Psychiatrist As Spiritual Healer

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Peck's book didn't create this explosion of interest in the relationship of psychology and spirituality. But he was a bellwether, a pioneer whose thinking tapped into America's collective desire to bring religion and spirituality out into the open. He made it safe to start a conversation that eventually changed the profession.

In the late 1980s when Common Boundary, the organization that I co-founded, first began holding conferences that explored the relationship of psychology and spirituality, most of the therapist-attendees had read Peck's book. They told us over and over again that they had been thinking about these sorts of issues for a long time, but hesitated to bring them up at professional meetings for fear of appearing foolish or unprofessional. Repeatedly, they expressed their relief at finding an arena in which they could speak freely of their own spiritual interests and discuss how to appropriately deal with their patients' beliefs and yearnings.

In the years after "The Road Less Traveled" first began climbing the best-seller charts, Peck became a familiar speaker at professional meetings, urging psychiatrists to learn how to take spiritual histories and calling for them to be trained in the different stages of spiritual growth. But to be fair, the apples were ripe for the picking. Scott Peck was the guy who plucked them and passed them around.

Peck, who had a Quaker background, eventually quit his private practice in favor of writing, lecturing, and leading workshops. He drew large crowds and developed into a unique and somewhat odd blend of psychiatrist and evangelist. He could, in any conversation or public speech, go from talking about counter-transference to declaring that: "Effective healing is a gift of the Holy Spirit."

At the end of his keynote address at the 1993 Common Boundary conference, Peck began to croon Bette Midler's ballad, The Rose, to a ballroom full of initially bewildered mental health professionals. But as he moved deeper into the song, the audience settled down, realizing the profundity of his message. It was the same message he had sent out 15 years earlier, though now tempered with tenderness.

Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed
That with the sun's love
In the spring
Becomes the rose.

Peck's legacy and greatest contribution was that he reminded mental health professionals-psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, counselors-that they were healers, and that the process they dedicated themselves to--helping clients and patients face themselves--is painful. Life is difficult. Yet Peck went a step farther: he also reminded each of us that at our core we have the capacity for love and greatness of character. Pain, love, and hope are naturally woven together, he told us. And all of it is a gift of Spirit.