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Dick Price

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Dick Price

Richard Price (October 12, 1930 – November 25, 1985) was an American Gestalt therapist, 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 the Rogers Park section of Chicago, Illinois. Price had a twin brother, Bobby, who died in 1933, and a sister Joan who was born in 1929.

Price's father Herman Price (anglicised from Preis) was born in an Eastern European Jewish family in 1895. 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. 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 Although Herman was a charismatic businessman, he was an emotionally withdrawn and distant father for Dick.[citation needed]

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.[citation needed]

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.

Dick Price died at age 55 when he was struck by a boulder while hiking near Esalen on November 25, 1985. He was survived by his wife, Christine Stewart Price, and two children, David and Jennifer Price.

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