This chapter includes:

• A brief review of previous chapters.

• Potential future directions of research.

The motive for this book was initially stated as being a desire to state, describe and trace the evolution of psychological theories and to indicate the ways in which they have been applied to the subject of the ‘tourist experience’. It was suggested that holidays are of significance because they represent times outside of the normal patterns of life, and in experiencing the ‘extra-ordinary’ they are important for the development of our own senses of being and are formative in shaping our personalities. From this perspective, many of the theories identified as having importance are associated with significant conceptual trends over the last century. It was noted how the Jewish migration to New York to escape the Nazi regime instilled a desire by psychologists to understand how humans might conform to extreme ideologies or otherwise stand firm in seeking their true nature. The 1930s saw the birth of humanistic psychology which wove a philosophical belief about human potential into theories of self-actualisation. Holidays, it was argued, are periods when self-discovery may occur, and even at their most prosaic, holidays are periods of relaxation, of relief from stress, and in that sense contribute to well-being.

With advances in technology, income and a post-Second World War recovery, existentialism became a somewhat ill-formed but important stream of thinking with the work of Sartre, Camus and others. The existentialists are not a consistent school of thinking for there are differences between the highly religious tendencies of a Søren Kierkegaard and an atheistic Jean-Paul Sartre. Indeed, Sartre was said to have rebutted any attempt at defining existentialism and as Solomon (2001) notes, many of the writings associated with existentialism lie in novels such as The Stranger (Camus, 1942) or from an earlier time the novels of Dostoyevsky.