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. Her death was confirmed by her friend and business partner, Constance Buffalo. The daughter of a gag writer for Bob Hope, George Burns and Henny Youngman, Ms.
Houston rejected any association with the word “guru,” viewing it as an intellectual demotion. She called herself an “evocateur of the possible” and a “midwife of souls.
” “In my definition, guru is spelled ‘Gee, You Are You,’” she said on the Oprah Winfrey television show “Super Soul Sunday. ” “I 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.
” 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. “She had a remarkable capacity to be present to others,” Robertson Work, a U. N.
policy adviser who accompanied her on trips around the world, said in an interview. “You felt like you were being seen. You could discover: ‘What is my greatness. What is my potential. ’” We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
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