Dick Price

Richard Price (October 12, 1930 – November 25, 1985) was an American Gestalt therapist, co-founder of the Esalen Institute in 1962, and a veteran of the Beat Generation. He ran Esalen in Big Sur for many years, sometimes virtually single-handed. He developed a practice of hiking the Santa Lucia Mountains and developed a new form of personal integration and growth that he called Gestalt practice, partly based upon Gestalt therapy and Buddhist practice.

Price consciously applied psychological principles to his sense of self, and helped many people work to do the same. His work remains at the core of the Esalen experience.

Early life Dick Price was born October 12, 1930, to Herman and Audrey Price in the Rogers Park section of Chicago, Illinois. ) was born in an Eastern European Jewish family in 1895. The family emigrated from Lithuania in 1911 (at that time a part of Russia), first to New York and finally to Chicago.

During World War I his father served in the United States Coast Guard, and then in the United States Navy. Herman was a refrigeration expert. He headed appliance manufacturing and design at Sears for their Coldspot brand, working extensively with Raymond Loewy, who was a close family friend. In 1936, the family moved into the two-floor penthouse apartment in at 707 W. Junior Terrace, just off Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. With the onset of World War II, Herman was loaned by Sears to the Douglas Aircraft Company where he applied his assembly line experience to organizing the mass production of aircraft, including the B-17 in particular. Although Herman was a charismatic businessman, he was an emotionally withdrawn and distant father for Dick.

Price's mother, and two children, David and Jennifer Price.

College education Price graduated from Stanford University in 1952 with a major in psychology.

After he was hospitalized, he was discharged from the Air Force, and went to work for his uncle's sign company in Chicago, Price Brothers. Henry Miller regularly visited the hot springs during this early period of Esalen's history. Julian Silverman came to Esalen in 1965, in order to work on the schizophrenia project at Agnews State Hospital, Grof was interested in the enhancement of human potentials through the induction of non-ordinary states of consciousness. He had conducted research with LSD at the Psychiatric Research Center in Prague, followed by similar research at Johns Hopkins University and the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. At Esalen, Price encouraged Grof to develop the therapeutic technique of Holotropic Breathwork, which functioned as a substitute for psychedelic drugs.

Gestalt practice

In 1964, Fritz Perls, the psychiatrist who developed Gestalt therapy, arrived at Esalen. During Perls' time at Esalen, Price became one of his primary students. He was also influenced by the work of Wilhelm Reich, who had been Perls' analyst.

Legacy In the time since his death, Price's work has remained influential.

In 2013, during a period of management changes, Christine Stewart Price, the widow of Dick Price, decided to withdraw from teaching at Esalen Institute. She founded an organization named Tribal Ground Circle to continue Dick Price's work.