M. Scott Peck's Maps and My Life
In M. Scott Peck's article "Choosing a Map for Life" he focuses on the topic of transferences, or maps, and how they affect our lives. He defines transference as a set of ways of perceiving and responding to the world which is developed in childhood and which is usually entirely appropriate to the childhood enviroment but which is inappropriately transferred into the adult enviroment. This definition simply says that something that happens to a child at a young age will affect them for the rest of their lives. If someone has parents that he/she cannot depend on then they will grow up to be people who do not trust or believe in anyone. This is because their transference is telling them how their life has been before and this is how it will always be. It is important that we are aware of transferences in our lives, because they can affect the way we think and the way that we look at things. Our opinions and beliefs can be totally altered because of a transference. If we are aware of transferences in our lives then we can work to put a stop to them and become more aware of the truth and not concentrate on what we think to be true. Peck calls this the revising of our maps, and this is something we should be doing to help us to stay close to reality. To revise our maps we must ignore the past maps and transferences and make new ones that coincide with our life today.
In my life I know that I am guilty of having a transference or map. When I was in grade school it was so easy for me to get good grades and I did not have to put much effort forth to succeed in my classes. Studying the night before a test and waiting until the night a project was due always worked out for me. When I came to SLUH I knew that it would be a lot harder, but I did not really take my this thought to seriously. All throughout the year I did not do as well on tests as I expected to do. Then I finally asked one of my teachers and he asked me if I ever studied more than one night for the test and I told him that I always only study the night before. He told me to go over the material a few days before the test so that it it fresh in my mind. So I listened to his advice and I did well on the next test. When my parents told me to go over stuff each day I ignored it, because I had never actually heard of doing anything like that. When I was finally open to changing my study habits and the way I approached things at SLUH it worked out for the better for me.
M. Scott Peck, M.D.