Human Potential Movement (named 1965, Esalen)
concept
The 1960s idea that most of our abilities go unused was named at Esalen in 1965.
Who they are
George Leonard and Michael Murphy[1].
What they do
It is the movement Esalen launched — and it has two sides in the record.
How it works
Leonard: 'Why not a human potential movement?' Its founders said our capacities are latent and can be unlocked by practice, not breeding. But the phrase itself is credited to a 1958 psychology book with a section on 'positive and negative eugenics', and one of Esalen's founding teachers had written about a spiritual leader caste.
Why it matters
Both sides are documented, and both stand.
The engine's record — word for word
[
Report #196] **In plain terms:** the 1960s movement that said most human capacity lies unused and can be unlocked — named at Esalen by George Leonard and Michael Murphy.
NAMING. George Leonard's own account (Walking on the Edge of the World, 1988): 'There's a civil rights movement,' I said, 'and a free speech movement. Why not a human potential movement?' I wrote 'human potential movement' on a slip of paper'. Kripal dates the coinage to 1965; Leonard met Murphy on 2 February 1965. The widely repeated 'March 1966' has no source. Leonard's research for Look: 'I had already interviewed thirty-seven people' — 'leading psychologists and brain researchers' (not '37 psychiatrists').
SOURCES OF THE IDEA. Aldous Huxley's 'Human Potentialities' talks (see huxley_human_potentialities_lectures); Abraham Maslow's self-actualization; Glenn Doman and Carl Delacato's Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential (1955). Kripal's note credits the phrase 'human potentialities' to Gardner Murphy's 1958 book of that name (see gardner_murphy) — a book with a section headed 'Positive and Negative Eugenics'.
THE FORK INSIDE IT. Esalen's own founders taught latent potential realised by practice, not breeding (Huxley: 'wholly potential and latent in man'; Murphy's 'evolutionary panentheism'). The book the movement's phrase comes from, and one of its founding teachers (gerald_heard, 'Neo-Brahmin' caste), carried ranking and selection language. Both are documented; held side by side, neither cancels the other.
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