Dick Price

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Dick Price co-founded Esalen Institute in 1962.


Contents

[edit] Biography

Richard “Dick” Price was born October 12, 1930 to Herman and Audrey Price in Chicago, Illinois.

Price had a twin brother, Bobby, who died at age 3, and a sister, Joan, born in 1929.

Herman Price (anglicised from 'Preuss') was born in 1895 and emigrated from Lithuania in 1911 (then a part of Russia), first to New York and then to Chicago. During World War I he served in the United States Coast Guard and then in the United States Navy.

Herman was a refrigeration expert and headed appliance manufacturing and design at Sears with Coldspot working extensively with Raymond Loewy, who was a close family friend. With the onset of World War II, he was loaned by Sears to the Douglas Aircraft Company where he applied the assembly line experience to assisting and organizing in the mass production of aircraft and the B-17 in particular.

Audrey Meyers (Price) was born in Indiana in 1895 and grew up in Auburn, Illinois. She was of Dutch, Irish and English extraction.

When Dick was born, the family lived in Rogers Park. In 1936, the family moved to the top two-floor penthouse of 707 Junior Terrace in Chicago.

[edit] Education

In 1942, the Price family moved to Kenilworth on the North Shore of Chicago. Price graduated from New Trier High School in 1948. Price was on New Trier’s wrestling team and placed second in his weight class in the state of Illinois.

Price graduated from Stanford University in 1952 with a major in psychology and went on to do graduate studies in clinical psychology at Harvard University.

While at Stanford, Price studied with both Gregory Bateson and Frederic Spiegelberg. Both of whom would later prove to be pivotal influences in the founding and development of Esalen.

[edit] San Francisco

After Harvard, in 1955, Price moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. While in the Air Force, he took a room at Alan Watts’ and Frederic Spiegelberg’s newly founded American Academy of Asian Studies (the precursor to the California Institute of Integral Studies; though it was to close in late 1956) in San Francisco. This placed him at the hub of the newly emerging North Beach Beat scene. Price knew most of the primary figures involved (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, etc.) but was particularly close with Gary Snyder. Price married during this time.

[edit] Psychosis

In 1956, in San Francisco, Price had undergone an episode of psychosis, which he later termed as simply "a state" referring to a break that he believed to be transitory and which needed to be gone through and experienced rather than repressed or managed. On December 7, 1956 he was committed by his parents to the Institute of Living mental health center until released on Thanksgiving Day of 1957. He was subjected to electroshock treatment and insulin shock treatment during this time. While committed, his mother had his marriage annulled. Price never forgave his parents for their actions during this episode.

After release, he returned to the Chicago area.

Price’s own words on the hospitalization experience:

“There was a fundamental mistake being made and that mistake was supposing that the healing process was the disease, rather than the process whereby the disease is healed.
The disease, if any, was the state previous to the “psychosis”.
The so called “psychosis” was an attempt towards spontaneous healing, and it was a movement towards health, not a movement towards disease…
In some categories it would be called mystical, really a re-owning and discovery of parts of myself…”

[edit] Founding Esalen

In May, 1960, Price returned to California and took up residence at the East-West House with Gia-Fu Feng. That year Price met fellow Stanford University graduate, Michael Murphy at Haridas Chaudhuri’s Cultural Integration Fellowship where Murphy was in residence. Price moved in to the Cultural Integration Fellowship as well. In 1961 they visited 127 acres of ocean side property which included natural hot springs in Big Sur, California which was owned by Murphy's family. In 1962, using that property, capital that Price had, and assistance from Watts, Aldous Huxley, Laura Huxley, Gerald Heard, Christopher Isherwood, Gregory Bateson, Frederic Spiegelberg (with whom both Price and Murphy had studied at Stanford), and others, they founded Esalen Institute together. Among other objectives, Price saw in Esalen an alternative to then current mental health practice, especially the practices of mental hospitals, a place where inner process could move forward safely and without interruption.

Previously, the natural hot springs baths were part of a run-down resort, whose security guard was a young Hunter S. Thompson and Joan Baez was also in residence - Thompson was soon fired by Murphy's grandmother and Baez remained in residence through the beginnings of Esalen. Henry Miller visited the hot springs regularly and he and Dick became friends.

In the summer of 1962, Abraham Maslow happened to drive onto the grounds and soon became an important influence. In 1964 it was notable that Price was romantically involved with Jane Fonda. Also in 1964, Fritz Perls arrived at Esalen. Price became one of Perls' closest students during Perls' time at Esalen. Price continued practicing, modifying, and teaching Gestalt at Esalen until his own death in a hiking accident on November 25, 1985.

[edit] Further reading

  • Anderson, Walter Truett. The Upstart Spring: Esalen and the American Awakening January 1983, Addison Wesley Publishing Company ISBN 0-201-11034-2 and February 2004, Backinprint.com ISBN 0-595-30735-3
  • Kripal, Jeffrey and Glenn W. Shuck (editors). On The Edge Of The Future: Esalen And The Evolution Of American Culture, July 2005, Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21759-8
  • Lattin, Don Following Our Bliss : How the Spiritual Ideals of the Sixties Shape Our Lives Today, 2003, Harper, San Francisco . ISBN 0-060-09394-3

[edit] External links

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