M. Scott Peck (1936 to 2005) was an American psychiatrist whose first book, The Road Less Travelled (1978), became one of the best-selling self-help books ever written. It opens with the words “Life is difficult” and says that growing up psychologically and spiritually means facing our problems and our pain, through discipline, love and what Peck called grace, rather than avoiding them. Therapeutic Shamanism borrows his phrase for the path of facing things as they really are, a path few people choose.
Who was M. Scott Peck? #
An American psychiatrist and writer. Morgan Scott Peck was born in New York City in 1936, studied at Harvard and then trained in medicine at Case Western Reserve University. He served as a psychiatrist in the United States Army until 1972, and from 1972 to 1983 worked in private practice in Litchfield County, Connecticut.1
He wrote The Road Less Travelled while still in practice. It sold slowly at first, then spread by word of mouth, and went on to sell millions of copies, reportedly more than ten million, in twenty languages.2 On 9 March 1980 he was baptised a Christian, and much of his later work tried to bring religion and psychiatry together. His later books include People of the Lie (1983), on human evil, and The Different Drum (1987), on building community; in 1984 he helped found the Foundation for Community Encouragement. He died on 25 September 2005, aged 69.3
What is The Road Less Travelled about? #
How people grow, and why most of us avoid it. Peck called his manuscript The Psychology of Spiritual Growth; the publisher, Simon and Schuster, gave it the title it is known by, with the subtitle A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth.4 American editions spell it Traveled; British ones, Travelled.
The book begins: “Life is difficult.” Life is a series of problems, and for Peck, meeting them, and bearing the pain that comes with them, is how we grow. Avoiding the pain of problems only creates more pain. The book then moves through four parts. The first is discipline, which for Peck has four tools: delaying gratification, accepting responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing. The second is love, which he defined not as a feeling but as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” The third is growth and religion, and the fourth is grace, the help that seems to come from beyond our conscious selves.5
Much of the book is drawn from his work with patients, and psychotherapy runs all the way through it. Peck saw entering therapy as a great act of courage, because in therapy we have to face the truth about ourselves. He wrote that the main reason people do not have therapy is not that they lack money, but that they lack courage, and that most people who start therapy leave long before the work is done. Hence his question, “Since the path of spiritual growth, albeit difficult, is open to all, why do so few choose to travel it?”6
Why does Therapeutic Shamanism use his phrase? #
Because the path it teaches asks for the same courage, to face what most people would rather not. Things can only be properly changed when we have the courage to face them fully and unflinchingly. Most people do not want to do it, and Peck spoke of therapy as the road less travelled for just that reason.7
The same is true of shamanism. It is not a light and fluffy path. The shaman has always been the person willing to face the things that really need facing, to see into the darkness and see things as they really are. Waking up to the true state of the middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer, and to the mess we are in these days, can be harrowing, and the more empathy and interconnection we regain, the more of the world’s pain we feel. “True shamanism is not spiritual bypassing, or emotional numbing, or avoiding being in the world.”8 Facing our own Shadow is the road less travelled too, “a minority sport, as it takes great courage.”9 See What is spiritual bypassing and how can psychotherapy help prevent it?
How is the road less travelled like the Hero’s Journey? #
Both mean leaving the familiar and setting off into the unknown. Like the hero, the shaman leaves the world of ordinary human reality, finds allies, undergoes initiation and transformation, meets the other-than-human, overcomes obstacles and returns with knowledge and healing gifts for their tribe. Because of our domesticationDomestication. The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. More about this and the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer, walking the shamanic path these days also means moving beyond the domesticated self and the comfort of everyday life to face great trials and the uncertainty of transformation. It is not for everyone. It is “a road that few people choose or wish to travel”.10
Meeting our own Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer Soul asks the same, which means getting past layers of distorted Taker cultureTaker culture. Daniel Quinn’s term for the totalitarian agricultural, owning, surplus-driven way of life that takes everything and leaves nothing, and calls itself ‘civilisation’. Cultural, not innate, which is why it can be changed. Used interchangeably with ‘Fallen culture’. Read the full answer thinking about what it is to be Human, and facing things that most people do not want to face.11 See What is a rite of passage, and what did we lose when initiation disappeared?
Why are the people who take this road called brave? #
Because facing the truth about where we come from is frightening. Only a few people from dysfunctional and abusive families find the courage to get into therapy and face what really happened to them. Peck counted such people amongst the bravest in the world, and Paul Francis, having spent much of his adult life working with them as a psychotherapist, agrees.12
The same holds on a larger scale. We grow up inside Taker culture much as a child grows up in a dysfunctional family, taking it as normal, “just the way things are”. Only a few per cent of people wake up and face its true nature; most prefer to keep living in denial, and some defend it.13 See What are Leaver and Taker cultures, the Great Forgetting and the Great Remembering?
Where does Therapeutic Shamanism see the road differently? #
In where the road leads. Peck’s road is one of individual spiritual growth, and in the book it runs upwards. In his words, “God wants us to become Himself (or Herself or Itself). We are growing toward godhood. God is the goal of evolution.”14 In Therapeutic Shamanism the road runs down as much as up. Facing things as they are includes facing the state of the world and the damage the Fall has done, and the shaman’s journey ends with a return, bringing healing back to the tribe. Healthy spirituality honours the Earth as much as the Sky, and descent is as valuable as ascent.15 See What is the Fall?
Facing all this need not end in despair. Facing reality is of no use if all that happens is that we sink into it, and so the road also needs hope, balance and practical things we can do. Gratitude practice is a powerful one for easing despair about the world.16 See Why is gratitude an animist practice?
Has the book been criticised? #
Yes, chiefly by evangelical Christian writers, who objected to its theology. H. Wayne House and Richard Abanes wrote a whole book, The Less Traveled Road and the Bible (1995), saying that Peck’s view of God and of spiritual growth is not biblical Christianity. The line about growing toward godhood concerned Christian reviewers in particular.17
Others have praised it highly. The Washington Post reviewer Phyllis Theroux called it “a magnificent boat of a book”, and one of its evangelical critics allowed that it “has genuine value in terms of its insights into human nature, relationships, and psychodynamics.”18
Is the road less travelled for everyone? #
No. It is called the road less travelled because few people choose it or wish to travel it.19 Nor does it need to be. In hunter-gatherer societies not everyone was a shaman, nor did they need to be for the tribe to be healthy. It was the shaman’s particular role to go to the other-than-human and bring their wisdom back.20 For those who do walk the road, it often feels as if there is little choice, and none at all if they wish to be whole.21
