Selfie: How the West Became Self-Obsessed

by Will Storr

The mid-1960s were incendiary and magnificent times for Esalen. Their 1965 brochure boasted that ‘new tools and techniques of the human potentiality – generally unknown to the public and to much of the intellectual community – are already at hand; many more are presently under development. We stand on an exhilarating and dangerous frontier – and must answer anew the old questions: “What are the limits of human ability, the boundaries of the human experience? What does it mean to be a human being?”’ In 1966 alone, around four thousand inner-adventurers – ‘doctors, social workers, clinical psychologists, teachers, students, business executives, engineers, housewives’, according to a contemporary New York Times account – made the long drive up Highway One to find out. A phrase heard often around the property was ‘Mother Esalen gives permission’ and, indeed, she did. There was nude massage, group sex, physical aggression and