Quotes from M. Scott Peck

Dependency is but one of the forms of behavior to which we incorrectly apply the word "love" when concern for spiritual evolution is absent.

genuine love transcends the matter of cathexes. When love exists it does so with or without cathexis and with or without a loving feeling.

some people may yearn for riches, not for money's sake but in order to send their children to college or provide themselves with the freedom and time for study and reflection which are necessary for their own spiritual growth.

Cathecting, it will be remembered, is the process by which an object becomes important to us. Once cathected, the object, commonly referred to as a "love object," is invested with our energy as if it were a part of ourselves, and this relationship between us and the invested object is called a cathexis.

I learned, however, that the loss of balance is ultimately more painful than the giving up required to maintain balance. It is a lesson I have continually had to relearn. As must everyone, for as we negotiate the curves and corners of our lives, we must continually give up parts of ourselves. The only alternative to this giving up is not to travel at all on the journey of life.

Patients are often unaware of how they view the world, and sometimes may even think they possess a certain kind of religion when they actually are possessed by a far different kind.

Love is not simply giving; it is judicious giving and judicious withholding as well. It is judicious praising and judicious criticizing. It is judicious arguing, struggling, confronting, urging, pushing and pulling in addition to comforting. It is leadership. The word 'judicious' means requiring judgment, and judgment requires more than instinct; it requires thoughtful and often painful decision making.

I thank them for the same service.

At this point they begin either to dissolve the ties of their relationship or to initiate the work of real loving.

Discipline has been defined as a system of techniques of dealing constructively with the pain of problem-solving—instead of avoiding that pain—in such a way that all of life's problems can be solved. Four basic techniques have been distinguished and elaborated: delaying gratification, assumption of responsibility, dedication to the truth or reality, and balancing.

Falling in love is not an extension of one's limits or boundaries; it is a partial and temporary collapse of them.

It is precisely because our consciousness is disordered that conflict occurs between it and the unconscious which seeks to heal it. In other words, mental illness occurs when the conscious will of the individual deviates substantially from the will of God, which is the individual's own unconscious will.

The highest forms of love are inevitably totally free choices and not acts of conformity.

It is impossible to truly understand another without making room for that person within yourself.

What transpires then in the course of many years of loving, of extending out limits for our cathexes, is a gradual but progressive enlargement of the self, an incorporation within of the world without, and a growth, a stretching and a thinning of out ego boundaries.

Third, the decision to withhold the truth should never be based on personal needs, such as a need for power, a need to be liked or a need to protect one's map from challenge.

Failure to perceive and respect this separateness is extremely common, however, and the cause of much mental illness and unnecessary suffering.

it is easy and not at all unpleasant to find evidence of love in one's feelings. It may be difficult and painful to search for evidence of love in one's actions.

The quickest way to change your attitude toward pain is tho accept the fact that everything that happens to is has been designed for our spiritual growth.

And there is yet another joy, even greater. It is the joy of communion with God.

It is hardly remarkable that we sicken and die; what is truly remarkable is that we don't usually sicken very often and we don't die very quickly. We can therefore say the same thing about physical disorders that we said about mental disorders: There is a force, the mechanism of which we do not fully understand, that seems to operate routinely in most people to protect and encourage their physical health even under the most adverse conditions.

Aware of their intimate connectedness to God, they experience a surcease of loneliness. There is communion.

The essential ingredient of successful deep and meaningful psychotherapy is love. ... Intensive psychotherapy in many ways is a process of reparenting.

This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness. Since most of us have this tendency to a greater or lesser degree, most of us are mentally ill to a greater or lesser degree, lacking complete mental health.