Humanistic Psychology - Brewster Smith - 1990 - Article

What is humanistic psychology?

Humanistic psychology can be defined as both a social movement within psychology, and an enduring perspective. It arose from personality psychology. The leaders of personality psychology founded humanistic psychology. For example, Rogers, Maslow and May proposed humanistic psychology to be the ‘third force’, with behaviorism and psychoanalysis. Humanistic psychology is different compared to scientific psychology. In contrast with behaviorism, humanistic psychology emphasizes human experience, the meaning of life. Most researchers in humanistic psychology have engaged in psychotherapy.

What are the antecedents of humanistic psychology?

During the 1920s and 1930s, American psychology was dominated by behaviorism. As you perhaps know, behaviorism disregarded human experience as being the topic of scientific studies. During this period, personality psychology emerged. This happened because of two books, namely Gordon Allport’s ‘Personality: A Psychological Interpretation’, and Henry Murray’s ‘Explorations in Personality’. Allport described how to study ‘ego’ (Freud) and how the ego develops. Murray emphasized aspects of personality that were unconscious, such as creativity and neurosis. Later, Gardner Murphy and George Kelly also released books about personality psychology. These books initially had little impact. Later, however, during the cognitive revolution in psychology, these books gained popularity. Behaviorism was in opposition to these views on psychology. Later, based on this personality psychology, humanistic psychology emerged.

How was humanistic psychology founded?

Humanistic psychology was launched as a social movement within psychology during a conference in 1964 in Connecticut. The leading figures of personality psychology (Allport, Murray, Murphy, Kelly) participated in this. Carl Rogers, May, and Abraham Maslow became the intellectual leaders of this movement. Humanistic psychology was called the ‘Third Force’. Carl Rogers launched the book ‘Counseling and Psychotherapy’, in which he introduced non-directive counselling, which is now called client-centered therapy. He emphasized self-actualization, and stated that socialization could block this. However, by using certain forms of therapy, self-actualization could be achieved. Abraham Maslow was experienced in the experimental study of primate behavior. Based on Kurt Goldstein’s work, Maslow developed a hierarchical theory of human motivation, described in ‘Motivation and Personality’. He stated that people have basic needs, that need to be satisfied. They also have needs for safety, love, and belonging, and for esteem. He called these ‘deficiency needs’. Only when these needs are satisfied, self-actualization can happen. Thus, both Rogers and Maslow embraced self-actualization as an ideal. They were supporters of Rousseau’s view on human nature, which entailed that humans are intrinsically good and only become bad, because of the society. This is in contrast to Freud’s Hobbesian view, which entailed that humans are intrinsically evil. Rollo May was influenced by Paul Tillich, a theologian. He brought the ideas of existentialism and phenomenology into humanistic psychology. Thus, Rogers and Maslow had Rousseauistic beliefs and they brought these beliefs into humanistic psychology. Thus, humanistic psychology is a positive view on human nature.

What was the impact of the counterculture?

The Third Force coincided with the emergence of a counterculture, namely that of the ‘flower children’ and the ‘hippies’ in the 1960s. There were some similarities, such as that the counterculture also emphasized individualism: the individual as the centre of value, independent of others. So, ‘people should do their own thing’. There was also a belief in human perfectibility. There was also an emphasis on self-disclosure, which meant that people should speak openly about themselves, in other words ‘let it all hang out’. There was also an emphasis on superficial intimacy, and on the here and now. Then, there was hedonism, which means that ‘if it feels good, do it’. Lastly, there was ‘irrationalism’, which means that people disconnected from science and of rational problem solving. Instead, they choose to rely on intuition over evidence. However, the founders of humanistic psychology were not antiscientific. Instead, they wanted to correct the biases of behaviorism and psychoanalysis, with the goal of producing a psychology which emphasizes human life.

What was the encounter group movement?

The leaders of the older generation of founders of the humanistic psychology dropped out, and Maslow and May were ambivalent about the directions that humanistic psychology was taking. Then, there came a new development, namely that of the encounter group movement, which identified themselves with the human growth centres. This was founded by Michael Murphy and Richard Price. The encounter group movement had different roots. One, it was based on the work of J.L. Moreno, a psychiatrist who wrote about psychological encounter and the use of psychodrama. He promoted psychodrama in America as a psychotherapeutic technique. Second, there was the sensitivity training of Kurt Lewin and his students. Lewin promoted “field theory” in psychology, and he founded the self-studying group which was a technique for training people in human relations skills. This sensitivity training became very popular, and even became a movement. It was also linked to industrial-organizational psychology. Aspects of this training were included in the encounter group movement. Gestalt therapy was a third influence. This was a group approach, in which the therapist plays a very active role, uses a variety of techniques such as role playing. The goal of this training was to focus participants on holistic emotional experiences of the here and now. Wilhelm Reich complemented this Gestalt training, by using forms of massage, meditational techniques, and yoga exercises. Thus, in the encounter groups, therapies based on these techniques were set out. But, they were not seen as psychotherapy, because others saw it as being unregulated and not empiric. It flourished for a while. Later, in the mid-1980s, the encounter group had faded.

What is transpersonal psychology?

Within humanistic psychology, the concept of ‘transpersonal psychology’ emerged. This was based on mysticism, so it focused on connecting consciousness to a larger spirituality. This was based on the ideas of Carl Jung. It seemed to be some kind of ‘religion’. Thus, the humanistic psychology was a social movement which responded to a lack of faith, hope and charity, but because of this it also seemed to be like some kind of religion, lacking the science which was associated with psychology.

What are other facets of humanistic psychology?

There were not only encounter groups in humanistic psychology. Instead, there was also logotherapy, which was an existentialist version of psychoanalysis which was similar to the approach of Rollo May. It emphasized the human need to think about death and suffering in some way that made life easier. Amedeo Giorgi’s interpretation of phenomenological philosophy was also important. David Bakan’s ‘The Duality of Human Existence’ was also important, because it provided an interpretation on masculinity and femininity. All of these contributions were important to humanistic psychology.

There were some critics on humanistic psychology. For example, Richard Farson, a former student of Carl Rogers. He objected the fascination with the different kinds of therapy. There were also attempts to bring humanistic psychology into the academic scientific psychology.

What was secular humanism?

Secular humanism was neglected in humanistic psychology, even though it was humanistic. It can be best described as a existentialist tradition of humanistic thought. It entails the ideas that humans are vulnerable, incomplete, and need God’s validation. This secular humanism was well-represented in psychology, but not in humanistic psychology. For example, the founders of the personality theory, such as Henry Murray talked explicitly about this secular humanism. Erich Fromm, a neo-Freudian psychoanalyst also published two books about this humanism. Lastly, Isidor Chein, in the book ‘The Science of Behavior and the Image of Man’, criticized behaviorism and provided an integration of psychoanalytic and phenomenological views of motivation and self-hood.

How was humanism related to science in psychology?

The German philosopher Dilthey had proposed a distinction between the ‘natural’ and the ‘mental or cultural’ sciences. The differences lay in terms of causes and reasons, for example differences between ‘efficient causes’ and ‘telic causes’, between ‘descriptive empirical lawfulness’ and ‘normative regulation’, in other words a difference between ‘behavior and action’. For example, causal understanding means that an external person understand the behaving person’s actions, and interpretive understanding means that the person looks at it from their own perspective, which involves feelings, meanings, intentions, and values. It seems that when we ascribe meanings or interpretations to our characteristics and actions, this is important in what we do. This is called the ‘reflexivity of self-reference’, and this was the subject of research on the ‘attribution theory’, which was developed by social psychologists in the 1960s and 1970s. Thus, meanings and reasons can act like causes. Thus, the distinction proposed by Dilthey should be replaced by a complementation between these differences, that can be the only way that the science of human experience can be satisfactory.

What can be concluded?

The cognitive revolution in psychology changed scientific psychology. There was an emphasis on consciousness. The movement of humanistic psychology became less popular, but can still be used in guiding researchers. For example, humanistic psychology emphasized human experience. Now that technology becomes more popular, a humanistic perspective on human experience is important. Also, the ideas about reflexiveness of selfhood imply that theories of personality and will should pay more attention to the historical and cultural context, if they want to scientifically valid.