© Roger M Tagg 2010
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
This book, like Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", was a big hit in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was written by an American psychotherapist, i.e. a medically-trained "shrink". It is remarkable for its insight in going beyond pure techniques and science, to encompass a view of "love" and even religion (though not the sort that is concerned with God the Father in the Sky Above, or with dogmas and rituals). It was one of the books that struck a chord with me in my own quest for "religionless Religion" (as Bonhoeffer put it). It is very much based on the author's own experience with psychotherapy, not just as a practitioner but also as a patient. Peck himself, at age 15, refused to go back to his secondary boarding school, and was sent for psychiatric treatment. Somehow he picked up his act well enough to go to Harvard, qualify medically and become a successful practitioner in Connecticut - not to mention a best-selling author.
"The Road Less Travelled" is an allusion to a poem by Robert Frost entitled The Road Not Taken.
Before starting the selected quotations, it is worth looking at the interesting overall list of contents. There are 58 pages on Discipline, 100 on Love, 41 on Growth and Religion and 79 on Grace (the "Amazing" sort!).
| Mega-chapter | Section | Page | --- | Mega-chapter | Section | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction | 11 | |||||
| DISCIPLINE | - Problems and Pain | 15 | GROWTH & RELIGION | - World Views and Religion | 185 | |
| - Delaying Gratification | 18 | - The Religion of Science | 193 | |||
| - The Sins of the Father | 21 | - The Case of Kathy | 197 | |||
| - Problem-Solving and Time | 27 | - The Case of Marcia | 208 | |||
| - Responsibility | 32 | - The Case of Theodore | 210 | |||
| - Neuroses and Character Disorders | 35 | - The Baby and the Bath Water | 221 | |||
| - Escape from Freedom | 39 | - Scientific Tunnel Vision | 225 | |||
| - Dedication to Reality | 44 | |||||
| - Transference: the Outdated Map | 46 | |||||
| - Openness to Challenge | 51 | |||||
| - Withholding truth | 59 | |||||
| - Balancing | 64 | |||||
| - The Healthiness of Depression | 69 | |||||
| - Renunciation and Rebirth | 72 | |||||
| LOVE | - Love Defined | 81 | GRACE | - The Miracle of Health | 235 | |
| - Falling in "Love" | 84 | - The Miracle of the Unconscious | 245 | |||
| - The Myth of Romantic Love | 91 | - The Miracle of Serendipity | 253 | |||
| - More About Ego Boundaries | 94 | - The Definition of Grace | 260 | |||
| - Dependency | 98 | - The Miracle of Evolution | 263 | |||
| - Cathexis Without Love | 106 | - The Alpha and the Omega | 268 | |||
| - "Self-Sacrifice" | 111 | - Entropy and Original Sin | 271 | |||
| - Love is Not a Feeling | 116 | - The Problem of Evil | 277 | |||
| - The Work of Attention | 120 | - The Evolution of Consciousness | 280 | |||
| - The Risk of Loss | 131 | - The Nature of Power | 284 | |||
| - The Risk of Independence | 134 | - Grace and Mental Illness: The Myth of Orestes | 289 | |||
| - The Risk of Commitment | 140 | - Resistance to Grace | 297 | |||
| - The Risk of Confrontation | 150 | - The Welcoming of Grace | 307 | |||
| - Love is Disciplined | 155 | - Afterword | 313 | |||
| - Love is Separateness | 160 | |||||
| - Love and Psychotherapy | 169 | |||||
| - The Mystery of Love | 180 |
| Page | Highlighted Quote |
|---|---|
| 15 | Life is difficult (Buddha: it's suffering) - many people spend a lot of time moaning about it. |
| 16 | It's in the process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. "Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure". Franklin: "Those things that hurt, instruct". "Most of us are not wise. Fearing the pain involved, almost all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, attempt to avoid problems. " |
| 17 | "Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering." |
| 18 | Delaying gratification is one sign of being self-disciplined. |
| 27-8 | Some people say: "I've never been able to fix things". The answer is "That's because you don't take the time". Doing anything properly takes time. |
| 33 | Many people don't want to take personal responsibility for their lives; something or someone else is always to blame. |
| 35-6 | The neurotic assumes he is at fault. But a character defect shows up as a disclaiming of responsibility - "I'm X". , "I can't" , "I had to " etc. |
| 38 | Neurotics make themselves miserable; those with character disorders make everyone else miserable, particularly their children. And they usually blame everyone else. |
| 39 | "If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem." |
| 41 | One's time management is totally one's own responsibility. We much each be aware when we are trying to do too much. |
| 42 | And we can't shift the onus for solving our time management problems onto someone else. |
| 44a | If we try to escape the pain of freedom (e.g. saying "I don't know, you decide), we give our power away. |
| 44b | We have to continually update our "life maps", i.e. our Weltanschauung. |
| 46 | If we don't, we are into "transference", i.e. forcing new situations into the structure of old ones (e.g. our childhood, school etc). |
| 51 | In past US culture, contemplation was not something held in high regard. Adlai Stevenson lost because people regarded him as an "egghead". (RT: what's changed?) |
| 52-3 | We must be prepared to be personally challenged, e.g. ready for other people saying "how can you say that?", "surely that's not right", "bullshit!" etc. Organizations are very bad in this respect; they like to maintain the myth that they are infallible (e.g. large companies, governments, political parties, the RC church etc). |
| 56a | The reason people lie is to avoid the pain of challenge and its consequences. |
| 56b | We always want to use a shortcut, especially if we are up against it. But is the shortcut legitimate? |
| 62a | If one always spoke one's mind, one would be regarded as insubordinate or a threat. |
| 62b | Peck's rules for "truthing": 1) never actually speak a falsehood; 2) withholding the truth is effectively a lie, so one had better have a good justification; 3) the decision to withhold the truth should never be based on personal needs; 4) the decision to withhold the truth must be based entirely on the needs of the person(s) the truth is to be withheld from; 5) assessing the other person's needs is complex, one needs "love" (as defined in this book); 6) the primary assessment factor is the other person's capacity to utilize the truth for his or her own spiritual growth; 7) our tendency is to underestimate, rather than overestimate, other peoples' capacity in this respect. |
| 67 | Loss of balance (whether physical, mental or social) is ultimately more painful than the giving up needed in order to retain balance. |
| 71-2 | Times of potential crisis in one's life, e.g. "mid-life crisis" are usually a matter of what we have to find a way of giving up. Erikson's list is: 1) the state of infancy, when we don't have to respond to external demands; 2) the fantasy of omnipotence; 3) the desire for total (including sexual) possession of one's parent(s) (the Freud thing); 4) the dependency of childhood; 5) distorted images of one's parents; 6) the omnipotentiality of adolescence; 7) the agility of youth; 8) the sexual attractiveness and potency of youth; 9) the fantasy of immortality; 10) authority over one's children; 11) various forms of temporal power; 12) the independence of physical health; 13) the self and life itself (accepting one is dying). My comment: 2, 6 and 9 seem somewhat similar; these sound like reasons for the high road toll. |
| 72 | The "process of giving up the self" leads to Peck's idea of "love". |
| 77 | Summary on discipline: it's a system of techniques for dealing constructively with the pain of problem-solving - instead of avoiding the pain. The 4 techniques are the 4 chapters, i.e. delaying gratification, assuming responsibility, being dedicated to the truth, and balancing. |
| 81-3 | People use the word "love" in many ways, not all of them good in Peck's view. In his definition, 1) it is oriented to another being's spiritual growth; 2) it is circular, in the sense that by working for another's spiritual growth we actually help our own; 3) self-love is included - denying oneself isn't the idea; 4) it takes effort and 5) it is both intention and action - there has to be will to actually do the loving action. Peck also talks about "extending one's boundaries" and opening up to others. |
| 88 | The perception that we are loving when we "fall in love" is a false one. That is not an act of will; it may just be our hormones. It is not an extension of our boundaries, it is a partial and temporary collapse of them. |
| 92 | The myth of romantic love is a dreadful lie. |
| 93 | Peck's work with couples led him "to the stark conclusion that open marriage is the only kind of mature marriage that is healthy and not seriously destructive to the spiritual health and growth of the individual partners". |
| 96 | To Hindus and Buddhists, "true reality can only be known by experiencing the oneness through a giving up of ego boundaries" . "It is a misperception (termed 'Maya') that the universe consists of discrete objects of various types." [RT: Frolio doesn't follow this line, but accepts that this is how people necessarily think.] |
| 116 | Love is an activity, not a feeling. |
| 117 | "Cathecting" and "cathexis" [Wikipedia: "investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea"] means setting something or someone up as a "love object". This could be a child, a hero, a heart throb, a pet or a possession. |
| 133 | Love transcends (i.e. "goes further than") cathexis . With cathexis there is always the risk of loss or rejection. |
| 136 | The only real security in life lies in relishing life's insecurity. |
| 155 | Whenever we exercise power we are attempting to influence the course of the world, of humanity, and therefore we are playing God. ... But those who truly love, and therefore work for the wisdom that love requires, know that to act is to play God. ... There is no alternative except inaction and impotence. Love compels us to play God with full consciousness. |
| 157 | The successful slave owner (our conscious self) treats his slaves (our instincts and feelings) with respect. |
| 168 | (In marriage) it is the separatedness of the partners that enriches the union. |
| 173 | The essential ingredient that makes psychotherapy effective and successful is not magical words, techniques and postures; it's human involvement and struggle. The voluminous professional literature in the West ignores the issue of "love". |
| 176 | Any genuinely loving relationship is one of mutual psychotherapy. |
| 177 | The criterion for when a patient is ready to terminate his/her therapy: it's when they themselves are able to make a good therapist. |
| 185 | We suffer from a tendency to define religion too narrowly. |
| 194 | "When it comes to questions of meaning, purpose and death, second hand information will not do." |
| "Science is a religion because it is a world view... " | |
| 206 | The Catholic (could have been any) church - unintentionally - provided Peck with much of his living as a psychotherapist. |
| 207 | Churches generally favour the "hand me down" variety of religion, and don't encourage individuals to work things out for themselves. |
| 222 | Another reason that scientists are so prone to "throw the baby out with the bath water" is that science itself is a religion. |
| 223 | It is essential for our spiritual growth for us to be scientists who are skeptical about what we have been taught. |
| 226 | Science - as a religion - may be limited by the view that anything that can't be measured isn't real. |
| 228-9 | Science and religion rarely open their doors to each other and ask "how can we help each other?" |
| 235 on | Peck sees Grace as the (RT: external?) force that drives improvement in all life. This includes evolution, the ability of some people to fight off injury or disease, or to avoid accidents. |
| 246-7 | Knowledge often already exists in one's subconscious. Also, there may exist collective knowledge among species. |
| 251 | Our unconscious is wiser than we are about everything. |
| 272-3 | If there is "original sin", it's laziness. The "serpent" is the easy story we listen to before reflecting or opening ourselves out. |
| 278 | Evil is laziness carried to the extreme; love is the antithesis of laziness (RT: sounds like "care"!) |
| 281 | Maybe "God" is the "unconsciousness within us", and capable of interaction with other unconsciousnesses. It's the "Holy Spirit". |
| 282 | Is God Jay's "collective unconscious"? |
| 294 | The myth of Orestes and the Furies: Peck says it's an allegory of "grace". |
| 296 | Most therapy patients must still be taught to assume total responsibility for themselves, as part of their healing. |
| 297-9 | Since the path of spiritual growth is open to all, why do so few people travel it? Why is the road "less travelled"? Is there a general lack of will to grow? |
| 300 | Instead of Christ's "many are called, but few are chosen", it might be better to say "all of us are called by and to grace, but few of us choose to listen to the call". To make progress or changes (i.e. receive grace), we have to open ourselves to the experiences that life offers |
| 303 | One of Peck's patients: "I don't want to have to think all the goddam time". |
| 308 | Buddha found enlightenment only when he stopped seeking for it, when he let it come to him. |
1. Successful living requires discipline:
a) don't eat all the icing on the cake first - save some
b) accept responsibility for your own life - don't make it depend on others.
c) don't nurture unreality - face the truth - don't hang on to outdated
"maps" .
d) be conscious of the need for balance - and to pull back on some things.
2. Real love consists of "extending one's self for the purpose of nurturing
one's own or another's spiritual growth" , and not:
a) the sort of romantic true love one "falls" into - what happens when the
ego boundaries eventually have to be reestablished?
b) dependency - i.e. inability to function properly "without the certainty that
one is being actively cared for by another".
c) idolizing something - or making something inanimate one's main concern, e.g.
money, power, golf-handicap, dog, cat.
d) self-sacrifice, doing everything for others - martyr-like behaviour,
doormat etc.
3. Love is an action or activity, not something one just feels. It involves a lot of attention and listening, also balance, and the practice of keeping the separateness of each individual's personality in mind.
Index to more highlights of interesting books
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 16th December 2010
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .