Dick Price

Price's father Herman Price (anglicised from Preis ) was born in an Eastern European Jewish family in 1895.

Price's mother, Audrey (Meyers) Price was born in Indiana in 1895, and grew up in Auburn, Illinois.

She was of Dutch, Irish and English heritage.

Audrey was a domineering figure in the family, and a problematic and intrusive mother for Dick.

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.

Richard Price (October 12, 1930 – November 25, 1985) was 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.

Dick Price was born October 12, 1930, to Herman and Audrey Price in Rogers Park.

Price had a twin brother, Bobby, who died in 1933, and a sister Joan who was born in 1929.

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Although Herman was a charismatic businessman, he was an emotionally withdrawn and distant father for Dick.

In 1941, the Price family moved to Kenilworth on the North Shore of Chicago.

Dick graduated from New Trier High School in 1948.

He joined New Trier's wrestling team and placed second in his weight class in the state of Illinois.

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

While at Stanford, Price studied with both Gregory Bateson and Frederic Spiegelberg.

They would later prove to be pivotal influences when he founded and developed programs at Esalen Institute.

He did graduate work in the social relations department at Harvard University, although he left before completing his degree because of his frustration with the conservative, research-oriented faculty.

After leaving Harvard in 1955, Price enlisted in the Air Force and was given an assignment in the East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area).

He rented a room in San Francisco at Alan Watts' and Frederic Spiegelberg's newly founded American Academy of Asian Studies (the precursor to the California Institute of Integral Studies).

During this time, the North Beach Beat scene was an emerging social trend.

Dick knew most of the primary figures, including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder.

Dick married his first wife, Bonnie, in a Zen ceremony.

In 1956, Price experienced an episode of manic psychosis in San Francisco which he later described as simply "a state", what he believed was a mental break that was transitory and which he needed to go through and experience rather than repress or manage.

On December 7, 1956, his parents involuntarily committed him to the Institute of Living, an exclusive mental treatment facility in Connecticut.

While hospitalized, he was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia.

He was subjected to physical confinement and major tranquilizers, along with numerous electroconvulsive and insulin shock treatments.

While committed, his mother had his marriage annulled He was released almost a year later on Thanksgiving Day 1957.

Price wrote about his hospitalization experience:

"There was a fundamental mistake being made and that mistake was supposing that the healing process was the disease, rather than the process whereby the disease is healed. The disease, if any, was the state previous to the 'psychosis.' ... The so-called 'psychosis' was an attempt towards spontaneous healing, and it was a movement towards health, not a movement towards disease.... In some categories it would be called mystical, really a re-owning and discovery of parts of myself."

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.

Price never forgave his parents for their actions.

He died when he was struck by a boulder while hiking near Esalen on November 25, 1985, and is survived by his wife, Christine Stewart Price, and two children, David and Jennifer Price.