Jean Houston, a spellbinding figure in the human potential movement of the 1960s who used guided imagery to inspire unmoored suburbanites, burned-out executives and even Hillary Rodham Clinton, helping Mrs. Clinton conduct imaginary conversations at the White House with Eleanor Roosevelt, died on May 16 at her home in Ashland, Ore. She was 89.<\/p>\n
Her death was confirmed by her friend and business partner, Constance Buffalo.<\/p>\n
The daughter of a gag writer for Bob Hope, George Burns and Henny Youngman, Ms. Houston rejected any association with the word \u201cguru,\u201d viewing it as an intellectual demotion. She called herself an \u201cevocateur of the possible\u201d and a \u201cmidwife of souls.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my definition, guru is spelled \u2018Gee, You Are You,\u2019\u201d she said on the Oprah Winfrey television show \u201cSuper Soul Sunday.\u201d \u201cI seem to be a process. I seem to be a verb of becoming, and held by the lure of becoming that keeps us going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the founder of numerous organizations, including the Human Capacities Corporation, Mystery School, Social Artistry School and the Possible Society, Ms. Houston led workshops at empowerment retreats, in corporate boardrooms, at her geodesic-domed house in Oregon and in far-flung countries with the United Nations.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had a remarkable capacity to be present to others,\u201d Robertson Work, a U.N. policy adviser who accompanied her on trips around the world, said in an interview. \u201cYou felt like you were being seen. You could discover: \u2018What is my greatness? What is my potential?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Houston synthesized mythology, the psychology of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, and the experiential ethos of Esalen<\/a>, the California retreat that shaped the human potential movement.<\/p>\n During her multiday workshops, participants engaged in imaginary conversations with historical figures like Mahatma Gandhi and Pablo Picasso, acted out the stages of evolution while pretending to be a fish or a monkey, and translated their dreams into elaborate dances.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea was that it\u2019s possible to cultivate a higher power within yourself,\u201d Marion Goldman, a professor emeritus of sociology and religious studies at the University of Oregon and the author of \u201cThe American Soul Rush: Esalen and the Rise of Spiritual Privilege\u201d (2012), said in an interview. \u201cBy making the self a better place, you make the world a better place.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to her workshops, Ms. Houston published more than two dozen books, including \u201cThe Possible Human: A Course in Enhancing Your Physical, Mental and Creative Abilities\u201d (1982), which sold more than 400,000 copies.<\/p>\n \u201cThe imaginal realms of inner space proliferate and spill over into the external world in a phenomenal growth of new science, art, music, literature, politics, and above all in a new vision of mankind and world that is the glory of humanism,\u201d she wrote in the book\u2019s introduction.<\/p>\n There were dissenters.<\/p>\n Writing in Skeptical Inquirer magazine, Martin Gardner<\/a>, a critic of pseudoscience, called Ms. Houston\u2019s workshops \u201cbewildering\u201d and judged her \u201cflowery New Age jargon\u201d to be \u201cso vague and murky that it is often difficult to understand.\u201d (Adding insult to injury, the article\u2019s headline labeled her a guru.)<\/p>\n Still, her pull was gravitational \u2014 even at the White House. In 1994, Ms. Houston was among a group of motivational speakers whom President Bill Clinton and the first lady invited to Camp David for a series of pick-me-up conversations after their universal health care initiative failed and Republicans took control of Congress.<\/p>\n She and Mrs. Clinton hit it off.<\/p>\n \u201cJean wraps herself in brightly colored capes and caftans and dominates the room with her larger-than-life presence and crackling wit,\u201d Mrs. Clinton wrote in her memoir \u201cLiving History\u201d (2003). \u201cShe is a walking encyclopedia, reciting poems, passages from great works of literature, historical facts and scientific data all in the same breath.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Houston helped Mrs. Clinton prepare for a visit to India, Nepal and Bangladesh in 1995. That year, the first lady invited her to the White House to brainstorm ideas for \u201cIt Takes a Village,\u201d Mrs. Clinton\u2019s book about the well-being of children.<\/p>\n Mrs. Clinton was physically and mentally exhausted. Perhaps, Ms. Houston suggested, she should speak with her hero, Mrs. Roosevelt. The idea was for Mrs. Clinton to talk as herself and then answer back as Mrs. Roosevelt \u2014 the sort of role-playing exercise that Ms. Houston had conducted thousands of times.<\/p>\n At some point, she described the sessions with Mrs. Clinton to the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, who recounted the details in his 1996 book, \u201cThe Choice.\u201d After an excerpt appeared in The Post, tabloids and Republican opponents of the Clintons accused the first lady of holding seances at the White House.<\/p>\n Mrs. Clinton released a lengthy statement<\/a> in her defense. \u201cThis was an interesting intellectual exercise to help spark my own thoughts,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was a brainstorming session for my book \u2014 not a spiritual event.\u201d<\/p>\n In an appearance on the \u201cToday\u201d show, Ms. Houston told Katie Couric that she was simply helping the first lady focus her mind by imagining \u201cwhat she would say to Eleanor Roosevelt should she have the occasion to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Houston felt that she had been unfairly maligned.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not a psychic,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not a guru.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Houston published more than two dozen books, including \u201cThe Possible Human\u201d (1982), which sold over 400,000 copies.Credit…Tarcher<\/p>\n Jean Houston was born on May 10, 1937, in Brooklyn. Her mother, Mary (Todaro) Houston, was an actress, interior designer and stock analyst. Her father, Jack Houston, was a comedy writer.<\/p>\n Growing up, she found inspiration in a dummy. When she was 8, she accompanied her father to deliver a script to the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen<\/a>. Upon arriving, they found Mr. Bergen talking to his plastic-and-wood buddy, Charlie McCarthy<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cCharlie, what is the meaning of life?\u201d Mr. Bergen asked the dummy, as Ms. Houston recalled in her memoir, \u201cA Mythic Life\u201d (1996). \u201cWhat is the nature of love? Is there any truth to be found?\u201d<\/p>\n The dummy mumbled some answers.<\/p>\n \u201cAt that moment,\u201d Ms. Houston wrote, \u201cmy skin turned to gooseflesh, an electric hand seemed to touch mine, and a fractal wave of my future activities crashed on the shore of my 8-year-old self. For I suddenly knew that we all contain \u2018so much more\u2019 than we think we do.\u201d<\/p>\n Her epiphanies proliferated. On a school trip, she met Helen Keller and marveled at how happy she seemed despite being blind and deaf. She joined an international pen pal club and corresponded about the scriptures of Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists. She had long conversations with an old man in Central Park; later, she discovered that she had been talking to the philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin<\/a>.<\/p>\n