Jean Houston, a mesmerizing figure in the human potential movement of the 1960s who used guided imagination to inspire hapless suburbanites, burned-out executives and even Hillary Rodham Clinton, who helped Mrs. Clinton have imaginary conversations in the White House with Eleanor Roosevelt, died May 16 at her home in Ashland, Oreg. She was 89 years old.
His death was confirmed by his friend and business partner Constance Buffalo.
The daughter of a gag writer for Bob Hope, George Burns and Henny Youngman, Ms. Houston rejected any association with the word “guru,” seeing it as an intellectual degradation. He called himself “the announcer of the possible” and the “midwife of souls”.
“In my definition, a guru is like ‘Yes, you are you,'” he said on the Oprah Winfrey television show “Super Soul Sunday.” “I seem to be a process. I seem to be an act of becoming, and I am bound by the attraction of becoming that keeps us going.”
As the founder of several organizations, including Human Capabilities Corporation, Mystery School, Social Artistry School, and Possible Society, Ms. Houston has led workshops in corporate boardrooms, at empowerment retreats, in her geodesic-domed home in Oregon, and in far-flung countries with the United Nations.
Robertson Work, a United Nations policy adviser who accompanied him on trips around the world, said in an interview, “He had a remarkable ability to be present to others.” “You felt like you were being watched. You could discover: ‘What is my greatness? What is my potential?'”
Ms. Houston synthesized mythology, the psychology of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, and the experiential ethos. esalenThe California Retreat That Shaped the Human Potential Movement.
During their multi-day workshops, participants had imaginary conversations with historical figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and Pablo Picasso, acted out the stages of evolution while pretending to be fish or monkeys, and transformed their dreams into elaborate dances.
“The idea was that it is possible to cultivate a higher power within yourself,” Marion Goldman, professor emeritus of sociology and religious studies at the University of Oregon and author of “The American Soul Rush: Esalen and the Rise of Spiritual Privilege” (2012), said in an interview. “By making yourself a better place, you make the world a better place.”
In addition to her workshops, Ms. Houston published more than two dozen books, including “The Possible Human: A Course in Enhancing Your Physical, Mental and Creative Abilities” (1982), which sold more than 400,000 copies.
In the book’s introduction he wrote, “In the unprecedented development of the new sciences, arts, music, literature, politics, and above all a new vision of mankind and the world which is the glory of humanism, the imaginary spheres of inner space expand and extend into the outer world.”
There were people who disagreed.
Writing in the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, Martin Gardner, a critic of pseudoscience, called Ms. Houston’s workshops “astonishing” and described her “flowery New Age jargon” as “so vague and vague that it is often difficult to understand.” (To add insult to injury, the headline of the article labeled him a guru.)
Still, his vibe was attractive — even in the White House. In 1994, Ms. Houston was among a group of motivational speakers who were invited by President Bill Clinton and the First Lady to Camp David for a series of pick-me-up conversations after her universal health care initiative failed and Republicans took control of Congress.
He and Mrs. Clinton hit it off.
Mrs. Clinton wrote in her memoir “Living History” (2003), “Jean would wrap herself in brightly colored hats and kaftans and dominate the room with her towering presence and sharp wit.” “He is a walking encyclopedia, in which poems, excerpts from great works of literature, historical facts and scientific data are all recited in the same breath.”
Ms. Houston helped Mrs. Clinton prepare for a trip to India, Nepal and Bangladesh in 1995. That year, the First Lady invited him to the White House to brainstorm Mrs. Clinton’s book about children’s well-being, “It Takes a Village.”
Mrs. Clinton was physically and mentally exhausted. Perhaps, Ms. Houston suggested, she should talk to her hero, Mrs. Roosevelt. The idea was to have Mrs. Clinton speak as herself and then respond as Mrs. Roosevelt — a kind of role-playing exercise that Ms. Houston had conducted thousands of times.
At some point, he described the sessions with Mrs. Clinton to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, who recounted the details in his 1996 book, “The Choice.” After a piece appeared in The Post, Clinton’s tabloids and Republican opponents accused the First Lady of staging a séance in the White House.
Mrs. Clinton issued a lengthy statement in her defense. He said, “It was an interesting intellectual exercise to help awaken my own thoughts.” “It was a brainstorming session for my book – not a spiritual event.”
In an appearance on the “Today” show, Ms. Houston told Katie Couric that she was helping the first lady focus by simply imagining “what she would say to Eleanor Roosevelt if she had the opportunity to do it.”
Ms. Houston felt she had been unfairly maligned.
“I’m not a mental patient,” she said. “I am not a guru.”
Jean Houston was born on May 10, 1937 in Brooklyn. His mother, Mary (Todaro) Houston, was an actress, interior designer, and stock analyst. His father, Jack Houston, was a comedy writer.
Growing up, she found inspiration in a dummy. When she was 8 years old, she accompanied her father to deliver a script to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. Upon arriving, they found Mr. Bergen talking to his plastic and wooden friend, Charlie McCarthy.
“Charlie, what is the meaning of life?” Mr. Bergen asked the dummy, as Ms. Houston recalled in her memoir, “A Mythic Life” (1996). “What is the nature of love? Can any truth be found in it?”
The dummy muttered some answers.
“At that moment,” Ms. Houston wrote, “my skin turned to goosebumps, an electric hand seemed to touch me, and a fractal wave of my future activities crashed on the shore of my 8-year-old self. Because I suddenly discovered that there is more ‘in’ us than we thought.”
His stories spread. During a school trip, she met Helen Keller and was amazed to see how happy she seemed, despite being blind and deaf. She joined an international Pen Mitra club and corresponded about the scriptures of Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists. He had a long conversation with an old man in Central Park; Later, she learned that she was talking to the philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
“When you make friends with your mind,” he Said“A lot becomes possible.”
At Barnard, he studied religion and theater, acting in Off-Broadway plays at night. He attended the doctoral program in religion offered by Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary, but did not receive a degree.
During graduate school, while studying the use of LSD, he met Robert EL Masters Jr., a writer. They married in 1965 and spent their honeymoon writing “The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience”, which was reviewed on the cover of The New York Times Book Review.
Also in 1965, the couple founded the Foundation for Mind Research, the first of several organizations that Ms. Houston started to promote and study human potential.
“We are living at the beginning of the golden age of mind, brain and body research,” he told The Washington Post in 1978.
mr masters dead in 2008. There were no immediate survivors of Ms. Houston.
Among his fondest memories was his childhood meeting with Ms. Keller, who was in her late 60s at the time – a story she often told.
Ms. Keller placed her hand on Jean’s face to read her lips.
“why are you so happy?” Jean asked.
“My child,” Ms. Keller replied, “that’s because I live my life every day as if it were my last. And life is so full of glory in all its moments.”
