The chapter includes:

• The importance of senses of self.

• Definitions of authenticity.

• Stimulus-response-organism theories.

• Alternative theoretical approaches.

• Authenticity, place and holidays and senses of self.

• The human gaze and imputations of meaning to place and activities.

• Issues in measurement of authenticity.

Introduction

The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote in his Moral Letters to Lucilius (65 AD) that travel attracted us with false hopes. It is, he wrote ‘a fool’s errand. We naively believe that a change of environment will ease distress which stems from within us. But it is part of us and goes wherever we go. What we may experience is a short period of alleviation provided by the distraction of new surroundings’ (Seneca, Letter XXVII, 65 AD). In short, wherever we go, we take ourselves. Consequently, if we are to be truly happy in our travels, we need to be happy in ourselves for ‘Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there’ (Seneca, Letter XXVIII, 65 AD). Yet we travel because of a need for distraction from what we perceive as the ordinariness of daily life. In Dann’s (1977, 1981) terminology, we are ‘pushed’ for a desire for the new, yet as Maslow (1968, 1970) argued, the fulfilled self-actualised person can find something new each day in our daily patterns of life. This tension between the secret of happiness being the contentment derived from familiarity and the love of oneself in one’s place and the desire for the excitement of the new is one of the conundrums that faces the tourist.

This was well recognised by Jan Morris, who, on her death, was acclaimed in various obituaries as one of the greatest, if not the greatest of travel writers.