The Road Less Traveled, Timeless Edition: A New Psychology Of Love, Traditional Values And Spiritual Growth

The Road Less Traveled, Timeless Edition: A New Psychology Of Love, Traditional Values And Spiritual Growth

Now featuring a new introduction by Dr. M. Scott Peck, the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the classic bestsellerThe Road Less Traveled, celebrated byTheWashington Post as ?not just a book but a spontaneous act of generosity.?Perhaps no book in this generation has had a more profound impact on our intellectual and spiritual lives thanThe Road Less Traveled. With sales of more than seven million copies in the United States and Canada, and translations into more than twenty-three languages, it has made publishing history, with more than ten years on theNew York Times bestseller list.Written in a voice that is timeless in its message of understanding,The Road Less Traveled continues to help us explore the very nature of loving relationships and leads us toward a new serenity and fullness of life. It helps us learn how to distinguish dependency from love; how to become a more sensitive parent; and ultimately how to become one?s own true self.Recognizing that, as in the famous opening line of his book, ?Life is difficult? and that the journey to spiritual growth is a long one, Dr. Peck never bullies his readers, but rather guides them gently through the hard and often painful process of change toward a higher level of self-understanding.From Publishers WeeklyPsychotherapy is all things to all people in this mega-selling pop-psychology watershed, which features a new introduction by the author in this 25th anniversary edition. His agenda in this tome, which was first published in 1978 but didn't become a bestseller until 1983, is to reconcile the psychoanalytic tradition with the conflicting cultural currents roiling the 70s. In the spirit of Me-Decade individualism and libertinism, he celebrates self-actualization as life's highest purpose and flirts with the notions of open marriage and therapeutic sex between patient and analyst. But because he is attuned to the nascent conservative backlash against the therapeutic worldview, Peck also cites Gospel passages, recruits psychotherapy to the cause of traditional religion (he even convinces a patient to sign up for divinity school) and insists that problems must be overcome through suffering, discipline and hard work (with a therapist.) Often departing from the cerebral and rationalistic bent of Freudian discourse for a mystical, Jungian tone more compatible with New Age spirituality, Peck writes of psychotherapy as an exercise in "love" and "spiritual growth," asserts that "our unconscious is God" and affirms his belief in miracles, reincarnation and telepathy. Peck's synthesis of such clashing elements (he even throws in a little thermodynamics) is held together by a warm and lucid discussion of psychiatric principles and moving accounts of his own patients' struggles and breakthroughs. Harmonizing psychoanalysis and spirituality, Christ and Buddha, Calvinist work ethic and interminable talking cures, this book is a touchstone of our contemporary religio-therapeutic culture.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.ReviewPhyllis TherouxThe Washington Post Not just a book, but a spontaneous act of generosity.About the AuthorM. Scott Peck, M.D. is the author of theNew York Times best-sellerThe Road Less Traveled, with six million copies in print. His other books includeFurther Along the Road Less Traveled, The Road Less Traveled andBeyond, Meditations from the Road and Golf and the Spirit.