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Despite such glossy statistics, however, the observer from the East still finds something provincial about California culture; it is overeager, overly dutiful, and beset by a local boosterism mixed with inferiority feelings. In this area, as in many others, Californians are victims of what Sociologist David Riesman calls "masochistic narcissism—the idea that you are either the greatest or the worst."
Crisis of Search
Having wrenched themselves loose from their pasts, a great number of the newly arrived discover that cultural roots, like heart transplants, do not take easily. The climate of tolerance and the very absence of tradition that encourage experimentation also deny people a sense of identity. And with the crisis of search comes the fear of failure.
For many, the sense of failure is intensified by the extremes of the California setting. Says Behavioral Scientist Richard E. Parson, Board Chairman of La Jolla's Western Behavioral Sciences Institute: "The discovery of what we've got, and what we know it is possible to have, is greater in California than anywhere else. The difference between life on the beach at sunset and life in a freeway jam is so big that it makes awareness of the discrepancy much greater."
The malaise that drifts like the coastal fog takes constantly changing forms. The population seems forever to be shifting fitfully, as if everyone is looking for a better motel. Some 500 people a day move out of the state altogether. Among the seekers who stay are a large number of the troubled souls, mainly young and middleaged, who join encounter groups, which proliferate in California like steelhead and artichokes and the wines that go with them.
Psychologist Carl Rogers, one of encounter therapy's pioneers and now a resident fellow at the Center for Studies of the Person in La Jolla, is convinced that group-grope "is the new psychological frontier. The people here are all transients. They're saying, 'What will I do for roots?' " The answer, it seems, lies in that Holy Grail of the psyche-oriented '60s—what in California might be called MEANINTPEREL, or "meaningful interpersonal relationships."
There is considerable debate about the value of these encounter groups. Some establishments, like the famed Esalen Institute at Big Sur, are rightly praised by reputable psychiatrists. Other observers argue that it is foolish to believe in salvation through collective bloodletting. Berkeley English Professor Frederick C. Crews, for one, calls encounter "extremely naive—a kind of utopianism based on the vulgarization of psychoanalysis."
Crime, as in other places, continues to rise in California. More than 5% of California's population was arrested last year on various charges. The rate of personal crimes of violence rose almost 18% in 1968. In San Francisco alone, there have been more than 109 homicides so far this year; forcible rape in September of this year has risen 101% over September 1968: 63 v. 30.
Suicide, Sickness and Divorce