Arthur Jones - The Road He Travelled: The Revealing Biography of M Scott Peck

CONTENTS

I am excited and intrigued by your suggestions of writing my biography. I recognize that you are talking about something other than a fully authorized biography, but do not consider this to be a barrier to our continuing to work together

M. Scott Peck to Arthur Jones, September 2003

We both know that this will never be the book you would have written about yourself. But if its a good tale about one mans life on the God quest, the joys and sorrow and mistakes itll do nicely. If the readers identify their life experience in the elements of your life, or the holes in your life, I suspect that the project will have succeeded despite us both.

Arthur Jones to M. Scott Peck, December 2003

British-born author and journalist Arthur Jones was educated at Ruskin College, Oxford and has reported from more than 30 different countries in his career. He has served as an international correspondent for the Financial Times and worked as a broadcaster for Irish and Australian radio. He was editor of the National Catholic Reporter and a former New York associate editor and European bureau chief of Forbes magazine. The author of 10 books, Arthur Jones is married and lives in My Ladys Manor (Lord Baltemores Guifte, 1713), Maryland.

Dear God

I aint what I wanna be,

And I aint what Im gonna be,

And I sure aint what I ought to be.

But thank God I aint what I used to be!

Gert Behanna

For Meg Stewart, and Leslie and Marilyn Jones,

my sister, brother and sister-in-law.

M. Scott Peck wanted a warts and all biography. He did not object to, or hide, much of the darker side of his personality and behaviour. Equally, he was determined that people around him not be further hurt. He agreed in advance, in writing, that he would not see this manuscript or any draft of it prior to publication, and yet would cooperate. His specific no-go areas were that I not approach his children for interviews, though if they chose to approach me that was up to them. And that though he would not discuss their divorce, I was free to contact his ex-wife, Lily. I wrote to Mrs Peck. She did not reply. After Scott Pecks death, Mrs Kathy Peck, Scotts second wife, in a move not prompted by me, arranged matters so that indeed I did interview Christopher Peck, Scott and Lilys third child and only son.

It must be said that during our sixty or seventy hours of interviews and telephone chats, a majority of them tape recorded, Pecks decision to stay with the truth on difficult topics was generally steadfast. I also had full access to twenty hours of interviews with Peck conducted in the late 1990s by the psychologist Dr James Guy of Pasadena. Guy had thought at one point of attempting a Peck biography. The tapes were transcribed and remained in Pecks keeping. Peck made them available to me. I am grateful to the generosity of both men. Because Peck gave many of the same answers to Guys and my similar questions occasionally word-for-word identical answers Guys interviews are woven in with my own (begun half-a-decade later), except where otherwise indicated.

Peck was a performer, many of his answers were a verbatim repetition of paragraphs in his books, or anecdotes or jokes hed regularly told, or replies given repeatedly during interviews or during question-and-answer sessions following his talks. His recall of what hed written or said was uncanny.

Elements of the JonesPeck writersubject relationship as it developed in the course of our interviews are discussed in a closing Appendix.

Life is difficult.

The opening sentence in

The Road Less Travelled

M. Scott Peck, MD

MENTION THE ROADLESS TRAVELLED, and back like an echo comes the name M. Scott Peck. Three decades ago, Peck, an American psychiatrist, literally trailblazed his book of that name across the United States, and then around the world, to create a new genre of personal development coupled to spiritual self-exploration. He had created one of the most successful commercial books in history. It sold more than seven million copies in the United States and a further three million worldwide. Peck became an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the living author whod spent the longest period with one book on the New York Times bestseller list.

But it was not Pecks impact on publishing, rather his effect on his readers lives, that warrants an assessment. On the strength alone of correspondence to Peck, judged from the thousands of letters the book generated because he included his home address, The Road Less Travelled liberated people from the emotional, traumatic or abusive spectres of their past.

Six months after his death in 2005, and forty years after he decided to write The Road Less Travelled the post for Dr Peck was still arriving at the house on Bliss Road, New Preston, Connecticut. In March 2006, a reader in Bargara, Queensland, who had only recently discovered the book and, unaware Peck was deceased, wrote, I want you to know it has given me courage and hope and has helped, in part, to clear the mists of confusion and doubt more than anything else anyone has written or said to me. You have been as a Prophet to me by speaking my own language, by being a translator, a conduit, a transmitter, a conductor I am now allowing myself to accept the Grace that is offered to me. It is hard to take, but I cannot throw it back any more.

Peck knew the books origins. It was my own journey, he said, and I was even working out my journey as I wrote it. But it became much more. An American college dean of students in Maryland, Paula Matuskey, said she believes The Road Less Travelled began a movement of writing that looks to spiritual journeys something we Baby Boomers seem to dwell upon. Im just glad I read it when I did. Another college dean, who wrote to Peck from the American South, revealed what Pecks book triggered as people read it, a very difficult although important synthesis of psychology and religion. Your writings have done much to help crystallise some of my thoughts and to raise other far-reaching questions.

There are hundreds of such letters in Pecks archives covering the three decades since The Road appeared. Pathos abounds in some. One man wrote, I finished reading your chapter on dependency and I cant do anything until I find help for my problem in that area. I want to live so badly and yet I am not living now. I am numb and empty and helpless to change.

A woman in the middle of reading your book, liked it because you so honestly say what is wrong, as in facing problems. I have never heard anyone speak so honestly. I want to thank you for that. I also want to solve my problems. I want to try to escape suffering. I want to feel the pain inside. I want to help myself grow emotionally. I want some mental health. I need these things.

His readers felt they knew Peck, they later came in their hundreds to his workshops and talks, as he brought them out of isolation into a community of readers who realised they were not alone in their emotional upheavals. I cant tell you how wonderful it feels that I am not alone, wrote a doctoral student who said she felt alone, outside the group of others who seem so certain about God and what life is all about. Now I feel that Im not just a misfit who couldnt accept the religion I grew up with, to leave a marriage looked upon by friends and family as perfect, but which felt empty to me. As I read your book I knew certainly and instantly why I had to leave.