Confronting and solving problems is a painful process which most of us attempt to avoid. And the very avoidance results in greater pain and an inability to grow both mentally and spiritually.

Drawing heavily on his own professional experience, Dr M. Scott Peck, a practising psychiatrist, suggests ways in which facing our difficulties - and suffering through the changes - can enable us to reach a higher level of self-understanding. He discusses the nature of loving relationships: how to recognize true compatibility; how to distinguish dependency from love; how to become one's own person and how to be a more sensitive parent.