Ken Keyes Jr. was an American personal growth author and lecturer, and the creator of the Living Love method, a self-help system. Keyes wrote fifteen books on personal growth and social consciousness issues, representing about four million copies distributed overall. 

Early life

Keyes was born an only child to an affluent family in Atlanta. Throughout their lives, he was close to his father and especially to his mother, despite her eventual abuse of alcohol. He suffered from chronic bronchitis and croup in his infant years, and in 1925 his family moved to Miami Beach, Florida, in hopes of his benefiting from its sunny climate. His father, Kenneth Keyes Sr., became successful in real estate development there and active in the conservative evangelical wing of the Presbyterian Church. Keyes was not very athletic as a child, but excelled in academics and developed hobbies, such as photography. When he was in high school, his father bought him a small boat, which began his lifelong interest in sailing.

Keyes attributed the seeds of the personal growth system he would later develop to an experience he had with a stern English teacher in ninth grade. Despite her reputation as a strict teacher and hard grader, he made an effort to be personally caring toward her, which led to her giving him a slight break in grading. He took the lesson from this experience to be "that when I express caring and friendliness, they are reflected back to me in life."

Final years

Keyes and Penny eventually were divorced and the Ken Keyes College closed. In 1990, Keyes began studying inner-child healing and the rapid-eye-movement therapy developed by Francine Shapiro. He established the Caring Rapid Healing Center in Coos Bay to do private multi-day counseling workshops in this area, and wrote his final book, Your Road Map to Lifelong Happiness, on these topics.

Keyes married a fourth wife, Lydia, who survived him. He died of kidney failure in 1995. He was also survived by his children, Ken Keyes III and Clara Hardin.