사상가, 정신과 의사이자 베스트셀러 작가, 강연가.
하버드대학(B.A.)과 케이스 웨스턴 리저브(M.D.)에서 수학한 후, 10여 년간 육군 군의관(정신과 의사)으로 일했다. 이때의 경험은 후에 개인과 조직에서의 인간 행동을 연구하는 데 귀중한 자료가 되었고 그러한 통찰은 여러 편의 책에서 구체화된다. 1978년, 마흔두 살에 쓴 첫 책 《아직도 가야 할 길》은 ‘사랑, 전통적 가치, 영적 성장에 대한 새로운 심리학’이라는 부제가 보여주듯 ‘심리학과 영성을 매우 성공적으로 결합시킨 중요한 책’으로 평가되며 이후 《뉴욕타임스》의 최장기 베스트셀러 목록을 차지할 정도로 독자의 사랑을 받았다. 불교도로서 이 책을 집필한 이후, 저자는 공개적으로 크리스천으로의 개종을 선언하고 인간 심리와 기독교 신앙의 통합을 지향하는 글쓰기에 매진한다. 개인뿐 아니라 조직과 사회의 영적 성장을 꿈꾸었던 스캇 펙은 그러한 이상을 실현하기 위해 아내와 함께 비영리 교육기관인 공동체장려재단(FCE)을 만들어 평화적인 동력을 구현해보려고 노력했다. 이러한 의지와 나름의 해법은 《마음을 어떻게 비울 것인가》에 고스란히 담겼다.
From 1963 until 1972, Peck served in the United States Army, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. His Army assignments included stints as chief of psychology at the Army Medical Center in Okinawa, Japan, and assistant chief of psychiatry and neurology in the office of the surgeon general in Washington, D.C.[5]
From 1972 to 1983, Peck was engaged in the private practice of psychiatry in Litchfield County, Connecticut. He was the Medical Director of the New Milford Hospital Mental Health Clinic and a psychiatrist in private practice in New Milford, Connecticut.[5] During this time Peck came to make a strong Christian commitment. Having been raised in a secular home, Peck developed his own religious beliefs over the period of his early adulthood. These ranged from Zen Buddhism to Jewish and Muslim mysticism, finally settling with Christianity at age 43.[7]
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https://www.davidsheff.com/m-scott-peck
M. Scott Peck
This article was originally published in March 1992.
A candid conversation with America’s all-time best-selling psychiatrist about the joys of love, the evils of Satan and the problem with fidelity
“Life is difficult.”
With those three words, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck began his landmark book The Road Less Traveled and launched millions of personal breakthroughs, religious conversions and psychological catharses. Few books since the Bible have influenced so many people. Certainly, few have sold more. While publishers gleefully celebrate the number of weeks a book survives on the best-seller list, Peck’s book seems to have taken up permanent residence there, going on its seventh year. It has sold about 4,000,000 copies and continues to move at the rate of approximately 500,000 books a year–recently acing out The Joy of Sex as the record holder in the nonfiction category.
In the process, Peck has become perhaps the most famous, and most controversial, psychiatrist in the country. His insights hit home with all age groups, but more interestingly, his infusion of spirituality into psychiatry–a field not known for its close relationship with religion–wins him both admirers, who are looking for moral guidance, and detractors, who find his religious views naïve and puzzling. Three other Peck books have followed The Road Less Traveled onto the best-seller list, and he is a sought-after speaker and lecturer, both as shrink and as religious leader.
Unlike his psychiatrist-turned-writer counterparts who offer self-help, instant therapy and an “I’m OK, you’re OK” view of life, Peck refuses to sugar-coat life’s problems. There are no easy answers, he says. The Road Less Traveled introduces a radically different idea: Of course you’re worried. There is a lot to be worried about.
Millions have found solace in this uncheery thought and in Peck’s prescriptions for coping with today’s harsh realities. For instance, depression, he says, is not necessarily something to be avoided; it is often an appropriate response to change or to the frustration most of us often feel. Nor is it the end of the road; it can be a temporary state in the process of growth. Peck has also sought to redefine our idea of relationships. As long as we hold on to our romantic illusions, he maintains, we will continue to be disappointed and to search for fulfillment in the wrong places. Peck offers no panaceas or quick fixes. He instead advocates hard work, discipline and introspection.
But it is Peck’s concern with spirituality that makes The Road Less Traveled unique. He rebelled against his family’s atheism while a college student, finding solace in Eastern religions well before they were fashionable here. He studied Zen Buddhism and Taoism and practiced meditation but put them aside when he opened his private practice in New Preston, Connecticut, where he was a traditional secular therapist.
“I came to see that psychotherapy and spiritual growth are one and the same thing,” Peck says now. Time and time again, he found that his patients were searching for answers that psychotherapy couldn’t provide. It led him to a search that culminated in his baptism as a Christian in 1980. Unlike traditional psychiatrists such as Sigmund Freud, Peck believes that psychology and religion are complementary. “Theologically, he’s very sound,” says the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, Jr., former senior minister at Manhattan’s Riverside Church.
When The Road Less Traveled was released in 1978, The New York Times summarized it as “psychological and spiritual inspiration by a psychiatrist.” Phyllis Theroux, writing in The Washington Post, called it “not just a book but a spontaneous act of generosity.” In an interview with the Times, she said she was so taken by the book that she spent weeks, “crafting a review for the Post that would force people to buy [it].”
The book, originally titled The Psychology of Spiritual Growth, is a mix of Peck’s common and uncommon sense, case histories from his days of practicing psychiatry, both privately and in the military, and doses of his neo-Puritan philosophy. The publisher, after asking him to rename the book, originally agreed to print only 5000 copies, which quickly sold out. Phenomenal word of mouth–at cocktail parties, group-therapy sessions, A.A. meetings, on college campuses–took over. Peck even received a call from Cher, who had read the book and wanted help from him personally. A year after its publication, it had sold 12,000 copies. In the following years, sales grew, so that by mid-1983–five years after it was released–it crept onto the Times best-seller list for the first time. More than 1,000,000 copies were sold that year.
Peck returned to his typewriter in 1982 and produced an incredibly controversial book, People of the Lie–a study of human evil from that in man-woman relationships to the horror of My Lai. The Wall Street Journal called the book “ground-breaking”; The Washington Times, “a daring study of evil”; and Contemporary Christian Magazine, “one of the most significant new works in recent memory.” This time, Theroux praised Peck’s “act of courage.”
Although People of the Lie didn’t come close to the first book’s huge appeal, it was another best seller, as was The Different Drum, which followed. In Drum, Peck moves from diagnosing the woes of individuals to diagnosing the woes of communities, America and the world itself. Subtitled “Community Making and Peace,” the book sets forth Peck’s premise that the human race stands at the brink of self-annihilation and only radically new thinking will save us.
Peck’s background is eclectic. He was born in New York City, where his father; a self-made man from Indiana, had become a successful lawyer and judge. After graduating from Harvard in 1958 with a degree in social relations, Peck bowed to pressure from his father and went into medicine. He enrolled in Columbia University for premed studies and there met Lily Ho, who was born and raised in Singapore. Although his family objected to their interracial relationship, they married a year later.
After receiving his degree in medicine, Peck joined the Army and spent the next nine and a half years as a military psychiatrist serving in Okinawa and the Surgeon General’s office in Washington, D.C. In 1972, he returned to civilian life and moved to Connecticut, where he hung out his shingle as a shrink and worked on his golf game. He, Lily and their three children lived in an 18th Century farmhouse on, appropriately enough, Bliss Road. There Peck led the quiet life of a country psychiatrist until, four years later, he “was called,” as he puts it, to write The Road Less Traveled.
The controversy surrounding Peck’s books and his work–he now spends most of his time lecturing, conducting workshops and promoting his books, as well as writing–continued when his latest book, A Bed by the Window, was released. It is, surprisingly, a novel, but it still provides a forum for his message–this time laced into a mystery about murder and sex in a nursing home. A reviewer for theLos Angeles Times was appalled. “Call me prejudiced! Call me puritanical! Call me naïve! The sex in this novel made my hair curl.” The New York Times, on the other hand, found “this overtly didactic and opaquely religious novel both moving and brave.” The conclusion? Nothing has changed; people are still furiously feuding about Peck, making it high time for us to make our own assessment. Contributing Editor David Sheff, who last squared off with Japan’s controversial politician Shintaro Ishihara, made the pilgrimage. His report:
“Psychologists tell us that everything we do, think and react to has a larger significance. At one time in my life, I thought that was nonsense. I considered most of psychology and psychiatry manipulative, exploitative and even dangerous. They offered panaceas, blame and rationalizations.
“When I first heard about Scott Peck, I was particularly suspicious. The first line of The Road Less Traveled that had been ballyhooed about–‘Life is difficult’–seemed like a less imaginative version of the bumper sticker Life’s A Bitch And Then You Die.
“Then, when my marriage disintegrated, I went into therapy. I came to realize that there was something profound about the process. The motivations for much of what we do are incredibly complex, and it’s no accident that we keep on making the same mistakes. In therapy, I learned that only if we choose to figure out why we do what we do can we live consciously–with our eyes open.
“By the time I was assigned to interview Peck, my mind was open to much of what he talks about, though I remained cynical about his religious references. I certainly appreciated the fact that he doesn’t pretend to have easy answers–and sometimes admits he has none.
“Nonetheless, I wasn’t prepared for the man I met. At times, the interview swung from the sublime to the ridiculous. Peck was full of contradictions. He trembled (attributing the condition to a neurological disorder) and smoked so much that I feel as if the interview had shortened my life.
“We met in Seattle, where he was busy working the talk-show-and-interview circuit to push his novel. After a hearty breakfast of eggs Benedict in the hotel’s restaurant, we moved to Peck’s room for a first marathon session. He sat on the couch, pulling up his khaki slacks at the knees. He adjusted his turquoise sweater and pushed on the nosepiece of his clear-framed spectacles, staring into the coffee he’d made with his travel percolator. His appearance changed with his moods–at times, he seemed older, world-weary; at others, youthful and vibrant. His tone swung from animated to, when he spoke about religion, sex or the demons that he believes exist among us, a barely audible monotone. He rolled his eyes when I asked my more skeptical questions. He’d heard them all before.
“He watched the clocks–three of them were placed around the room–and at precisely five P.M. poured us healthy shots of gin. For all of his solemnness and reverence, Peck was aware that this was, after all, the Playboy Interview. In addition to describing what he likes about our centerfolds (basically, the more provocative the better), he told me a joke for Playboy readers:
A very Christian woman with two Christian parakeets went to a pet shop to buy a third but was told that the one parakeet the pet-shop owner had left was inappropriate for her, since the only thing it could say was, ‘I’m a prostitute! I’m a prostitute!’
The woman finally persuaded the man to sell her the bird, anyway–her birds, she said, would save it. So she took it home and placed it in a cage with the Christian parakeets. After a few minutes, the newcomer spouted the only expression it knew: ‘I’m a prostitute! I’m a prostitute!’ The Christian parakeets looked at each other and said, ‘Our prayers have been answered.'”
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