Psychology: HUMANISTIC APPROACHES

The history of psychology in the twentieth century is the history of a discipline struggling to balance values that seemed, more often than not, to exist in mutual tension. Some psychologists emphasized the necessity of empirical rigor in research, others promoted the development of individual emotional health and maturity, while still other mid-century thinkers would advance larger social and ethical concerns. Psychology's quest to establish itself as a science, combined with its historical emphasis on the connections between the human self and human well-being, produced a discipline of broad application and intense vitality, one uniquely suited to address the problems and opportunities of humankind in a technological age. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the rise of what has become known as humanistic psychology.

Background

Efforts to limit psychological research to observable phenomena or behavior along began with reactions against the introspective psychological research program of Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920). In the form of behaviorism, these efforts dominated psychological theory and practice between the two world wars. As conceived by such founders as Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), John B. Watson (1878–1958), and B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), behaviorism aspired to be wholly objective. Watson insisted upon leaving consciousness and other metaphysical concerns aside for an experimental precision that could not be attained using "internal perception" or any other introspective methods. He articulated his fundamental complaint about previous psychological thought when he wrote, "Behaviorism claims that consciousness is neither a definite nor a usable concept. The behaviorist, who has been trained always as an experimentalist, hold, further, that belief in the existence of consciousness goes back to the ancient days of superstition and magic" (Watson 1924, p. 2). Behaviorism attempted to show that phenomena previously studied using introspective methodologies could be examined much more effectively from a perspective of stimulus and response; only those observations verifiable in more than one instance by more than one observer would be allowed to qualify as scientific.

Behaviorism has had lasting effects on the discipline and practice of psychology, including the development of highly objective experimental standards, new statistical methods, and behavior therapies. During the middle decades of the twentieth century, Skinner took Watson's ideas to their ultimate objective extreme, concentrating on the larger goal of predicting and controlling a broad range of human behavior. Much of this work was understandably focused on education and pedagogy, and Skinner and his colleagues often articulated an idealistic quest for positive techniques to solve human problems and improve society.

As psychology honed its experimental methods and techniques, its expanding scientific powers nevertheless brought ethical concerns to the foreground. Some of the most famous and influential studies in the field of behaviorist psychology, while revealing new insights into human consciousness and behavior, also highlighted the need for ethical standards in research practices. For instance, Watson and Rosalie Rayner's 1920 "Little Albert" study conditioned an eleven-month-old child to fear a white rat by pairing its presentation with a loud and startling noise—a fear that the young child generalized to similar animals and objects, and from which he was never deconditioned. Stanley Milgram's elaborate 1965 obedience experiments led subjects to falsely believe that they were carrying out orders to administer extremely severe electric shocks to another person. In the Stanford prison experiment in 1971, Philip Zimbardo assigned subjects to either a prisoner or guard role for a two-week simulation; the growing intensity of the situation and the subjects' increasing absorption into their roles, however, forced Zimbardo to halt the experiment after six days.

While each of these studies provided new discoveries in conditioning, obedience, roles, and attitudes, their effects on human subjects also provided strong arguments for reforms in experimental ethics. Over time, psychology established stringent ethical guidelines for informed consent, debriefing practices, and weighing potential deceptions or risks to subjects (including risks to animals as well as humans) against potential research benefits.

In contrast to the behaviorist attempt to eliminate consciousness by means of a methodological focus on overt behavior, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) sought to downgrade consciousness through investigations into the power of the unconscious and its influence on behavior. Freud's psychoanalysis, however, developed primarily in a medical-clinical setting, drawing on clinical experience to formulate theories of human emotional abnormality and irrationality. Psychoanalysis thus developed a theory of human nature that highlighted the hidden complexities of the human psyche. But in the tradition of such thinkers as Plato, Augustine, or Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Freud was also concerned with human capability for self-understanding, the freedom that self-awareness can bring, and, more specifically, capacities to cope with life in more rational ways.

In psychoanalytic practice, too, ethical questions were brought to the fore. Like behaviorism, psychoanalytic theory challenged common conceptions of moral responsibility. Close relations between patient and psychoanalyst sometimes led to behaviors such as sexual relations that clearly violated social and traditional professional norms.

The Humanistic Movement

It was in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis that humanistic psychology began in the 1950s to develop its special approach to the study and treatment of human behavior—with a new ethical commitment. Among the precursors was Alfred Adler (1870–1937), who criticized Freud's emphasis on sexuality. Humanistic psychology was also influenced by existentialist philosophy, with its focus on human struggles for meaning in a world characterized by scientific and technological dehumanization in such blatant forms as death camps and atomic bombs as well as in what existentialist philosophers from Søren Kierkegaard to Albert Camus saw as the more subtle forms of bourgeois culture.

Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), for example, in his book Man's Search for Meaning (1959), drew on his unique experiences to argue the power of human decision in the face of the most dehumanizing circumstances. But it was Carl Rogers (1902–1987), Abraham H. Maslow (1908–1970), and Rollo May (1909–1994) who most typified what Maslow himself termed the "third force" in psychology (the first force being behaviorism and the second, psychotherapy). Maslow in particular played a significant role in the development of the humanistic psychology movement, turning from his training in behaviorism to argue for a broader, more holistic version of human health. Maslow believed that no psychological theory could be truly complete unless it took into account complex human factors and motivations such as love and connection (Figure 1). Maslow's "self-actualization" theory of personality and his development of a human "hierarchy of needs" both stressed the universal human potential for achievement.

Even more representative, insofar as humanistic psychology brings its perspective to bear on science and technology, is the work of Erich Fromm (1900–1980). Like other third-force humanistic psychologists, Fromm sought to refocus the central ideas of Freudian psychoanalytic theory to address the moral, emotional, and spiritual crises of an increasingly violent and technology-oriented global society. He was less interested in simple human adaptability, techniques for the control of behavior, or strategies of coping than in nurturing humanity's basic ability to meet the challenges of a difficult transition into modernity, with its changing political systems and assumptions; various physical and spiritual displacements; astounding technological innovations in health, industry, and war; and, later in the century, the long Soviet–American nuclear standoff.

Forced to flee Germany after Adolf Hitler's election in 1933, Fromm was particularly concerned with the development of a "technetronic" society and its dehumanizing implications. He reserved his most incisive critiques for behaviorist strivings for absolute objectivity, arguing that behavioristic theories merely served the cerebral and technical prejudices of industrial society. Understanding, Fromm believed, should be different than "scientific" description. His criticism was often less than subtle: "[George] Orwell's 1984 will need much assistance from testing, conditioning, and smoothing-out psychologists in order to come true. It is of vital importance to distinguish between a psychology that understands and aims at the well-being of man and a psychology that studies man as an object, with the aim of making him more useful for the technological society" (Fromm 1968, p. 46).

Writing from a position similar to that of the existentialist thinkers, Fromm recognized that humankind had lost its traditional religious-ethical moorings, and he worried that the powerful attraction of technology and machinery was evidence that technological society had simply exchanged its religious faith (and humanistic values) for material and technical values: If something is possible (build the atom bomb, go to the moon), we should do it; production of more is preferred to production of better. People had lost, in that exchange of values, their capacity for deep emotional experiences, and with them their capacity to engage life with any sense of meaning. "Today," Fromm wrote in 1968,

a widespread hopelessness exists with regard to the possibility of changing the course we have taken. This hopelessness is mainly unconscious, while consciously people are 'optimistic' and hope for further 'progress.' ... [People] see that we have more and better machines than man had fifty years ago. ... They believe that lack of direct political oppression is a manifestation of the achievement of personal freedom. (p. 5)

Aside from arguing for a reevaluation of technical values, Fromm advocated a reemergence of practical humanist perspectives, including altered forms of material consumption; an emphasis on social activity against what he perceived as a new and cancerous cultural passivity; changed attitudes about the place and capabilities of the worker in large organizations; more person-oriented, responsible, and imaginative bureaucratic systems; and spiritual renewal focused on faithful practices involving compassion instead of allegiance to ideology or code. Despite the existence of good reasons for pessimism, Fromm displayed the same hopefulness in his own attitudes that he argued would be necessary for the renewal of individuals and society: "The history of man shows precisely what you can do to man and at the same time what you cannot do. If man were infinitely malleable, there would have been no revolutions; there would have been no change because a culture would have succeeded in making man submit to its patterns without his resistance" (Fromm 1968, p. 62). One of Fromm's primary goals was to help initiate a resistance against the unimpeded development of a technological culture he believed had come to threaten humanity's connections to broader social and environmental contexts.

Ethics

Despite its inherently ethical orientation, humanistic psychology seldom explicitly couched its concerns in terms of "ethics." No doubt one reason is that both behaviorist and psychoanalytic thought had become over the course of decades extremely skeptical of ethical and moral language, so often used in order to advance destructive or manipulative ideologies, or simply to mask people from themselves. Humanistic psychologists nevertheless believed that to the extent that the inner life of human beings is taken seriously, and human nature conceived of as capable of freedom, people will be better equipped to examine the relationships that have been put at risk.

This fundamental commitment is clearly expressed in the Code of Ethical Principles of the UK Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners (UKAHPP). According to its first fundamental principle, "UKAHPP Members respect the dignity, worth and uniqueness of all individuals. They are committed to the promotion and protection of basic human rights, the integrity of the individual and the promotion of human growth, development and welfare. They affirm the self-determination, personal power and self-responsibility of the client." Note, in the last sentence, how the language of "patient" is rejected in favor of "client." More than any other group of psychologists, humanistic psychologists see themselves as working with and for others rather than as being superior to them. In this respect humanistic psychology presents a challenge for all scientists to reconsider the ways in which they conceive themselves as distinct or separate from the larger nonscientific public.

GLENN R. WILLIS MARGARET M. BRACE

SEE ALSO Choice Behavior;Freud, Sigmund;Jung, Carl Gustav;Skinner, B. F.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Becker, Ernest. (1973). The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press.

Blass, Thomas. (2004). The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram. New York: Basic.

Fromm, Erich. (1968). The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology. New York: Harper and Row.

Fromm, Erich. (1973). The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Homans, Peter. (1989). The Ability to Mourn: Disillusionment and the Social Origins of Psychoanalysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Watson, John B. (1998 [1924]). Behaviorism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

INTERNET RESOURCE

UK Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners (UKAHPP). "UKAHPP Code of Ethical Principles." Available from http://www.ahpp.org/ethical/code_of_ethics.htm.