In the summer of ’62, Abraham Maslow drove through the heavy fog along the California’s dangerous Big Sur coastal highway. An interesting sign caught his eye and he pulled over to check it out. He had wandered upon the world’s first-ever personal growth facility, Esalen. Ironically, as he arrived, staffers had just received copies of his most recent book, Toward A Psychology of Being.
Given such lofty beginnings, it was inevitable that Abraham Maslow would turn into the cult hero of the human potential society. With the central idea of the ‘self-actualizing person’, his book, Motivation and Personality (1954) showed a new ideal portayal of humanity that delighted an entire generation.