M. Scott Peck M. Scott Peck Köprülü Category="1936 births"Category="2005 deaths"Category="American psychiatrists"Category="Columbia alumni"Category="People from New York City"Morgan Scott Peck, M.D. (May 22, 1936 - September 25, 2005) was an American psychiatrist and best-selling author.

Biography

Peck was born in New York City. He graduated from Friends Seminary in 1954, after which he received a B.A. from Harvard in 1958 and an M.D. degree from Case Western Reserve University in 1963. He served in administrative posts in the government during his career as a psychiatrist. He was the Medical Director of the New Milford Hospital Mental Health Clinic and a psychiatrist in private practice in New Milford, Connecticut. His first and best-known book, The Road Less Traveled, has sold more than seven million copies.

Peck's works combined his experiences from his private psychiatric practice with a distinctly religious point of view. In one of his books, People of the Lie, he wrote, "After many years of vague identification with Buddhist and Islamic mysticism, I ultimately made a firm Christian commitment - signified by my non-denominational baptism on the ninth of March 1980..." One of his religious insights was that people who are evil attack others rather than facing their own failures. His religious views are criticized by some fundamentalist Christians (for example, Debbie Dewart).

In 1984, Peck co-founded the Foundation for Community Encouragement, a tax-exempt, nonprofit, public educational foundation, whose stated mission is "to teach the principles of community to individuals and organizations."

Peck married Lily Ho in 1959, and they had three children. In 2004 she left him. Peck then married Kathleen Kline Yates.

Peck died at his home in Connecticut after suffering from Parkinson's disease and pancreatic and liver duct Cancer.

The Road Less Traveled

The Road Less Traveled is Peck's best-known work, and the one that made his reputation. It is, in short, a description of the attributes that make for a happy and fulfilled human being, based largely on his insights as a psychiatrist and a person.

In the first section of the work Peck talks about discipline, which he considers essential for emotional, spiritual and psychological health, and which he describes as "the means of spiritual evolution". The elements of discipline that make for such health include the ability to delay gratification, accepting responsibility for oneself and one's actions, a dedication to reality and an openness to challenge.

In the second section, Peck considers the nature of love, which he considers the driving force behind spiritual growth. The section mainly attacks a number of misconceptions about love: that it is about dependency, that true love is "falling in love", that love is a feeling. Instead love is about cathexis, the extending of one's ego boundaries to include another, and about the spiritual nurturing of another.

The final section describes Graces - phenomena which Peck says:

He concludes that "the miracles described indicate that our growth as human beings is being assisted by a force other than our conscious will".

Bibliography

References

External links