Through A Still Imperfect Lens: a true story of Personal Growth and Relationship from a Psychospiritual Perspective

In 1990, noted author and psychiatrist M. Scott Peck and attorney Elliot Talenfeld began what would become a decade-long correspondence. The two exchanged ideas about the practical and professional implications of Peck’s famous dictum, in The Road Less Traveled, that “any truly loving relationship is one of mutual psychotherapy.” Talenfeld and his therapist-wife had spent three years in an intentional, self-help community that practiced its own form of mutual therapy. After reviewing portions of a manuscript describing that experience, Peck encouraged Talenfeld to “continue to the end with writing this book, to which you quite obviously seem called.” (Peck passed away in 2005.) The result, presented here, is a memoir that reads like a novel and serves as a case study on mutual therapy between a husband and a wife. A former law professor and partner at a prominent law firm, Talenfeld also holds a master of counseling degree and serves as a Jewish Cantor. Drawing on such diverse training and experience, his passion for self-examination and courageous self-disclosure now yield an unexpected wealth of worldly, psychological and spiritual insight. Dedicated “to every heart so foolish as to have no doubt, and every mind so arrogant as to have no faith,” this remarkable work offers a new psychospiritual perspective – one that speaks to and through mind and heart, left brain and right, simultaneously. Those who have longed for such a synthesis won’t be able to put this down.