Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90168 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
By melding love, science and religion into a primer on personal growth, M. Scott Peck launched his highly successful writing and lecturing career with this book. Even to this day, Peck remains at the forefront of spiritual psychology as a result of The Road Less Travelled. In the era of I'm OK, You're OK, Peck was courageous enough to suggest that "life is difficult" and personal growth is a "complex, arduous and lifelong task". His willingness to expose his own life stories as well as to share the intimate stories of his anonymous therapy clients creates a compelling and heartfelt narrative.

Synopsis
Confronting and solving problems is a painful process which most of us attempt to avoid. Avoiding resolution results in greater pain and an inability to grow both mentally and spiritually. Drawing heavily on his own professional experience, Dr M. Scott Peck, a psychiatrist, suggests ways in which facing our difficulties - and suffering through the changes - can enable us to reach a higher level of self-understanding. He discusses the nature of loving relationships: how to distinguish dependency from love; how to become one's own person and how to be a more sensitive parent. This is a book that can show you how to embrace reality and yet achieve serenity and a richer existence. Hugely influential, it has now sold over six million copies - and has changed many people's lives round the globe. It may change yours.

From the Publisher
25th Anniversary edition of the hugely influential modern classic.

Customer Reviews

Deep, full of insight, helpful and a little loony.
Just get it. It'll cost you a penny second hand, and it's well worth it. I mean just look at the fact there are 38 reviews to it's name!

But beware, he's going to talk about God. That's right, a psychotherapist talking about God. He only does so however in the last section and by then you've got enough benefit from it to throw it away with a smile and no resentment, no matter how hardened an atheist you are.

Briliant answers to questions you've never quite been able to articulate
If you've reached a point in time where you need to find credible answers to life's most difficult questions and someone has mentioned "The Road Less Travelled", let me say straightaway that you have definitely come to the right place.

This is an incredibly significant and important book, probably one of the very best of its type ever written. It is easily read and full of accessible wisdom. It is no exaggeration to say that this is a book that is more than capable of changing your life for the better.

Scott Peck explores two primary themes in RLT. One is that life is a series of problems and while there are no easy answers he provides a brilliant description of the tools we need to solve them. The second theme is that nearly all of the problems we encounter in life concern our relationships with ourselves and with others. So the Road Less Travelled is all about how to get the most out of life and how to build meaningful, satisfying realtionships. This description may over-simplify what is a deeply thoughtful and inspiring analysis of what it means to be human, but I hope it provides some idea of just how good this book is. Like the other reviewers here, I first read RLT 20 years ago. It helped me then. I recently came back to it and it helped me again at a whole different level.

It takes a fair amount of mental effort to fully grasp many of the concepts described within it, but the effort is certainly rewarded. Once you have understood and digested what the author is saying, you will gain a knowledge and insight that will profoundly affect how you relate to people around you, especially those you most care about.

In one sense, this book provides what can be fairly described as a practical definition of the meaning of life. You cold say that RLT is manual that solves human problems just as a car's handbook solves practical mechanical issues! So, if you've ever been faced with tough situations or problems to which no easy answers can be found, this i a great place to start. I can genuinely say that I am a happier and more fulfilled person for having read it. I hope you will be too, so do try it.

Thank you, Scott Peck.

A Good Read
An interesting and enjoyable read. Kept me turning the pages for some hours, which is hard to do, I normally put a book down after an hour. Thanks to the author.