The Advantage of 20 Years Perspective on The Road Less Traveled
Notes by Doug Muder (1997)
The Road Less Traveled is a book of its time, the late 1970s. Currents of thought that were fashionable then are unfashionable now, sometimes for good reason. Also, writers of the 1970s were less sensitive to out-of-the-mainstream readers of all types.
- There's very little appreciation that psychological problems can have physical causes. In the 1990s, we usually think of schizophrenia or depression as primarily physiological problems rather than psychological ones.
- In general, Peck's examples are gender stereotypic.
- "My work with couples has led me to the stark conclusion that open marriage is the only kind of mature marriage that is healthy and not seriously destructive to the spiritual health and growth of the individual partners." [page 93, footnote] This point of view was a lot more fashionable in the 70s than in the 90s.
- In many of his examples, one result of successful therapy is divorce. The presence of children does not seem to affect Peck's declaration of success in these cases. Fashionable thought in the 1990s is less sanguine about the effects of divorce on children.
- "It is only when one has taken the leap into the unknown of total selfhood, psychological independence and unique individuality that one is free to proceed along still higher paths of spiritual growth and free to manifest love in its greatest dimensions." [page 139] This emphasis on independence first and reaching out to others later is a typical 1970s, and typical male, formulation. Writers in the 1990s tend to see a tighter, more subtle feedback loop between independence and relationship.
- Peck makes a positive reference to a male homosexual asking a girl for a date, as if homosexuality could or should be overcome. [page 148]
- "I frequently tell my patients that their feelings are their slaves and that the art of self-discipline is like the art of slave-owning." [page 156] Peck then gives us an explanation of how to be a good slave-owner. One wonders if he considered how his black readers would relate to this.
- "Were I ever to have a case in which I concluded after careful and judicious consideration that my patient's spiritual growth would be substantially furthered by our having sexual relations, I would proceed to have them." [page 175-176] He goes on to say that this has never happened to him and he doesn't believe it ever will, but what strikes me here is that the consideration is so one-sided. Presumably Peck had the kind of open marriage he advocates.
- In his discussion of miracles, Peck asks "Does the inanimate machinery of a motor vehicle possess an instinct to collapse itself in just such a manner as to preserve the contours of the human body within? … Such questions seem inherently absurd." [page 242] Not really. Cars are designed to do that.
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