M. Scott Peck is a psychiatrist, diagnostician, management consultant, founder of the Foundation for Community Encouragement, and author of The Road Less Traveled, a New York Times bestseller with sales of over five million copies in the United States and Canada alone. This follow-up volume consists of lectures that expand upon some of his essential ideas and ideals on self-development.

The material is arranged into three sections. The first one on growing up covers consciousness and the problem of pain, blame and forgiveness, the issue of death and meaning, and the taste for mystery. Part two explores knowing yourself with probes on self-love versus self-esteem, mythology and human nature, spirituality and human nature, and addiction as a sacred disease. The final section is on the search for a personal God with lectures on the role of religion in spiritual growth, matter and spirit, the new age movement, sexuality and spirituality, and an epilogue on psychiatry's predicament.