A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

1978, re-issued 2003

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This classic of psychotherapeutic self-help gives a clear picture of the issues and dramas that can be confronted and resolved in therapy, and what he sees as the relationship between psychological development and spiritual growth. The first two sections on Discipline and Love are excellent, unusually straightforward discussions from a more or less traditional analytical point of view. The section on Religious Traditions clarifies ways in which early religious upbringing and parental directives often create unconscious conflicts in later life.  Grace, the final chapter, is Peck’s own philosophy of God, and for some it may be irrelevant—but his discussion of laziness is equally applicable to any kind of developmental path. With or without a therapist, his clarity provokes insight.

The Risk of Confrontation          
For the truly loving person the act of criticism or confron­tation does not come easily; to such a person it is evident that the act has great potential for arrogance. To confront one's beloved is to assume a position of moral or intellectual superiority over the loved one, at least so far as the issue at hand is concerned. Yet genuine love recognizes and respects the unique individuality and separate identity of the other person. (I will say more about this later.) The truly loving person, valuing the uniqueness and differentness of his or her beloved, will be reluctant indeed to assume, "I am right, you are wrong; I know better than you what is good for you."

But the reality of life is such that at times one person does know better than the other what is good for the other, and in actuality is in a position of superior knowledge or wisdom in regard to the matter at hand. Under these circumstances the wiser of the two does in fact have an obligation to confront the other with the problem. The loving person, therefore, is frequently in a dilemma, caught between a loving respect for the be­loved's own path in life and a responsibility to exercise loving leadership when the beloved appears to need such leadership.

The dilemma can be resolved only by painstaking self-scru­tiny, in which the lover examines stringently the worth of his or her "wisdom" and the motives behind this need to assume leadership. "Do I really see things clearly or am I operating on murky assumptions? Do I really understand my beloved? Could it not be that the path my beloved is taking is wise and that my perception of it as unwise is the result of limited vision on my part? Am I being self-serving in believing that my beloved needs redirection?"

These are questions that those who truly love must continually ask themselves. This self-scrutiny, as objective as possible, is the essence of humility or meekness. In the words of an anonymous fourteenth-century British monk and spiritual teacher, "Meekness in itself is noth­ing else than a true knowing and feeling of a man's self as he is. Any man who truly sees and feels himself as he is must surely be meek indeed."*

There are, then, two ways to confront or criticize another human being: with instinctive and spontaneous certainty that one is right, or with a belief that one is probably right arrived at through scrupulous self-doubting and self-examination. The first is the way of arrogance; it is the most common way of parents, spouses, teachers and people generally in their day-to-day affairs; it is usually unsuccessful, producing more resentment than growth and other effects that were not intended.

The second is the way of humility; it is not common, requiring as it does a genuine extension of oneself; it is more likely to be successful, and it is never, in my experience, destructive.

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