And the Children Shall Lead: Abraham Maslow and the Adventure of Science

Abstract

In this brief commentary on Abraham Maslow’s (1969) Toward a Humanistic Biology, it is argued that Maslow’s engagement with life science was a way for him to highlight the importance of innovative research for the development of third-force psychology. The way Maslow envisioned psychology as involving two forms of objectivity indicate that had he been steeped in phenomenology, he likely would have endorsed a hermeneutic-phenomenological vision of science. It is further argued that his vision of the third force was inherently developmental and laced with cultural themes.

In Toward a Humanistic Biology, Maslow (1969) worked in two directions. On the one hand, he applied his way of approaching psychology to biology. On the other hand, this exploration was an opportunity for him to speak to the importance of innovative research for the development of third-force psychology and addressed some of its broad theoretical concerns.

Maslow observed that mainstream psychology’s predominant model of science was adopted from the strictest forms of naturalism (e.g., astronomy, chemistry). Given the object-centered, impersonal nature of these sciences, psychology thus adopted an approach to the study of psychological life that was inordinately detached and “value-avoiding” (Maslow, 1969, p. 725). Psychology’s approach and methods preceded considerations of its subject matter. First-force (i.e., behavioral/experimental) psychology, as he called it, gave psychology its primary research paradigm or “gold standard.” On this view, subjectivity as manifest in first- and second-person perspectives is merely anecdotal at best. At worst, it could be a potential contaminant in scientific data collection and analysis. Thus, first-force psychology offered the image of human subjects as objects of experimental manipulation and control. With subjectivity in exile, there was no direct access to the value structures embedded in the lives of human research participants.

While the pervasive influence of the natural sciences acted as an obstacle to the humanization of psychology, Maslow saw special promise in biology. As soon as one transitions to the study of living nature, the data make it obvious that manifold meanings compete in the demand for selection among courses of action associated with varied, sometimes conflicting valences and affordances. The difference in selection for a particular organism in a given time and place can be the difference between life and death. Research that is fully cognizant of situated, contextually nested points of view thus places a demand quality on the researcher. Here, scientists are confronted with a field of meanings wherein some appear as more important than others for the organism under study. Researchers of good conscience must sooner or later confront this fact and enter the more complicated terrain of scientific inquiry that is aware of and confronts questions of value.

The scientific study of living forms is all the more complicated when we focus our attention on human psychology on three accounts. First, whether one looks upon human beings as having more instincts than nonhuman animals or no “true” instincts, the outcome is the same: psychological life plays out in a vastly broadened and deepened field of meaning that must be competently navigated. There are more valences and affordances resulting in a greater demand for decision and selection. Human life is more loosely assembled than non-human animal life from its outset, allowing for greater degrees of freedom to meet these demands. The question of values thus assumes a heightened importance. Accordingly, humans are conspicuously cultural animals.

Second, so far-reaching are the consequences of this complexification that development takes on a special meaning for human beings: being as becoming. All living organisms must develop, and that can only be done in environments where certain potentials can be cultivated over others. But human beings are the developing beings par excellence. Development is a lifelong process of self-cultivation for the human lot (DeRobertis, 2015, 2017; DeRobertis & Bland, 2020). For descendants of the third force, “maturation” is a total bio-psycho-social-spiritual phenomenon (DeRobertis, 2021a), implicating phenomena such as openness, spontaneity, willing, imagination, competence, purpose, commitment, identity, and destiny. ¹ Existentially, we lament our fundamental incompleteness. Human growth and development, as Maslow clearly saw, is an ongoing process and, in exemplary cases, a lifestyle that has gone by various names (self-realizing, self-actualizing, self-fulfilling, or, as noted, self-cultivating). Human development is shot through with ontological significance, a further attestation to the importance of values in human psychological life.

Third, when it comes to the science of psychology, the researcher belongs to the same species as the valuing being under study. Scientists can use their imaginations to temporarily disengage from this brute fact, but a steadfast denial of its reality is an exercise in bad faith. Indeed, it can lead to the unconscious imposition of the researcher’s values. Psychologists, whether they choose to face it or not, are actively involved in the process of determining the nature of “good conditions” for development: the growth-conducive culture, “the good society” (Maslow, 1969, p. 726).

Considering these facts, Maslow saw that a significant part of humanistic psychology’s mission was to be able to do good psychological science without habitual value-avoidance. His proposal was to integrate a new way of approaching “objectivity” into science, one that is Taoistic, receptive without being detached: “Taoistic means asking rather than telling. It means nonintruding, noncontrolling. It stresses noninterfering observation rather than a controlling manipulation. It is receptive and passive rather than active and forceful” (Maslow, 1969, p. 730). This is Maslow the proto-phenomenologist (e.g., see Wertz, 1989). Compare, for example, Heidegger’s (1962) description of phenomenology as a method that lets that which shows itself to be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself, not to mention the many parallels that have been drawn between Heidegger’s thought and Taoism (e.g., Nelson, 2004; Parkes, 1987; Storey, 2012). As his exemplar, Maslow (1969) chose the encounter with the human child: to understand children deeply and fully, we must “develop techniques for getting them to tell us what is best for them” (p. 730). Maslow admonished that integrating a Taoistic perspective into psychological science means trusting the child’s growth tendencies, placing a greater emphasis on spontaneity and autonomy rather than external control and prediction. Here, scientific openness is facilitated by a loving interest in the observed. Paradoxically, to achieve greater objectivity, the research must learn to feel more deeply in the research process. As Maslow put it, greater perspicuity and accuracy of perception come “originally” from “loving perception,” as between parents and children (p. 731).

Always the aspiring integrator and unifier, Maslow never rejected the methods of natural scientific psychology. He wanted psychology to embrace two paths to objectivity. From these observations, I draw two broad conclusions. First, had Maslow been familiar with phenomenology, he would have eventually advocated for a hermeneutic-phenomenological vision of psychology involving a dialectical interplay between natural scientific and human scientific research. Second, this article confirms my ongoing conviction that the founding vision of humanistic psychology was deeply developmental and embedded with cultural concerns, both of which require greater attention by the humanistic community (DeRobertis, 2021b). As Hoffman et al. (2015) observed, “From its inception, humanistic psychology has maintained a deep appreciation for diversity; however, humanistic psychology has also failed at actualizing this appreciation for diversity in multiple ways” (p. 41). These included attracting a large group of individuals representing various forms of diversity and a willingness to infuse, enrich, transform, and further develop humanistic theory and research with their fresh multicultural perspectives.