Peck, The Road Less Traveled

The Road Less Traveled was the first non-fiction book that I read willingly, and not out of unbelievable boredom. I've been hooked on non-fiction and felt a particular affinity for psychology books ever since.
I found the book first in my parents' closet... There weren't enough shelves in the house to hold all of the books we owned, so about half of them ended up in strange places. My parents' closet was one, in a cupboard in the kitchen was another. Originally, the cupboard held only cookbooks, which made sense, but others eventually found their way there too. Magazines were kept in the dining room. Any box around the house was filled with books, including the one that the cats used for sunbathing, the great heavy chest we used as a television stand, and one we used as a side table. I think there were even some books kept on the shelves above the washer and dryer in the mud-room.
The copy of The Road Less Traveled that I found in my parents' closet was tattered, worn, well-read and about to fall apart. The most intriguing kind. The title was also in reference to a Robert Frost poem.But none of those was the reason I opened the book. "A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth" was cheesy enough for me to put it back.
The reason I opened the book was because I had seen a copy of it in every therapist's office I had ever been in. And I'd been in my share of them. I was trying to find some common ground with my therapist at that time. I had given up on a direct approach to the Trust Issue. I didn't trust her, but if sessions were being paid for I might as well use them to discuss Something. But, like a good therapist, she didn't talk about herself. So I could only go by things in her office.
I intended to force myself through the book, mentioning it and talking about it as I read. Once I opened it, however, I didn't put it down. I couldn't.
Peck presented his ideas in such a clear, straightforward and intuitive manner that I was drawn in and addicted at once. I didn't agree with all of his ideas, but he put them so clearly and simply that I could readily argue either for or against them.
When I later read other non-fiction books, I would often think I saw some of Peck's ideas reflected in the text. And I was not always just seeing things because they were new and fresh in my mind.
I was reading Papert's The Children's Machine when he said something about love between a teacher and a student. It sounded so much like Peck that I closed Papert to look up The Road Less Traveled. Had I continued reading Papert, I would have laughed long and hard, as indeed I did, when a few pages later Papert quoted a large passage of Peck directly. My delight at that lasted for days.
The Road Less Traveled is not for people who are reading psychology books to figure out what's wrong with their own minds. No psychology book should be used that way. That's what self-help books are for. It is, however a book that will get the reader to reflect. I would especially suggest it to those who are confident enough in themselves and in their ideas that they will question Peck at every turn, making the book more of a conversation than a filling of the brain with someone else's ideas.