WEB SIGHTS
40th Anniversary of the Perspective
— Bruce Wochholz

The peak experience is a sudden surge of meaning. The question that
arises now is: how can I choose meaning? If Maslow is correct, I can’t. I
must be “surprised” by it. It is a by-product of effort.
— Colin Wilson

BRUCE WOCHHOLZ

WEB RESOURCES

T he 40th Anniversary of AHP’s newsletter highlights the “new pathways” and significant contributions of many members and founders of Humanistic Psychology.

This edition of Web Sights hallmarks these critical contributions to the history of psychology. Before moving to the reviews, I would like to mention that I inherited this column from its founder, Georgia Berland, who was AHP’s Executive Director for five years. The AHP Perspective June/July 1999 issue introduced Internet Connections with reviews of internet connections, or links, on ahpweb. Georgia, as ahpweb editor, linked this column with ahpweb to allow members the opportunity to have their sites reviewed and publicized, a tradition that continues today. Then I took over with the first issue of 2001.

Many of the original humanistic psychology works are out of print. However, the website for Maurice Bassett Publishing provides many in e-book form. For example, the opening quote above is from New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow and the Post- Freudian Revolution by Colin Wilson, which is out of print, but available from this web site in three formats, which all contain the complete 270-page text of the 1972 hardcover edition.

C. George Boeree provides two excellent sites, one on Abe Maslow and the other on Rollo May. Maslow served as the chair of the psychology department at Brandeis University for 10 years, where he met Kurt Goldstein, who introduced him to the idea of self-actualization, and where began his own theoretical work. It was also here that he began his crusade for a humanistic psychology—something ultimately much more important to him than his own theorizing.

Ludwig Binswanger

Rollo May is the best-known American existential psychologist. Much of histhinking can be understood by reading about existentialism in general, and the overlap between May’s ideas and the ideas of Ludwig Binswanger is great. In 1958, May edited, with Ernest Angel and Henri Ellenberger, the book Existence, which introduced existential psychology to the U.S.

The contributions to the history of psychology by practitioners of Humanistic Psychology would not be well rounded without reference to James Bugental. Not “healing an illness,” but a philosophic venture in which the person dares and learns to confront self and world. Not “learning to adjust,” but facing infinite unadjustability. The therapist sees the patient as an encumbered person who struggles against the limitations imposed by her encumbrances . . . . Therapy’s mission is to make patients conscious of the inner conflicts that give rise to defensive and constrictive maneuvers, and encourage the growth tendency of striving for actualization which will overthrow the defensive maneuvers.

Charlotte Bühler

A German psychologist who was committed to studying the whole person as early as the 1920s (including using subjects’ diary entries), Charlotte Malachowski Bühler is known for her theoretical, research, and clinical work that eventually helped launch Humanistic Psychology. Her publications include The Course of Human Life; A Study of Goals in the Humanistic Perspective (1968) and Introduction to Humanistic Psychology, completed at age 79 in 1972.

Along with Abraham Maslow and others, she addressed what they considered to be deficiencies in behaviorism and psychoanalysis. She was at the Old Saybrook Conference with Maslow, Rogers, May, Moustakas, Vich, Bugental, et al. in 1964. She was president of AHP from 1965 to 1966. She also presided over the First International Conference on Humanistic Psychology in Amsterdam in 1970. [See her 1970 article in this issue]

According to Dr. Bühler, essentially healthy people face challenges continuously throughout life. They attempt to integrate four basic tendencies which include: 1) satisfying one’s needs (for love, sex, ego, and recognition) 2) making self-limiting adaptations (by fitting in, belonging, and remaining secure) 3) moving toward creative expansion (through selfexpression and creative accomplishments) 4) upholding and restoring the inner order (by being true to one’s conscience and values).

The person-centered approach in Taking a Closer Look at Carl R. Rogers is well documented, as is The Humanistic View. Humanism is seen as the “third force” in psychology. It is a theoretical alternative to the psychoanalytic and behavioral approaches. However, humanism does incorporate aspects of psychoanalytic and behavioral views. Behaviorists believe that all human behavior is controlled by external environmental factors, whereas psychoanalysts believe that human behavior is controlled and directed by unconscious internal forces. Thus, the humanistic approach perceives behavior as holistic.

Perhaps one of the most important theoretical antecedents to humanistic psychology is the work reflected in Seeing Things Right-Side Up: The Implications of Kurt Goldstein’s Holism. Kurt Goldstein’s approach to biology, in his book The Organism and Human Nature, heralded such an approach to science. We have said that life confronts us in living organisms. But as soon as we attempt to grasp them scientifically, we must take them apart, and this taking apart nets us a multitude of isolated facts which offer no direct clue to that which we experience directly in the living organism. Yet we have no way of making the nature and behavior of an organism scientifically intelligible other than by its construction out of facts obtained in this way. We thus face the basic problem of all biology, possibly of all knowledge. The question can be formulated quite simply: What do the phenomena, arising from the isolating procedure, teach us about the “essence” (the intrinsic nature) of an organism? How, from such phenomena, do we come to an understanding of the behavior of the individual organism?

The following links reflect substantial “continental” influences on humanistic psychology, its founders, and the many contributors to AHP’s newsletters. The Archives of the History of American Psychology links to History & Philosophy of Psychology Web Resources provide excellent detailed accounts and a through listing of links.

Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology is grounded in a holistic therapeutic approach and is a system of theory and practice built upon existential and humanistic principles, as described by The Alfred Adler Institute of New York. The Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology describes how in 1911 Adler and his followers left the Psychoanalytic Society to form their own group and develop the system of individual psychology, a holistic, humanistic therapeutic approach that views the individual as primarily a social rather than a sexual being and places more emphasis on choices and values than Freudian psychology does. At the center of Adlerian psychology is the individual striving toward perfection and overcoming feelings of inferiority (a concept later popularized—somewhat mistakenly—as the “inferiority complex”).

Fritz Perls, a student of Goldstein’s, made unique contributions to Gestalt psychology, particularly the concepts of holism or wholeness—the restoration of wholeness being a principle aim of its technique. These insights are included within The Gestalt Therapy Page, a joint project sponsored by The Gestalt Journal and the International Gestalt Therapy Association.

Christian Ehrenfels

Gestalt theory is perhaps best known through the efforts of Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Kohler, and Max Wertheimer. The basic thesis of gestalt theory might be formulated thus: there are contexts in which what is happening in the whole cannot be deduced from the characteristics of the separate pieces, but conversely; what happens to a part of the whole is, in clear-cut cases, determined by the laws of the inner structure of its whole. The term gestalt (“figure”) was introduced by the Austrian philosopher Christian Ehrenfels in 1890.

The Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy describes holism as a scientific and philosophical field which has made an important contribution to the central ideas of Gestalt therapy. It is present-centered in the same way as Gestalt psychology, because it is impossible to conceive of the holistic perspective without its present-centered focus. This is also true of phenomenology. Phenomenology takes as its subject matter the study of the objects and events we perceive and the development of thorough and comprehensive methods for observing and examining them. Existentialism takes as its main concern modern (and present-centered) questions about the nature and meaning of living, death, and personal relations.

The Society for Existential Analysis site is set up for members and nonmembers where particular attention is given to the impact of an existential and phenomenological approach to counseling and psychotherapy. The existential model seeks to remain with the phenomena as they present themselves, to “open the phenomenon to a less restricted view.” Existential psychotherapy attempts to unfold and “refocus” conscious awareness. The existential therapist’s attempts to “unfold” the client’s lived experience rest upon a specific form of inquiry, the phenomenological method, which seeks to remain at a descriptive level, focusing upon the “what” and “how” of experience, rather than posit or provide “why-based” explanation. A superb set of links on phenomenology is available within the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology.

Existentialism rests on phenomenology, i.e. it uses personal, subjective experience as the foundation upon which abstract knowledge is built . . . . The existentialists along with many other groups are helping to teach us about the limits of verbal, analytic, conceptual rationality. They are part of the current call back to raw experience as prior to any concepts or abstractions. This amounts to what I believe to be a justified critique to the whole way of thinking of the western world in the 20th century, including orthodox positivistic science and philosophy, both of which badly need re-examination. Abraham Maslow

AHP Members are encouraged to submit their web addresses to WebSights columnist Bruce Wochholz at bwochholz@mac.com for review. Sites should be primarily educational or informational, and relate to AHP’s interests, but member sites may emphasize services, books, workshops, tapes, or other commercial offerings.