In Memory of Tom Greening: A Life of Humble Service to Humanistic Psychology

Abstract

Tom Greening was an existential-humanistic psychologist who practiced for more than 50-years in the same psychotherapy office where he began working with James F. T. Bugental. He served for 34 years as the editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. Tom was also a prolific poet with 10 books of poetry, including his final book, Into the Void: An Existential Therapy Faces Death Through Poetry. In this brief article, I reflect on my personal experiences with my friend and colleague, Tom Greening, and highlight some of his most important contributions.

Over the last several years, I made a point of regularly calling and visiting my friend and colleague, Tom Greening. These became more meaningful as, with each visit, I knew it may be the last. He was struggling with dementia worsened by several strokes, but these rarely seemed to hamper his wit and humor. During the visits, we spent hours talking about the history of humanistic and existential psychology, politics, music, and, of course, poetry. Despite mounting health challenges, he remained concerned about these passions. For Tom, these were things he believed made the world a better place. On a couple of these visits, my sons accompanied me. One of my sons, Lukaya, read Tom’s poetry book for children, Animals I Have Known (Greening, 2018), over and over and declared Tom to be his favorite author. I am not sure who was more excited about their meeting. Tom worried about what would become of his poetry and was heartened by a voracious young reader finding delight in his rhymes.

I learned of Tom’s death while in Greece attending the World Congress of Existential Therapy, a few days after visiting the concentration camp memorial in Dachau, Germany. I think Tom, who Shawn Rubin and I last visited a few months earlier, would have found this to be appropriate. He would always ask me, “Did I do anything that made a difference? Will humanistic psychology survive?” So, between visits I would collect stories from colleagues, former students, and other readers of his work about his impact on them. Each visit, I shared these with him. Although I knew he would likely forget them by the next day, he would delight that maybe he made some impact through his service to humanistic and existential psychology. At the World Congress, I announced his passing and read a poem of Tom’s before Nathaniel Granger led us in a moment of silence in his honor. Afterward, many of his former students, colleagues, and friends, as well some who only knew of him through his work, came up and shared memories and stories about Tom—a final tribute testifying that he had, indeed, made a positive impact upon the world.

As a good existentialist, Tom had been intently contemplating death the last several years of his life. At first, he did this through poetry, which led to his book Into the Void: An Existential Psychologist Faces Death Through Poetry (Greening, 2020). But the poetry left him, too, as it became difficult to manage the computer. No more threads of emails on listservs or his own personal email list filled with poems. This was a difficult loss for him. I once accused Tom of thinking in poems. A mutual friend commented once that no one had likely written a poem on cheese. I suggested she had better check with Tom on that and he took up the challenge. We emailed back and forth with Tom several emails with each of his coming in the form of a poem. The last email playfully accused me of being an enabler to an addict, his addiction being poetry. But poetry was more than art or play for Tom, it was part of who he was. It was a way that he could disarm the depths of existential dread with playful rhymes making the dread a little less bitter but no less profound.

Tom recognized redemptive qualities in the challenges of existence. This can be seen in what is likely his best-known piece of scholarship: “Existential Challenges and Responses” (Greening, 1992). In this short, 5-page article, Tom challenged the view that the existential givens were solely dreadful challenges. Instead, he advocated that with each challenge came an opportunity. This is powerfully illuminated in my favorite quote of Tom, which came from an interview with him as part of Trent Claypool’s (2010) dissertation:

I finally went to a concentration camp for the first time in my life last August . . . I wanted to do that, and am glad I did—a very powerful experience. It sort of felt like paying one’s existential dues. There’s a new concept for you: That if you are going to be alive in the 20th century or 21st century, if you are going to claim to be alive and had lived in that time, then what should you be aware of, or in touch with? Certainly, that you are living in a body, that’s important, friends, relatives, and stuff like that, and that your taxes are going to kill people. There’s a whole bunch of existential facts of life that one ought to really deepen, embrace, or acknowledge, even feel existential guilt about. (p. 110)

This is a powerful quote. It is one that I reflected on as I walked through Dachau a few weeks ago with tears streaming down my face mixed with periods of intense anger. In the midst of these powerful emotions, I was appreciative of Tom’s words and found comfort in them. This is a lesson we need today as we continue to witness dehumanizing trends in politics and society. We can see in the efforts to suppress critical race theory and history that may cause White people to feel guilty an avoidance of our existential dues. We need to remember and meditate on this important lesson from Tom. He recognized that guilt, particularly existential guilt, is something that can serve humanity. We need to change our relationship with it, embrace it, and learn from it. But alas, we more often seem to try to overcome our emotions and our humanity. Tom did not do that. He lived his humanity and tried to make it better, which was illustrated in his attempts to continue learning to become a better person even into his struggle with dementia.

But there is another gem in this quote from Tom about our existential dues that is easily missed: “There’s a new concept for you.” What makes this simple phrase special is that this is who Tom was. Although Tom was a brilliant thinker, he did not publish much scholarship of his own as compared to other leaders in the movement. He gave away his ideas. He spent 34 years as editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and even more as a faculty member and mentor at Saybrook University. Tom was a master editor—both content and copy-editing. He helped others become better thinkers and better writers. He did this without asking for credit. In our years of friendship, Tom would often say during our conversations, “someone should write about that.” At Saybrook, he would often come up with profound ideas and then encourage students to develop these as their own. He did not seem concerned about credit—he just wanted to give these ideas a chance to develop, flourish, and actualize.

One of these concepts, existential shattering, is particularly poignant. Tom spoke about this at Saybrook Residential Conferences, but he never published anything on this important concept. Instead, he encouraged students to do so. Years later, Lisa Xochitl Vallejos and I (2020) wrote an encyclopedia entry describing existential shattering as “the sudden and unexpected dismantling, or shattering, of one’s self-conception and worldview as a consequence of an event or process that the individual has experienced” (p. 847). Although we also broadened Tom’s concept (with his permission) to note that shattering could be a consequence of cumulative experiences over time, our primary motivation for writing this piece was assuring that Tom received credit for the idea even if he was not concerned about credit. This concept was advanced through two dissertations (Hoxie, 2013; Vallejos, 2015) and a journal article (Ren et al., 2018) crediting Tom before our encyclopedia entry. It deserves continued attention and development from the existential community.

One of the reasons why Tom was so beloved by his students and colleagues is because they recognized that he strove to humbly serve humanistic and existential psychology. He wanted to know if he made a difference, but it mattered less if he received credit for the difference that he made. Tom may not be remembered like Rollo May, Jim Bugental, Carl Rogers, and others who made more recognizable contributions, but this is why it is important that we pay tribute to him in this issue and not let his service be easily forgotten.

It is fitting to close with the final poem in his book, Into the Void, “How I Want to Die”:

With no great final drama,

here’s how I want to die:

Some warm and cozy evening

I’ll simply say goodbye,

or fusing in my garden

one cool and rainy day,

the world will hardly notice

that I have slipped away,

The roses still will blossom,

The worms do what they do—

I hope that what I’ve planted

will bring delight to you. ¹

Tom, we may not grant your wish of allowing the world to hardly notice, but rest assured, what you planted continues to bring delight.