Criticism
Over the years, Esalen Institute has been the subject of criticism. Generally, the Human Potential Movement has been criticized for espousing an ethic that the inner-self should be freely expressed in order to reach one's true potential. Some people have seen this ethic as an aspect of Esalen's culture. The historian Christopher Lasch claimed that humanistic techniques encourage narcissistic, spiritual materialistic or self-obsessive thoughts and behaviors. These criticisms were examined in a 2002 BBC television series, called The Century of the Self, which included video segments recorded at Esalen. In 1990 a graffiti artist spray painted, "Jive shit for rich white folk," on the entrance to Esalen, highlighting class and race issues. This implied that Esalen courses are too expensive and poor people can't afford to experience their "full human potential". Some think that this is a regression of progress away from true spiritual growth.
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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.”
—Richard Holt Hutton (1826–1897)
“I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)