ABSTRACT
In California, the traffic from San Francisco down Route l to Big Sur has declined, and in the programs that continue at Esalen, encounter groups dissolve into an ever new mix of bodily and spiritual disciplines and delights. Therapy fads proliferated, communes were established, mystical cults spread and the charismatic movement with its strange penchant for "speaking with tongues" penetrated the established churches. For all its emphasis on the intensive group experience, the encounter movement and humanistic psychology in general has been radically individualistic, a respect in which it resonates with a dominant theme in American culture at large. A doctrine of human perfectibility runs through most writings in humanistic psychology, and distinguishes them from the somberness of S. Freud. Rollo May, whose strong roots in European existentialism lead him to attend to the tragic aspects of life, is the major exception.
