psy 55555 module 2
psy 55555 module 2
psychologists but seem not to trouble positive psychologists. He similarly argued that they dif- fer in their epistemology because their adher- ents read separate literatures. Last, Waterman argued that their approaches to practical appli- cations differ in that humanistic psychothera- pies typically emphasize the value of working in the present, while positive psychotherapies typically emphasize using specific intervention techniques. Even if any of these generalizations might be true or somewhat true, how would they demonstrate irreconcilable differences rather than, more simply, just differences?
In fact, his last argument of irreconcil- able differences pertaining to practical appli- cations is especially curious, as Waterman (2013) illustrated his point with a specific intervention favored by positive psychology, namely, promoting mindfulness. However, focusing on experience in the present, which he attributed to humanistic psychology, is essentially the same as using mindfulness techniques (Friedman, 2010). There are other contradictions mentioned by Waterman, such as his linking the notion of a “true self” with positive psychology—and arguing that hu- manistic psychologists would reject this con- struct. In fact, the conjecture of a true self is central to many humanistic psychology the- ories (e.g., Friedman, 1983) and something I think most positive psychologists would, in- stead of accepting, soundly reject. In his dis- cussion of the true self, Waterman argued that integrating the humanistic and positive psychology perspectives would require rec- onciling in ways seldom attempted, as if rar- ity supports the contention that these are ir- reconcilable. Likewise, Waterman dismissed reconciling qualitative and quantitative re- search, despite admitting that they are com- plementary, by arguing that few psychology research efforts employ mixed methods, which again does not support that humanistic and positive psychology are incommensu- rate. Perhaps Waterman’s clinching argu- ment is that an integration of the two would require a desire on the part of humanistic and positive psychology researchers to address issues relevant to both sides of their divide. Once more, this surely does not support his central contention of an incommensurable di- vide, and, as a counterexample, I might men- tion that much of my recent research (e.g., Needham-Penrose & Friedman, 2012) has specifically been oriented to bridging this rift.
In conclusion, Waterman (2013) has provided some broad-brush generalizations about differences between humanistic psy- chology and positive psychology, many of which do not hold in all cases, and he has pointed out some difficulties that would be involved in reconciling them. However, he has not presented any convincing argument that the two are irreconcilable. Essentially,
Waterman has confounded difficulties with impossibilities by concluding these are in- commensurate. Worse, the founding of pos- itive psychology involved a political agenda in attacking its own precursor, and this article subtly continues that founding tradition. In contrast, humanistic psychology has tried to be conciliatory in the face of the lambasting given it by positive psychology, as exempli- fied by the plea of a prominent humanistic psychologist in an article aptly subtitled “Why Can’t We Just Get Along?” (Sch- neider, 2011). Although Waterman pro- claimed that humanistic and positive psy- chology should abandon hope for any reconciliation and, instead, should operate as independent silos, he offered only evidence that bringing them together would have some difficulties. I have argued elsewhere in great detail how these difficulties could be sur- mounted (e.g., Friedman, 2008, 2013), and in examining many of the same concerns as Waterman did, I drew the opposite conclu- sion, namely, that humanistic and positive psychology are commensurate and, for a va- riety of reasons, should be reconciled.
REFERENCES
Friedman, H. (1983). The Self-Expansiveness Level Form: A conceptualization and mea- surement of a transpersonal construct. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 15, 37–50.
Friedman, H. (2008). Humanistic and positive psychology: The methodological and epis- temological divide. The Humanistic Psy- chologist, 36, 113–126. doi:10.1080/ 08873260802111036
Friedman, H. (2010). Is Buddhism a psychol- ogy? Commentary on romanticism in “Mind- fulness in Psychology”. The Humanistic Psy- chologist, 38, 184 –189. doi:10.1080/ 08873267.2010.485899
Friedman, H. (2013). Reconciling humanistic and positive psychology: Bridging the cultural rift. Self & Society, 40(2), 21–25.
Needham-Penrose, J., & Friedman, H. (2012). Moral identity versus moral reasoning in reli- gious conservatives: Do Christian evangelical leaders really lack moral maturity? The Hu- manistic Psychologist, 40, 343–363. doi: 10.1080/08873267.2012.724256
Schneider, K. J. (2011). Toward a humanistic positive psychology: Why can’t we just get along? Existential Analysis, 22, 32–38.
Seligman, M. E., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduc- tion. American Psychologist, 55, 5–14. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.5
Waterman, A. S. (2013). The humanistic psycholo- gy–positive psychology divide: Contrasts in philosophical foundations. American Psycholo- gist, 68, 124–133. doi:10.1037/a0032168
Correspondence concerning this comment should be addressed to Harris Friedman, Depart- ment of Psychology, University of Florida, 1270
Tom Coker Road, LaBelle, FL 33935. E-mail: harrisfriedman@hotmail.com
DOI: 10.1037/a0034868
Practicing What We Preach in Humanistic and Positive
Psychology
Scott D. Churchill University of Dallas
Christopher J. Mruk Bowling Green State University
After presenting his assessment and some evidence concerning what may be under- stood as an insurmountable divide between them, Alan Waterman (April 2013) con- cluded that it is best for humanistic and positive psychologists to “look for those occasions on which mutual benefit is pos- sible, and get on with respective projects, with as few recriminations as possible coming from either side” (p. 131). Al- though such a recommendation may be preferable to some alternatives, there are at least two problems with this position. One is that there is more evidence for an opti- mistic conclusion than meets the eye in the Waterman article, and the other is that such a decidedly pessimistic position runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It is true that the logical positivism un- derlying positive psychology is clearly and irrevocably at odds with the existential-phe- nomenological foundations of the humanistic position in their most radical or pure forms. However, it can also be argued that such differences largely occur at the theoretical level rather than at applied levels. Although the early founders of positive psychology took an unfortunately dismissive stance to- ward their humanistic forebears (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), what can be called “second-generation” positive psychologists are much more open to genuine dialogue with humanistic psychology (Mruk, 2013). For example, positive psychologists Linley and Joseph (2004) reached a conclusion very different from Waterman’s when they wrote,
Humanistic psychology is a broad church, and there are parts of it we would not recognize as positive psychology; but in our view, the ideas of the main humanistic psychology writ- ers . . . deserve to be set center stage within positive psychology. Theirs was an empirical stance, explicitly research based. . . . We ought to respect this lineage, and we encour- age those who are not familiar with this earlier work to visit it. (p. 365)
Similarly, although there certainly are hu- manistic and existential psychologists who sharply distinguish their work from the log-
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90 January 2014 ● American Psychologist
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08873260802111036
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08873260802111036
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08873267.2010.485899
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08873267.2010.485899
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08873267.2012.724256
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08873267.2012.724256
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.5
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.5
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0032168
mailto:harrisfriedman@hotmail.com
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0034868
ical positivism that underlies positive psy- chology (Taylor, 2001), there are a good number of us who actively welcome inte- grations of qualitative and quantitative methods in our work in order to better achieve our knowledge aims.
Contemporary humanistic psycholo- gists have made a sincere effort to enter into dialogue with positive psychologists, not only in our division programming, but also in the content of our publications. For example, since 2007 the American Psycho- logical Association’s Division 32 journal The Humanistic Psychologist has published 12 articles devoted to a dialogue with pos- itive psychology, which represents a re- spectable 10% of its article content. Two special issues devoted entirely to the inter- face between humanistic and positive psy- chologies have appeared (Vol. 36, No. 2, and Vol. 37, No. 1), in which one of the guest editors explicitly invited an open, friendly exchange, acknowledging that the editor-in-chief of the journal had “ex- pressed . . . our great obligation to set the right tone to genuinely foster the possibility of more conversation among humanistic and positive psychologists” (Robbins, 2008, p. 108). Waterman’s (2013) cautionary note that there is little evidence of interest on either side “to expand common ground” may therefore be more a reflection of personal opinion than a “philosophic divide” (p. 131).
There has been a noticeable in- crease in research and work on research methodology in contemporary humanis- tic psychology; thus Waterman’s (2013) assertion that “the five [sic] decades of work on humanistic psychology” has now “waned” (p. 131) is more than ques- tionable. The American humanistic move- ment began in the late 1930s; and, even if we have often been presumed by others to be “holders-on” to the legacy of our found- ing fathers, it has been our work in recent decades to forge ahead with an expanding philosophical foundation (which currently includes hermeneutics, social construction- ism, and feminist orientations in addition to classical humanism and phenomenology), with implications for becoming better ser- vice providers to those in need (see, e.g., Sass, Parnas, & Zahavi, 2011). In a review conducted of the past seven years of pub- lished articles in The Humanistic Psychol- ogist, there were 49 articles (42%) report- ing research and another 18 (or 15%) on research methodology, with several special “Methods” issues that have been devoted exclusively to research and methodology. Waterman (2013) was correct in observing that humanistic psychologists “are associ- ated with the extensive and rigorous use of qualitative methodologies” (p. 128). How- ever, research methods in humanistic psy-
chology are now, as they always have been, pluralistic. In the aforementioned sample, 69.3% of the research articles were quali- tative, 16.3% were quantitative, and 14.3% used mixed methods. Thus, with over 30% of our research articles utilizing quantita- tive methods, it is not reasonable to view humanistic psychologists as being too tied to our philosophical foundations to show interest in the “nomological” objectives of positive psychology.
With regard to philosophical founda- tions, Waterman’s (2013) presentation sig- nificantly misrepresented both the current and past ontological and epistemological foundations of humanistic psychology. Two very important issues require clarifi- cation: the characterization of the ontolog- ical foundation as irremediably individual- istic, and the implication drawn from this that it is not possible to know (or even communicate effectively with) other peo- ple from the existential epistemological standpoint, which presumably would limit us to “individual isolation and aloneness” (p. 127). With regard to the first point, Waterman exaggerated the relationship of humanistic psychology to the French exis- tential writers Sartre and Camus. More troubling, he mischaracterized phenomeno- logical philosophy (he named Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty—to which we would add Levinas) as hopelessly indi- vidualistic because of a presumed inherent solipsism built into its ontological founda- tion. On the contrary, we refer the reader here to the Handbook of Humanistic Psychology (soon to appear in a revised 2014 edition) for ample references to the consistent emphasis on human sociality and therapeutic commu- nication that would disavow such views.
A hallmark of phenomenology is its fundamental emphasis on relationality, be- ginning with Heidegger’s early lectures on Aristotle, in which he argued vehemently against the Cartesian starting point taken by other philosophers (including positiv- ists) and in favor of a “relational” philoso- phy that would direct us toward those as- pects of human existence that are always already grounded in “caring” and “encoun- ter” (Heidegger, 1921–1922/2001, pp. 61– 97). Husserl himself wrote thousands of pages on intersubjectivity, portions of which were published in the three volumes known as his “Intersubjectivity Papers” (Husserl, 1973). The works of Husserl and Heidegger on the fundamentally relational, intersubjective dimension of human expe- rience have informed the later phenomeno- logical ethics of Levinas, which emphasize human responsibility and accountability to others. Finally, Merleau-Ponty’s ontologi- cal reflections on “expression,” “institu-
tion,” and “history” would preclude any slippage into isolationism, and his concept of “the body as speech” further recognizes that communication between persons hap- pens quite spontaneously and is not ham- pered by existential isolation.
In closing, it is possible to make two points worth consideration within the con- straints of this comment. One is that shared interests, a growing dialogue, and coopera- tive attitudes between the two approaches will allow for a more fruitful future than the one that results from a distorting lens focused on philosophical, paradigmatic, and historical commitments. Second, being convinced that there is little likelihood of success in reaching across such borders is far more likely to cre- ate a self-defeating cycle—in contrast to the more virtuous process associated with a gen- uinely positive stance. Waterman’s (2013) conclusion would keep humanistic psychol- ogists locked in their past, as if their contri- butions were forever limited to those of the first generation of humanistic luminaries. On the contrary, the humanistic psychology movement continues to grow by enlarging its dialogue not only with the phenomenological and hermeneutic philosophies but also with the ongoing developments in transpersonal, feminist, constructivist, and mainstream psy- chological thought.
With a largely backward glance cast toward humanistic psychology’s early suc- cesses, Waterman’s (2013) article con- cluded by turning toward positive psychol- ogy’s “vibrant” future and pointed to irreconcilable differences that would limit further dialogue between the two fields. From our perspective, such an assessment results in premature closure on the relation- ship between the two subdisciplines, as we in the humanistic tradition continue to ap- preciate and place our trust in the power of dialogue. Psychologists on both sides of this epistemological boundary might there- fore benefit from focusing on the possibil- ities offered by an interface between the two approaches rather than on a divide that is far more likely to push us apart.
REFERENCES
Heidegger, M. (2001). Phenomenological inter- pretations of Aristotle: Initiation into phenom- enological research (R. Rojcewicz, Trans.). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. (Original lecture course presented 1921–1922 and published 1985)
Husserl, E. (1973). Husserliana 13, 14, 15: Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität [To- wards a phenomenology of intersubjectivity]. The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Ni- jhoff. (Original works written 1905–1935)
Linley, P. A., & Joseph, S. (Eds.). (2004). Pos- itive psychology in practice. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. doi:10.1002/9780470939338
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