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Oh, yes, I, too, have seen the belly of the pop psych beast, beginning in the '60s with people who dangerously popularized their misunderstanding of Fritz Perls' gestalt therapy: tearing people down and then failing to put them back together again, through Est and so-onward into self-esteem

WE may have passed in the night, CR. I spent a year with Perls in Big Sur. HE tore people down and failed to put them back together. I rather liked him personally, he'd come up to my house on Partington Ridge for dinner, and even babysat for my kids a couple of times. Fascinating conversationalist. But as a therapist? Not good. I think he'd never met anyone like me. He kept trying to convince me to admit I was Jewish, but I was a very Irish convent-school catholic from midwest. He didn't have a clue!

I did EST in LA in maybe 74-75, had big fun, later met Werner and could not stand him, and the feeling was mutual. The Human Potential Movement, as it was called in the late '60s, was interesting and fun for this (formerly) extremely uptight lady....I think the physical stuff was best: rolfing, bioenergetics, alexander technique were quite beneficial and didn't muck with your mind.

When people ask me what I got from those years, I smile enigmatically and say, "I learned to dance." I mean that literally. Until I had a session with Ida Rolf, I was so cranked up I could neither rock nor roll, and I was very young.

One of the fellows in a month-long Perls workshop at Esalen was a teacher at Berkeley and member of "The Sexual Freedom League." He used to sit in Perls' hot seat and complain about how tired he was of bleeping every girl he met....maybe you knew him??? LOL!

Ah, yes, the Human Potential Movement, I'd almost forgotten the term.

Sounds indeed like we passed in the night. My reaction to Fritz was similar to yours, although I knew a few people who thought he was a decent therapist. What a guy to talk with, though!

Speaking of the HPM bleeping, do you remember the guy in Santa Barbara (no it wasn't Gary, it was Patrick something or other, a psych grad student) who wrote a book Humanistic Hustling? I ran across a copy when cleaning out stuff a couple of months ago. Unreal. I actually knew a couple of his conquests. Their comments about him (after publication of the book) wer e scathing, but insightful. One of them, who had also met Fritz, thought that gestalt was all about Fritz getting laid, and was only given a respectable quasi-scientific basis by Paul Goodman and Hefferline. One step above Reich was her take.