For anyone who has issues....need I say more? The first 2/3 of this book (I didn't care for the last 1/3 at all when he gets into religion) is really thoughtful and helpful when it comes to sorting out your "issues". Issues with family, issues dealing with your strengths/weaknesses and habits, and more. I re-read this often, as every time I read it, I seem to get a different answer/lesson that fits my concerns.

This book has stayed with me, and helped a great deal with overcoming aspects of my life that I have striggled with.

3.75

Đọc lại lần 02 vào 2024 sau 6 năm. Vẫn thấy sách có nhiều góc nhìn hay về tình yêu, sự trưởng thành. Nhưng cũng thấy được nhiều vấn đề về lập luận, cách giải quyết vấn đề.
----
Cuốn này được dịch ra tiếng Việt là con đường chẳng mấy ai đi vào năm 2004, một cuốn sach hay và tuyệt vời đến thế nhưng mình lại không hề biết tới sự xuất hiện của nó. 11 năm liền nằm trong bestseller của new york time.

Nếu bạn là một người yêu thích lĩnh vực tâm lí học, không nên bỏ qua cuốn sách này. Đây là cuốn sách đưa ra rất nhiều quan điểm và phân tích hay để bạn giúp bạn trưởng thành về mặt tâm trí, tinh thần và cả trong tình yêu nữa.

Đọc xong cuốn này mình tin là các bạn sẽ bớt ham muốn, bớt thích những thứ hào nhoáng xa hoa mà sẽ tập trung vào những gì cốt lõi nhất, đó là tình yêu chứ không phải sự ràng buộc, đó là học cách yêu chứ không phải phụ thuộc vào người yêu của mình. Bạn cũng sẽ hiểu rằng chịu trách nhiệm cho cuộc sống của chính mình, và duy trì trạng thái cuộc sống cân bằng là những điều vô giá để vượt qua được những thử thách lớn trong cuộc sống

Ngoài ra, cuốn sách rất thích hợp với những bạn có sự quan tâm đến sự phát triển về tinh thần và con đường tâm linh. Một cuốn sách hay và rất đáng đọc, tiếc là nó đã chìm nghỉm ở VN mất rồi.

Mình viết review những cuốn sách khác tại blog nhỏ này http://ahapyman.com

Probably the most important book on love, psychological and spiritual development that I have ever read. Clear, straightforward, concise, very accessible. Don't be put off by the criticism of the numerous references to "God" and "grace" in the later chapters: I found them useful and "open" (in the sense that "God" might be substituted by "universe", "energy", "oneness" or whatever you might want to call it. There is no need to believe in a deity.) If you do find the reference to concepts of oneness or "God" problematic, just read the first parts and leave the rest for another time. It's well worth it.

I have owned this book since I believe 1980 or so, but consider this a book, everyone should have on their life travel.

I think this man was unwell when he wrote this.

He says the goal of all therapy should be to become God, and that most of his clients leave long before they are ready because they are too lazy to become God. He doesn't think the goal of therapy should be to become more comfortable with one's life, or calmer, or happier, but rather spiritual growth and "godhood". Godhood is a word. Once you become God you can be a therapist, even if you aren't trained. The implication here is that Peck is God.

Nonetheless, as soon as we believe it is possible for man to become God, we can really never
rest for long, never say, “OK, my job is finished, my work is done.” We must constantly push ourselves to greater and greater wisdom, greater and
greater effectiveness. By this belief we will have trapped ourselves, at least until death, on an effortful treadmill of self-improvement and spiritual
growth. God’s responsibility must be our own. It is no wonder that the belief in the possibility of Godhead is repugnant.
The idea that God is actively nurturing us so that we might grow up to be like Him brings us face to face with our own laziness.

There is an also an awful lot of pseudoscience. He says that evolution is a miracle because it goes against entropy *headdesk* and often mentions scientific concepts he obviously doesn't understand to support his ideas. He holds the false belief that evolution has an endpoint / destination, and, guess what, the end point is our evolution is our evolution into God.

Telling your clients they aren't ready to leave therapy until they are God seems like a cunning marketing ploy to me. If this appeals to you you will like the book. It's well written and there are some great nuggets in it.

I have a colleague who often tells people, ‘“Look, allowing yourself to be dependent on another person is the worst possible thing you can do
to yourself. You would be better off being dependent on heroin. As long as you have a supply of it, heroin will never let you down; if it’s there, it will
always make you happy. But if you expect another person to make you happy, you’ll be endlessly disappointed.”

This isn't to say that you can't trust other people, just that others are not responsible for your happiness.

And I was introduced to the concept of cathexis, which is very interesting. Sublimation without the underlying sexual motive. Devoting yourself to something or someone and growing through acts of love. Like a gardener and her garden. What a great word.

Still though, I think he projects a lot on to his patients.. a lot a lot a lot. I read a study that showed that all therapy, even "sham" therapy helps at least 70% of people, but I do wonder if he never caused anyone any harm. He has this very specific world view and way of doing things and actively resents people that don't fit into it:

“What is it about living in Okinawa that’s so painful for you?” I asked. She began to cry in a whining sort of way. “I don’t have any friends here, and I’m alone all the time.”
He reads the audiobook himself, and there's a lot of disdain in how he pronounces the word "whining". I felt he showed disdain for any of the patients that chose not to work with him after an initial meeting, or anyone he wasn't able to help for one reason or another.



I think this is exactly the sort of book that gives the entire genre of self-help a bad name. I listened to the abridged version and I don't think I'll be going back to read it in full, yet maybe in the future being divine will appeal to me - god only knows.

n  DNF @ Pg 223 (70%)n

Maybe I'll come back to it later but it's just really dragging for me and I can't be bothered any more!

I thought it would be wise, inspirational, mind-blowing ... it's not. It's interesting in places, but otherwise it just seems ... obvious?

The title is pretty misleading, because this seemed more about how everyone is messed up? Like, what road are you referring to exactly and who is travelling it? I am confused.

The subtitle suggests this is THE 'classic work on relationships, spiritual growth and life's meaning', but I disagree. I have read better.

This book spends 170 pages discussing the nature of love and how it is the core of everything we do. I mostly agree with that sentiment but I was bored after the first 100 pages of it. It's just repetitive and it's more information you just observe rather than do anything with. Essentially, it talks about how our relationships in childhood (predominantly with our parents) can set us up for all kinds of psychological disorders. Which is fascinating to a degree but it's not like we can go back and re-do our childhoods. The only way to fix these issues is therapy, apparently. I'm not anti-therapy at all, but the message got a bit wearying after a while.

So then I skipped from pg 108 straight to the 'Growth and Religion' section which was, again, interesting, but not exactly anything life-altering. It talks about how everyone has religion, even if your religion is having no religion. I was interested in the relationship between religion and science, but this was more interested in case studies and showing that god exists even when he doesn't. So I found myself skimming again.

By the time I'd skimmed my way to the section titled, 'Grace', I was done.

Nothing about this book is mind-blowing. It's interesting in places, sure, but it's not just the inspirational book I had hoped it would be. The psychology does interest me so I may return to it, but when I was expecting more this just ended up being a disappointing chore to read.

The first about 2/3 of this book was fantastic. He goes into detail on some basic psychology concepts, and it was interesting reading about these through a more individual perspective focused on personal growth. A few points read kind of like a textbook, but the nerdy part of me that misses learning enjoyed it. The message that confronting problems in life takes work, love takes work, and therapy takes work comes off as reassuring and hopeful when framed as normal and essential to “spiritual growth,” and is something that most people can probably relate to.
I kind of lost him in the last part. He makes some valuable points about how everyone has a “religion,” even if not in the traditional sense, how many scientists’ approach of disregarding things that can’t be measured or don’t fit into current understanding closes us off from further exploration, and also pretty much predicts the discovery of cancer immunotherapy while discussing miracles. But he then connects everything to God in a way that feels unnecessary to convey the message he’s attempting to get across. Throughout, you can definitely tell this book was written in the 70s and he uses some offensive analogies and and examples. He also occasionally comes off as quite pretentious, highlighting the ease with which he overcame something in his life without making any note of the privileges he had that helped him do that or why it might be more difficult for others.
Despite that, it’s overall a great book that I feel I gained a lot from and is definitely worth the read.


“If someone is determined not to risk pain, then such a person must do without many things… all that makes life alive, meaningful and significant.”

“When we love someone our love becomes demonstrable or real only through our exertion - through the fact that for that someone (or for ourself) we take an extra step or walk an extra mile. Love is not effortless. To the contrary, love is effortful.”

“In any case, when we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems, we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us. It is for this reason that in chronic mental illness we stop growing, we become stuck. And without healing, the human spirit begins to shrivel.”

I was on track to give this book a 4-5 star review, probably 4 because of some gross gender role references. Then I got close to halfway and read the slave comparison and nope.

"While one should not be a slave to one's feelings, self-discipline does not mean the squashing of one's feelings into non-existence. I frequently tell my patients that their feelings are *their* slaves and that the art of self-discipline is like the art of slave owning. First of all, one's feelings are the source of one's energy; they provide the horsepower, or slave power, that makes it possible for us to accomplish the tasks of living. Since they work for us, we should treat them with respect. There are two common mistakes that slave-owners can make which represent opposite and extreme forms of executive leadership. One type of slave-owner does not discipline his slaves, gives them no structure, sets them no limits, provides them with no direction and does not make it clear who is the boss. What happens, of course, is that in due time his slaves stop working and begin moving into the mansion, raiding the liquor cabinet and breaking the furniture, and soon the slave-owner finds that he is the slave of his slaves, living in the same kind of chaos as the aforementioned character-disordered "bohemian" couple."

There's more but that's where I closed the book.

A very insightful book authored by a psychologist/psychiatrist who reveals the secrets to fulfilling, healthy, meaningful and lasting relationships. It really makes you see yourself and others in a different light, as well as words and concepts we think we understand. His hallmark argument is that we so often view love as a noun instead of a verb... as something that just happens to us or doesn't happen to us, instead of an ongoing task we must work at...that work, that action-is love. In fact, something I clearly remember is his point that when people feel as though they've "fallen out of love", it is then that the opportunity for true love to grow is at its greatest. Not at all written in a preachy, self-help sort of way. It's very interesting, full of a lot of great anecdotes.

I have this sparkly new massage therapist in my life now, in my new hometown, and the last time I went to her with my aches and pains, she noticed I was reading THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED. She's a young thirtysomething, and she wasn't familiar with the title, but when I explained that it was a famous bestseller from 1978 and probably the most influential book of psychotherapy ever to hit book stores, she took a picture of the cover and said, “I can't believe I don't know this book. I was raised by two psychotherapists.”

Whoa. Curious cat that I am, I immediately needed to know what that was like. I asked her, and she answered something like, “You know. . . far from perfect, but we were always resourced, that's for sure.”

Little did she know that her casual words sent my mind racing, and I was thinking of this term, resourced, for the next couple of weeks.

You see. . . I didn't know that I wasn't resourced until I was in my late 30s and setting out to adopt for the first time. We were already the proud parents of a preteen son, but because we were entering into the legal arena of adoption, we were suddenly required to take parenting classes and be evaluated by a social worker.

It was just an introduction to therapy for me, and a short-lived experience, but I became curious enough about this notion of being resourced to pursue a private therapist of my own a few years back.

I felt like a toddler, entering this world of human and spiritual growth. I still do, for the most part. There's a lot to learn about being human. Hell, there's a whole different language that marks the terrain, and much of it was foreign to me.

Fast forward to the current version of me, reading this “psychology classic” about being resourced, through discipline, love and grace, just as a new person in my life credited her parents for helping her to maintain equilibrium throughout her life, largely by being resourced.

As Dr. Peck writes in his book, “spiritual growth is an effortful and difficult one. This is because it is conducted against a natural resistance, against a natural inclination to keep things the way they were, to cling to the old maps and old ways of doing things, to take the easy path.”

Oh, for shit sure, Dr. Peck, and don't think I haven't kicked, screamed and cried throughout many a session, sir. It's not the easiest thing to realize that you were essentially raised by two eighth graders who would have rather been sitting, perpetually, on their cars in front of the Dairy Queen than parenting you. (We've all got our issues, now, don't we?).

Dr. Peck's ultimate goal for himself and his patients was “spiritual growth,” and by “spiritual growth,” he didn't mean that any of us needed to become a Methodist or a rabbi. This famous psychiatrist was interested, primarily, in our journey of “spiritual evolution.” This is a book about elevating humanity, for your own sake, and for the sake of others.

I would've had no interest in this material in my teens or twenties, when it was the most popular, (and when I thought I had life all figured out). To be honest, I probably wouldn't have had the emotional maturity or the mental bandwidth to read this before the age of 40, but I appreciated it so much now.

The final chapters in the final section on “Grace” are not for everyone, nor will every person who reads this book be prepared to tackle that material. Personally, my thoughts are aligned with these particular concepts, but I can also see that some of that material might be daunting for readers who aren't ready to "go there."

But, regardless of any reader's experience of Dr. Peck's final thoughts, I'd like to contribute that I found myself with more than 30+ status updates for a book of only 311 pages, and my copy is covered with post-it notes. It's a challenging and thoughtful work that is barely dated, despite the material being 45 years old.

This non-fiction work, prompted by my 1970s reading project, has turned out to be one of my most meaningful reads of all time.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
--Robert Frost

This book is second only to the bible to me. It teaches you what love is. What love is not. Why old fashioned values like honesty, hard work, discipline and integrity are important. Every person should read it. This book should be required reading in high school or college.

I read this book to make my mom happy. Her church book group was reading it, and she got all stoked about it after reading the first section. It was a fairly bland combination of basic common sense (self-discipline is good, laziness is bad), pseudo-spiritual psychobabble (your unconscious mind is God!), and the occasional moral zinger (open marriage is the only real form of marriage). Overall, I was unimpressed, but I wasn't begging the Lord for the 6 hours of my life back, either. I never even asked my mom what she thought of the book after the first part. I suppose that would be a good thing to do. I love my mom.