He was a gin-sodden, marihuana-inhaling, parent-resenting, chain-smoking adulterer who, by his own admission, failed to live a life his words advocated. September 25, 2005, impotent and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he died of liver and pancreatic cancer at age 69.
Psychiatrist, M. Scott Peck MD, author of The Road Less Traveled and 14 other books that made him a millionaire, an admired speaker and an advocate of self-discipline, restraint and responsibility lacked the character traits he advocated. Tiring of his infidelities, his first wife left him in 2003. His two oldest children had, for years, refused to talk with him.
Morgan Scott Peck’s father, a self-made Park Avenue lawyer who hid his Jewish heritage, raised his son to be the ultimate WASP, placing him on an education road that passed through Phillips Exeter Academy bound for Harvard University. Instead, Scotty, as his friends knew him, took a detour.
Hating the competitive environment of Exeter, Scotty dropped out of school. His parents placed him in a psychiatric hospital. ”When I left Exeter I felt very badly about myself,” he said. ”I thought there was something wrong with me, and my parents thought I must be crazy.”
After a few weeks in the hospital, he attended Friends Seminary, a small Quaker school in Greenwich Village and later Middlebury College. He dropped out because of ROTC requirements.
Scotty with help from his father’s connections entered Harvard. After graduating from Harvard in 1958 he married Lily Ho, a Chinese student from Singapore. His father disinherited him.
Peck, a military-abhorring, war-protesting, hippy joined the Army because, “It was the cheapest way to continue studying medicine.” He graduated from Case Western Medical School in 1963,
Paradoxically, a dissenter of the Vietnam War rose to become Assistant Chief of Psychiatry at the Surgeon General’s office in Washington DC. In 1972, Lieutenant Colonel Peck, resigned to enter private practice in Connecticut.
In 1976, Dr. Peck became inspired to write a book. Twenty months later, Random House rejected the book originally entitled The Psychology of Spiritual Growth, judging the final section “too Christ-y.” Jonathan Dolger, an acquisitions editor for Simon & Schuster, purchased the book with an advance of $7,500 and published it as The Road Less Traveled. The book entered the marketplace unnoticed.
Simon & Schuster sent a copy to Phyllis Theroux at The Washington Post. Ms. Theroux said that she spent two weeks writing a review “that would force people to buy the book.” Dr. Peck stimulated sales by copying the review and sending it to several hundred newspapers. Five years after publication The Road Less Traveled reached the New York Times best-seller list where it remained for more than 13 years. Translated into more than 20 languages, sales reached 10 million copies worldwide.
In People of the Lie, he wrote, “After many years of vague identification with Buddhist and Islamic mysticism, I ultimately made a firm Christian commitment.” He was baptized by a Methodist minister in an Episcopal convent. Despite his conversion, Peck described himself as “a flawed man who had a weakness for cheap gin, marijuana and women.”
The life of Morgan Scott Peck leaves us puzzled over the incongruence of words written by a man who struggled to follow the path he so clearly described. Lest we become too critical, let us remember that all of us sin and “fall short of the glory of God.” Sermons preached flow easier than sermons practiced. Words written emerge easier than words willed.