‘Road Less Traveled’ a 10-Year Best-Seller : Psychology: Although the book purports to explain many of life’s phenomena, its own unprecedented success remains a mystery.

The book “The Road Less Traveled” has topped The New York Times best-seller list for nearly 10 years--as long as “Cats” has played on Broadway--but no one seems to know why.

Week after week, the book fluctuates between the third and 10th spot on the nonfiction list in the Sunday Book Review section, withstanding competition from the barrage of other self-help books flooding the market. “The Guinness Book of World Records” lists it as the title with the longest life on the paperback best-seller list.

“Go figure,” said Jonathan Dolger, the editor who acquired the book by a psychiatrist, Dr. M. Scott Peck, for Simon & Schuster in 1977. Dolger, who is now Peck’s literary agent, concedes the phenomenon is “very peculiar.”

Readers willing to persevere past the book’s opening line--”Life is difficult,”--and sometimes impenetrable logic--”We cannot solve life’s problems except by solving them”--may uncover answers to the myth of love, the definition of grace and the religion of science.

Peck counsels that only by confronting and working through conflict can we attain salvation. Religion, classic Freudian analysis and John Denver lyrics are added to the mix.

But while the book, whose original title was “The Psychology of Spiritual Growth,” purports to explain many of life’s phenomena, its own unprecedented success remains elusive.

Booksellers around Manhattan report steady sales but offer no insight.

“I don’t understand it,” said Chris Donohue, manager of the B. Dalton Bookseller in midtown Manhattan.

“I have no idea why,” said Richard Deveraux, the floor manager at the Strand Book Store in Greenwich Village.

Yes, there are theories.

“I think it’s a gift-giving book,” said Dina Roman of The New York Times Book Review. “I’m not sure it’s the book per se but the fact that it makes a good gift.”

Dolger thinks that members of 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous--that is, “people interested in religion and inspiration”--continually generate new interest.

“But then again,” Dolger said, “it’s been very popular in France and I don’t think they even have 12-step programs there.”

Gail Pewterbaugh, Peck’s business manager, offers a more esoteric explanation:

“People are ready for it at different times in their lives. They may pick it up and put it down five times before they’re ready to learn from it. That keeps the book’s pertinence alive.”

Peck himself believes positive word-of-mouth constantly introduces the book to new readers. Neither the publisher nor the author has promoted the book since its paperback release in 1982.

Peck, 56, now devotes himself to writing about rather than practicing psychiatry. He has written three other nonfiction books with moderate success.

Though the book was originally published in 1977, it was, with the exception of a glowing review in The Washington Post, largely ignored. The paperback edition surged onto the best-seller list five years later.

To date, “The Road Less Traveled” has sold more than 3.5 million copies in the United States and 6.5 million worldwide.

It has spawned workbooks, study groups, devoted fans and at least 10 different audiocassettes.

Donohue at B. Dalton said his customers are middle-aged businessmen. Dolger maintains the range of readers encompasses a “mix of hard-core devotees--guru types--to sophisticated successful people.”