The Rule of Love

MICHAEL KAHN

Michael Kahn, former actor, pilot, and long-time psychology professor, had his life changed by Timothy Leary at Harvard in 1961. He has not recovered. And is eternally grateful.

When Tim came to Harvard in the ’60s, the upheaval he brought was not primarily due to the drugs. It was primarily due to his challenging the assumptions that had governed the place for a very long time. The basic assumption was that tenure at Harvard (or, failing that, at Yale or Berkeley) was the most desirable of all goals. Other assumptions followed: It was important that a person have a national reputation. National reputations were gained by prestigious publications and memberships. It was therefore necessary to attract and keep a large stable of graduate students. There was only one criterion for a research topic: would it advance one’s career?

Tim pointed out the egregious social and human irresponsibility that underlay these assumptions and he did so very persuasively. Tim’s faculty colleagues saw him preaching academic socialism to a society that depended on the assumptions of academic capitalism. It was about as welcome as the Fabian Socialists had been to the British establishment in the ’20s. The drugs were not the issue; they were the excuse to get rid of him.

Harvard firing Tim in 1963 had some important implications. In that year Abe Maslow had published Toward a Psychology of Being and founded the Association of Humanistic Psychology. Mike Murphy and Dick Price had founded the Esalen Institute. Something new and important was being born in American psychology and American culture. Tim was a major force in that revolution; by firing him Harvard served notice that the new movement had no place in the university, which is to say in establishment America. That it was predictable made it no less ominous.

The humanistic movement developed many voices, not all of them very attractive. But at the center was one major theme. If we are to be saved there is only one way: the rule of love must replace the rule of selfishness. I had heard that message before. I suppose I had heard it a lot before. But I heard it from Tim in a way that penetrated to my core and changed my life. I think the same can be said of an enormous number of people. Our debt to him should not be forgotten.