M. Scott Peck, M.D. : Therapy + Grace
The Road Less Travelled (1978)
As a psychiatrist, I feel it is important to mention at the outset two assumptions that underlie this book. One is that I make no distinction between the mind and the spirit, and therefore no distinction between the process of achieving spiritual growth and achieving mental growth. They are one and the same. The other assumption is that the process is a complex, arduous and lifelong task.
Psychotherapy is only a tool, a discipline, to be used in treating mental illness. It is up to the person seeking growth to choose or reject the tool, and once chosen, it is she who determines how much to use the tool and to what end. There are people who will overcome all manner of obstacles – insufficient funds, previous disastrous experiences with therapists, cold and rejecting clinics, disapproving relatives – to obtain therapy and every last ounce of its possible benefit. Others, however, will reject therapy even if it is offered to them on a silver platter, or else, even if they do become engaged in a therapeutic relationship, will sit in it like a bump on a log, extracting from it almost nothing no matter how great the therapist’s skill and effort and love.
While at the conclusion of a successful case I am tempted to feel I have cured the patient, I know the reality of the situation is that I have been no more than a catalyst – and fortunate to be that. Since ultimately people heal themselves with or without the tool of psychotherapy, why is it so few do and so many do not? Since the path to spiritual growth, albeit difficult, is open to all, why do so few choose to travel it? It was to this question that Christ was addressing himself when he said, “Many are called but few are chosen.”
Among the factors that must be taken into account is an ephemeral something in the individual patient which might be called a ‘will to grow.’ It is possible for an individual to be extremely ill, yet at the same time possess an extremely strong ‘will to grow,’ in which case healing will occur. On the other hand, a person who is only mildly ill, but who lacks the will to grow, will not budge an inch from an unhealthy position. Although I recognize the importance of this ‘will to grow,’ I don’t think I understand it. The concept brings us to the edge of mystery, for the ‘will to grow’ is in essence the same phenomenon as love. Love is the will to extend oneself for spiritual growth. Genuinely loving people are, by definition, growing people.
Some light may be thrown on the question of why some people respond well, even having grown up under unloving circumstances and others do not, by consideration of the concept of grace. I believe that grace is available to everyone, that we are all cloaked in the love of God. The only answer I can give, therefore, is that most of us choose not to heed the call of grace and reject its assistance. I would interpret Christ’s assertion to mean “All of us are called by and to grace, but few of us choose to listen to the call.”
Why do most of us actually resist grace? One answer is entropy, or laziness. Just as grace is the ultimate force that enables us to grow, so it is entropy that causes us to resist that force, to stay at the comfortable, easy rung where we are now, or even to descend to less and less demanding forms of existence. It is only natural that we should shrink from the difficulty. But there is one other factor that deserves mention: the issue of power.
Psychiatrists and many laymen are familiar with the fact that psychiatric problems occur with remarkable frequency in individuals shortly after promotion to positions of higher power and responsibility. The military psychiatrist, who is particularly familiar with this problem of ‘promotion neurosis,’ is also aware that the problem does not occur with even greater frequency because vast number of soldiers are successful in resisting promotions in the first place. There are a great many low-ranking career noncommissioned officers who simply do not want to become top sergeants, first sergeants, or sergeant majors. And there are also a large number of intelligent noncommissioned officers who would rather die than become officers and who, often repeatedly, reject offers of officer training for which, by virtue of their intelligence and stability, they would seem to be well qualified.
And so it is with spiritual growth as well as in professional life. For the call to grace is a promotion, a call to a position of higher responsibility and power. To be aware of grace, to personally experience its constant presence, to know one’s nearness to God, is to know and continually experience an inner tranquility and peace that few possess. On the other hand, this knowledge and awareness brings with it an enormous responsibility. The call to grace is a call to a life of effortful caring, to a life of service and whatever sacrifice seems required. It is a call out of spiritual childhood into adulthood.
It may sound strange to laymen, but psychotherapists are familiar with the fact that people are routinely terrified by mental health. A major part of the task of psychotherapy is not only to bring patients to the experience of mental health but also, through a mixture of consolation, reassurance and sternness, to prevent them from running away from that experience once they have arrived at it. One aspect of this fearfulness is rather legitimate and, by itself, not unhealthy. It is the fear that if one becomes powerful one might misuse power.
Saint Augustine wrote, “If you are loving and diligent, you may do whatever you want.” If people progress far enough in psychotherapy, they will eventually leave behind the feeling that they cannot cope with a merciless and overwhelming world and will one day suddenly realize that they have it in their power to do whatever they want. The realization of this freedom is frightening. “What is to prevent me from making gross mistakes, from committing crimes, from being immoral?” they ask. Some who have been called to grace may wrestle for years with their fearfulness before they are able to transcend it. It is not the “Do what you want” part of Augustine’s maxim that causes them indigestion, but the “Be diligent” part.
Most of us are like children or adolescents; we believe that the freedom and power of adulthood is our due, but we have little taste for adult responsibility and self-discipline. Much as we feel oppressed by our parents – or by society, or fate – we actually seem to need to have powers above us to blame for our condition. To rise to a position of such power that we have no one to blame except ourselves is a fearful state of affairs. Were it not for God’s presence with us in that position, we would be terrified of our aloneness. Most people want peace without the aloneness of power. And they want the self-confidence of adulthood without having to grow up.
A very few march unambivalently and unhesitatingly into adulthood, ever eager for new and greater responsibilities. Most drag their feet and never become more than partial adults, always shrinking from the demands of total adulthood. So it is with spiritual growth, which is inseparable from psychological maturation. For the call to grace is a summons to be one with God, to assume peerhood with God. Hence, it is a call to total adulthood. We are accustomed to imagining the experience of conversion or sudden call to grace as an “Oh, joy!” phenomenon. In my experience, more often than not it is, at least partially, an “Oh, shit!” moment. At the moment we finally listen to the call we may say, “Oh, thank you, Lord.” Or we may say, “Oh, Lord, I am not worthy.” Or we may say, “Oh, Lord, do I have to?”
So, the fact that “many are called but few are chosen” is easily explainable in view of the difficulties inherent in responding to the call to grace. But what distinguishes the few who follow this ‘road less travelled’ from the many who do not? Here we are left facing a paradox. I have been writing of spiritual growth as if it were an orderly, predictable process as one might learn a field of knowledge within a university. I have implied that whether or not we become blessed by grace is a matter of our choice. But that is not the whole story.
We do not come to grace; grace comes to us. Try as we might to obtain grace, it may yet elude us. We may seek it or not, yet it will find us. We may avidly desire the spiritual life but then discover all manner of stumbling blocks in our way. Or we may have little taste for the spiritual life and yet find ourselves vigorously called to it in spite of ourselves. While on one level, we do choose whether or not to heed the call of grace, on another it seems clear that God is the one who does the choosing. The common experience of those who have achieved a state of grace, on whom this “new life from heaven” has been bestowed, is one of amazement at their condition. They do not feel they have earned it. They distinctly feel that the goodness of their nature has been created by hands wiser and more skilled than their own.
How do we resolve this paradox? We don’t. Perhaps the best we can say is that while we cannot will ourselves to grace, we can will ourselves to be open to its miraculous coming. We can prepare ourselves to be fertile ground, a welcoming place. If we can make ourselves into totally disciplined, wholly loving and adult individuals then we will have prepared well for the coming of grace. The rest is up to God.
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Morgan Scott Peck served in administrative posts in the government during his career as a psychiatrist. He also served in the US Army and rose 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, DC. He was the medical director of the New Milford Hospital Mental Health Clinic and a psychiatrist in private practice in New Milford, Connecticut. His first and best-known book, The Road Less Traveled, sold more than 10 million copies. Peck's works combined his experiences from his private psychiatric practice with a distinctly religious point of view.
Coming Next: Annie Dillard: There Is Only Us - Holy the Firm (1977)