M. Scott Peck photo

M. Scott Peck

Dr. Peck was born on May 22, 1936 in New York City, the younger of two sons to David Warner Peck, a prominent lawyer and jurist, and his wife Elizabeth Saville. He married Lily Ho in 1959, and they had three children.

Dr. Peck received his B.A. degree magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1958, and his M.D. degree from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in 1963. From 1963 until 1972, he served in the United States Army, resigning from the position of Assistant Chief Psychiatry and Neurology Consultant to the Surgeon General of the Army with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and the Meritorious Service Medal with oak leaf cluster. From 1972 to 1983, Dr. Peck was engaged in the private practice of psychiatry in Litchfield County, Connecticut.

On March 9, 1980 at the age of 43, Dr. Peck was nondenominationally baptized by a Methodist minister in an Episcopalian convent (where he has frequently gone on retreat).

Dr. Peck's first book, The Road Less Traveled, was published by Simon & Schuster in 1978. The book has sold over six million copies to date in North America alone, and has been translated into over 20 languages.

Dr. Peck's second book, People of the Lie: The Hope For Healing Human Evil, was published by Simon & Schuster in October of 1983. It is recognized as a ground-breaking contribution to the field of psychology, and is currently a best seller in Japan.

Dr. Peck's third book, What Return Can I Make? Dimensions of the Christian Experience, was published by Simon & Schuster in December of 1985. It contains Marilyn Von Waldner's singing as well as Dr. Peck's essays and audio commentary. It was republished by Harpers (San Francisco) in the fall of 1995, under the new title, Gifts For the Journey: Treasures of the Christian Life, and is being republished again by Renaissance Press.

A fourth book entitled The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, was published in June 1987 by Simon & Schuster and is recognized as another ground breaking contribution to the behavioral sciences.

Dr. Peck's fifth book and first work of fiction, A Bed By the Window: A Novel of Mystery and Redemption, was published by Bantam in August, 1990. It was hailed by the New York Times as "something of a miracle".

The Friendly Snowflake: A Fable of Faith, Love and Family, Dr. Peck's sixth book, and first for children as well as adults, (Turner Publishing, Inc.) and was illustrated by Dr. Peck's son, Christopher Peck, and published in October 1992.

Dr. Peck's seventh book, A World Waiting To Be Born: Civility Rediscovered, a work on organizational behavior, was published by Bantam in March 1993.

Meditations From the Road, was published by Simon & Schuster in August 1993.

Further Along the Road Less Traveled, a collection of Dr. Peck's edited lectures (1979-1993) was published by Simon & Schuster in October 1993.

In Search of Stones: A Pilgrimage of Faith, Reason and Discovery was published by Hyperion in April 1995. It is also illustrated by his son, Christopher. It has been hailed by Publisher's Weekly as a "quirky, magical blend of autobiography, travel, spiritual meditation, history and Arthurian legend."

A second novel In Heaven As On Earth: A Vision of the Afterlife, was published by Hyperion in the spring of 1996.

The Road Less Traveled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety, is a synthesis of all Dr. Peck's work and was published by Simon & Schuster in January 1997.

With his background in medicine, psychiatry and theology he has also been in a unique position to write Denial of the Soul: Spiritual and Medical Perspectives in Euthanasia and Mortality, this first "topical" book, published by Harmony Books (Crown) in April 1997.

Golf and the Spirit: Lessons for the Journey was published by Harmony Books in 1999. It too is illustrated by Christopher Peck.

Dr. Peck was a nationally recognized authority on the relationship between religion and science, and the science o


“The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual.... For it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.”
M. Scott Peck
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“The overall purpose of human communication is - or should be - reconciliation. It should ultimately serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding which unduly separate us human beings, one from another.”
M. Scott Peck
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“I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.”
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“Spiritually evolved people, by virtue of their discipline, mastery and love, are people of extraordinary competence, and in their competence they are called on to serve the world, and in their love they answer the call.”
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“Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and wisdom.”
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“When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is that which kills spirit. There are various essential attributes of life -- particularly human life -- such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body. Thus we may "break" a horse or even a child without harming a hair on its head. Erich Fromm was acutely sensitive to this fact when he broadened the definition of necrophilia to include the desire of certain people to control others-to make them controllable, to foster their dependency, to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredectibility and originalty, to keep them in line. Distinguishing it from a "biophilic" person, one who appreciates and fosters the variety of life forms and the uniqueness of the individual, he demonstrated a "necrophilic character type," whose aim it is to avoid the inconvenience of life by transforming others into obedient automatons, robbing them of their humanity.Evil then, for the moment, is the force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness.”
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“We cannot solve life's problems except by solving them.”
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“When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.”
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“With total discipline we can solve all problems.”
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“Once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand and accept it — then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”
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“Life is difficult.”
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“How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded! Community requires the ability to expose our wounds and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be affected by the wounds of others... But even more important is the love that arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness.”
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“Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.”
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“Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.”
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“There is no virtue inherent in un-constructive suffering.”
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“The person with a secular mentality feels himself to be the center of the universe. Yet he is likely to suffer from a sense of meaninglessness and insignificance because he knows he’s but one human among five billion others - all feeling themselves to be the center of things - scratching out an existence on the surface of a medium-sized planet circling a small star among countless stars in a galaxy lost among countless galaxies. The person with the sacred mentality, on the other hand, does not feel herself to be the center of the universe. She considers the Center to be elsewhere and other. Yet she is unlikely to feel lost or insignificant precisely because she draws her significance and meaning from her relationship, her connection, with that center, that Other.”
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“Let me simply state that it is wrong to regard any other human being, a priori, as an object, or an 'It.' This is so because each and every human being - you, every friend, every stranger, every foreigner - is precious.”
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“The problem of unmet expectations in marriage is primarily a problem of stereotyping. Each and every human being on this planet is a unique person. Since marriage is inevitably a relationship between two unique people, no one marriage is going to be exactly like any other. Yet we tend to wed with explicit visions of what a “good” marriage ought to be like. Then we suffer enormously from trying to force the relationship to fit the stereotype and from the neurotic guilt and anger we experience when we fail to pull it off.”
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“There is no worse bitterness than to reach the end of your life and realized you have not lived.”
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“Love is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will -- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.”
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“Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and to begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience -- to appreciate the fact that life is complex.”
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“...truth is reality”
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“It is in the whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn.”
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“Since [narcissists] deep down, feel themselves to be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world's fault. Since they must deny their own badness, they must perceive others as bad. They project their own evil onto the world. They never think of themselves as evil, on the other hand, they consequently see much evil in others.”
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“You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.”
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“Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.”
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“The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behavior.”
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“It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. ”
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“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”
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“Share our similarities, celebrate our differences.”
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“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”
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“We must be willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.”
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“Human beings are poor examiners, subject to superstition, bias, prejudice, and a PROFOUND tendency to see what they want to see rather than what is really there.”
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“I feel compelled to make another 'nonapology.' Many readers are likely to be concerned about my use of masculine pronouns in relation to God. I think I both understand and appreciate this concern. It is a matter to which I have given much thought. I have generally been a strong supporter of the women's movement and action that is reasonable to combat sexist language. But first of all, God is not neuter. He is exploding with life and love and even sexuality of a sort. So 'It' is not appropriate. Certainly I consider God androgynous. He is as gentle and tender and nurturing and maternal as any woman could ever be. Nonetheless, culturally determined though it may be, I subjectively experience His reality as more masculine than feminine. While He nurtures us, He also desires to penetrate us, and while we more often than not flee from His love like a reluctant virgin, He chases after us with a vigor in the hunt that we most typically associate with males. As CS Lewis put it, in relation to God we are all female. Moreover, whatever our gender or conscious theology, it is our duty---our obligation---in response to His love to attempt to give birth, like Mary, to Christ in ourselves and in others. "I shall, however, break with tradition and use the neuter for Satan. While I know Satan to be lustful to penetrate us, I have not in the least experienced this desire as sexual or creative---only hateful and destructive. It is hard to determine the sex of a snake.”
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“Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truely loves does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present. ...Conversely, it is not only possible but necessary for a loving person to avoid acting on feelings of love.”
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