“It Made Me a Better Person”: An Interview with Mel Kimura Bucholtz about the Human Potential Movement

Mel Kimura Bucholtz founded Interface Education Foundation in 1972, the first holistic training center on the East coast. He now maintains an international consulting and therapist training program. He teaches The Tuning Effect technique across the country to people seeking rapid trauma relief and enhanced self-esteem. We talked to Mel about the history of the Human Potential Movement, which has been an important element in the Rowe Center’s programming, and with which he’s been associated from its beginning.

Rowe Center: You were involved with the Human Potential Movement from its beginning. In 1974, what were you doing?

Mel Kimura Bucholtz: I was teaching at Emerson College and working at the Psychophysiology lab at Harvard under Dr. David Shapiro with Danny Goleman and Richie Davidson when Jonny Kabat-Zinn and Larry Rosenberg walked in asking us to study the brainwave pattern of their teacher, Swami Rama. That moment encapsulates a lot of what was to come to define the human potential movement.

R.C.: Looking back, what do you think the Human Potential Movement accomplished?

M.K.B.: I founded InterFace in 1972, as a place where psychologists, therapists, and brain researchers could encounter different modes of thinking, mostly Asian, about human consciousness. It was a time when many were involved in self-actualization public programs like EST, Silva Mind control, Transcendental Meditation, the humanistic psychology pioneered by Abraham Maslow, and research into the physiology of consciousness….I was also personally interested in altered states of consciousness because that was the hot thing at the time. I saw what we were doing as a next step beyond the Beat movement of the 1950’s and ‘60's, which was to open up Asian thought into the public and into the drug culture of the 1960’s. We were also developing an alternative model to the Freudian pathologically-based model of human behavior, as well as an alternative to behaviorist thinkers like Skinner, with their mechanistic model of human life and learning.

R.C.: What changed as a result of these ideas?

M.K.B.: Out of all this came many new kinds of therapy, based on an understanding of how systems work in couples and families. The old paradigm had been about individuals solving problems on their own through analysis. This was trauma-based, and we were looking for new ways of helping people to flourish beyond problem solving, beyond using the same consciousness that got them into those problems in the first place .

Another branch of the human potential movement, which did not inspire me, was the New Age movement, which sought a new level of human consciousness largely through the use of chemical substances like LSD. The idea was that if you did enough drugs, the resulting “higher” consciousness would change the planet. I thought the drug-induced methods only led to another closed society of people.

R.C.: Is the human potential movement over? Has it evolved into something else?

M.K.B.: I think that the concept and practice of mindfulness, which has become very influential, came out of the encounter of Western psychology with Asian thought and practice—that is where I came into the picture. Ericksonian theory has also been very influential.

R.C.: What did you personally get out of your involvement with the human potential movement?

M.K.B.: Two things. It told me where I do not belong, which is in academia, and where I do belong, which is following in the footsteps of pioneers like Dr. Milton Erickson, who developed hypnotic techniques to help people to realize, and unleash, their natural potential in their personal and social lives. It taught me how to become a better person, not merely a good problem solver, and not just in theory, but in practice. I now realize that helping others to discover and live creatively empathic lives in their relationships, rather than only cultivating insights to solve problems, is my ultimate act of personal responsibility, as a teacher and as a human being.

MEL KIMURA BUCHOLTZ founded Interface, the first holistic training center in Boston, and now maintains an international consulting and training practice in Boulder. Mel teaches his Tuning Effect ™ across the country to people seeking rapid trauma relief and enhanced self-esteem.