Re: M. (Morgan) Scott Peck, 69.


fluffy_dogXX1@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> And that's another thing. He kicked off the self-help sub-genre. As you
> say, this might be a good thing, sortof. Well, it's a thing; can we
> agree on 'thing'?

It's a thing, all right.

Peck was a pretty brave flawed guy. (When someone asked how he'd
overcome his problems with infidelity, he said "I didn't. I lost my
libido.") His suggestion that the world of psychology and psychiatry
would do well to study spirituality and religion was heretical: it
still is in many circles.

I don't know why people blame self-help books on him. Dale Carnegie and
Norman Vincent Peale come to my mind, and there were others before them
I'm sure. When a scholar's ideas don't fit the mold, he takes them
elsewhere--to the people or to some corporate R & D department.

Peck asked people to make their thinking more complex, not simpler.He
struggled with spirituality and thought that if you didn't struggle
with that and the questions of the meaning of life, THEN something was
wrong with you, and if you DID struggle you were on the right path.
Sort of. If I recall.

He talked about becoming one with god. That's an ancient and strong
idea. It's not an easy one, though. It makes sense to me. And that's
the measure of "good" self-help: it makes sense to us.

I'm curious: why does he so enrage you? Besides the hypocrisy thing, I
mean.

Is it a response to that very clever, insightful obituary that
ultimately tells more about its writer than about Peck? Or have you
thought this way about Peck a lot?

Christine

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