| Despite the growth of the psychoanalytical movement during the post-World War II era, psychology in 20th-century America has been permeated by a positivistic and behavioristic orientation. Some psychologists during the "golden age" of behaviorism in the late 1950's and 60's, however, became increasingly discontented with behaviorism's view of human nature as well as with its methodology. Rebelling both institutionally and intellectually, they founded what they were fond of calling a "third force" in American psychology (psychoanalysis and behaviorism being the other two forces). Their theories collectively came to be known as humanistic psychology.;This dissertation consists of three main parts, preceded by an introductory chapter: the first two are short essays, and the third is a detailed intellectual history of the movement. Chapter II is a biographical essay on the five most prominent founders of the movement upon whom this study relies: Gordon W. Allport(1897-1967), Abraham H. Maslow (1908-1970), Carl R. Rogers (1902-1987), Rollo May (1909- quad) and James F. T. Bugental (1915- quad). Chapter III is an institutional history describing the founding and organization of the institutions that played a part in the establishment of the movement. Finally, Chapters IV through VIII provide a detailed intellectual history that discusses the views on human nature, methodology and psychotherapy that characterize humanistic psychology as a distinct movement in American psychology. This intellectual history focuses on the making of humanistic psychology at the intersection of the main psychological currents of the time, viz., the revolt against behaviorism and classical psychoanalysis and the impact of the neo-Freudians, phenomenological and existential psychologies, and other significant sources of inspiration (Kurt Goldstein, personality and Gestalt psychologies, and Eastern thought).;It is proposed that despite general philosophical similarities between the European phenomenological and existential tradition and humanistic psychology, the latter--since it was mainly a pragmatic response to what its proponents regarded as the positivistic and mechanistic psychologies of behaviorism and psychoanalysis--has unique characteristics that make it an American intellectual phenomenon. |
