Human Potential Movement - Authors and Essayists

Authors and Essayists

Michael Murphy and Dick Price founded the Esalen Institute in 1962, primarily as a center for the study and development of human potential, and some people continue to regard Esalen as the geographical center of the movement today. Aldous Huxley gave lectures on the "Human Potential" at Esalen in the early 1960s, and some people consider his ideas as also fundamental to the movement. Christopher Lasch notes the impact of the human potential movement via the therapeutic sector: "The new therapies spawned by the human potential movement, according to Peter Marin, teach that "the individual will is all powerful and totally determines one's fate"; thus they intensify the "isolation of the self."

George Leonard, a magazine writer and editor who conducted research for an article on human potential, became an important early influence on Esalen. Leonard claims that he coined the phrase "Human Potential Movement" during a brainstorming session with Murphy, and popularized it in his 1972 book "The Transformation: A Guide to the Inevitable Changes in Mankind". Leonard worked closely with the Esalen Institute afterwards, and in 2005 served as its president.

Read more about this topic:  Human Potential Movement

Famous quotes containing the words authors and, authors and/or essayists:

    In the present age, alas! our pens are ravished by unlettered authors and unmannered critics, that make a havoc rather than a building, a wilderness rather than a garden. But, alack! what boots it to drop tears upon the preterit?
    Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898)

    Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to set them right.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    By now, legions of tireless essayists and op-ed columnists have dressed feminists down for making such a fuss about entering the professions and earning equal pay that everyone’s attention has been distracted from the important contributions of mothers working at home. This judgment presumes, of course, that prior to the resurgence of feminism in the ‘70s, housewives and mothers enjoyed wide recognition and honor. This was not exactly the case.
    Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)