The Road Less Traveled
M. Scott Peck · 1978
The Road Less Traveled (1978) is a book by M. Scott Peck on psychology & human behavior. Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck fuses clinical psychology with spirituality into a guide for growing up: life is difficult, and only discipline, genuine love, and grace can carry us through the painful work of becoming whole.
A landmark that redefined love as an act of will rather than a feeling, and argued that facing life's pain, not dodging it, is the only road to becoming whole.
Three of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of The Road Less Traveled pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first three.
- Life is difficult, and this is a great truth, because once we truly accept it, the difficulty no longer matters. Most mental suffering comes from raging against reality, as if life were supposed to be easy.
- Discipline is the basic set of tools we use to solve life's problems and endure their pain. Peck names four: delaying gratification, accepting responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing.
- Avoiding legitimate suffering is the root of most mental illness. Whenever we sidestep the pain a problem demands, we substitute a neurosis for it, the problem doesn't vanish, it festers.
The other 4 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 9 chapters
The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.
- Life Is Difficult: The Meaning of Discipline
- Delaying Gratification and Accepting Responsibility
- Dedication to Truth: Revising the Map
- Balancing: The Discipline of Giving Up
- Falling in Love Is Not Love
- Love as the Will to Extend Yourself
- The Work and Risk of Real Love
- Growth, Religion, and the Problem of God
- Grace, Entropy, and the Force That Resists
Finish The Road Less Traveled tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 11 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.
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