IF JIMMY CARTER HAD READ IT HE'D STILL BE PRESIDENT TODAY:

OBIT: M. Scott Peck, Self-Help Author, Dies at 69 (EDWARD WYATT, September 28, 2005, NY Times)

Dr. Peck is among the founding fathers of the self-help genre of books, which retain their popularity from year to year. "The Road Less Traveled," published in 1978, and its later companion volumes, "Further Along the Road Less Traveled" (1993) and "The Road Less Traveled and Beyond" (1997), have sold more than 5 million copies in North America, according to Dr. Peck's publisher, Simon & Schuster, and have been translated into more than 20 languages.

" 'The Road Less Traveled' really marked the beginning of contemporary self-help," said Jan Miller, a literary agent whose firm, Dupree Miller & Associates, represents other stars in the field, including Dr. Phil McGraw and Joel Osteen. "It was a significant work because he was able to blend the psychology and the spiritual so magnificently."

Unlike the huge best sellers of today, however, which arrive in bookstores accompanied by blaring trumpets of publicity, "The Road Less Traveled" went all but unnoticed when it was released in 1978.

Simon & Schuster initially printed only about 5,000 copies, one of which was sent to Phyllis Theroux at The Washington Post. Ms. Theroux was later quoted as saying that she spent two weeks writing a review "that would force people to buy the book."

That eventually happened, but only after Dr. Peck labored to stimulate sales by copying the review and sending it to several hundred newspapers around the country. The hardcover book sold a respectable 12,000 copies, and the paperback edition sold 30,000 in its first year.

That number doubled in each of the next two years, and in mid-1983, five years after publication, "The Road Less Traveled" reached the New York Times best-seller list for the first time. It has since spent 694 weeks on the list, the equivalent of more than 13 years. [...]

The book focused on Dr. Peck's core belief that, as stated in its opening sentence, "Life is difficult," and that its problems can be addressed only through self-discipline. Humans, however, tend to try to avoid problems, a habit that only creates more difficulties, Dr. Peck said.

To that dose of self-discipline, Dr. Peck added an inseparable spiritual element. "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," Dr. Peck wrote in the preface to the original book. "They are one and the same."

Dr. Peck's approach to self-discipline was infused not only with his general belief in the help of higher power, which made his books particularly popular with 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, but also with his specifically Christian personal beliefs, which crystallized relatively late in life.

MORE:
The religion of science (M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled)

Science is a religion because it is a world view of considerable complexity with a number of major tenets. Most of these major tenets are as follows: the universe is real, and therefore a valid object for examination; it is of value for human beings to examine the universe; the universe makes sense--that is, it follows certain laws and is predictable; but human beings are poor examiners, subject to superstition, bias, prejudice, and a profound tendency to see what they want rather than what is really there; consequently, to examine and hence understand accurately, it is necessary for human beings to subject themselves to the discipline of the scientific method. The essence of this discipline is experience, so that we cannot consider ourselves to know something unless we have actually experienced it; while the discipline of scientific method begins with experience, simple experience itself is not to be trusted; to be trusted, experience must be repeatable, usually in the form of an experiment; moreover, the experiment must be verifiable, in that some other people must have the same experience under the same circumstances.