The Scientific Humanism of G. Stanley Hall

Abstract

This paper presents the humanistic psychology of the pioneer American psychologist Granville Stanley Hall (1844-1924), examining Hall's effort to develop a system of psychology that is at once rigorously scientific and, simultaneously, capable of verifying essential human values. Divided into three parts, the paper attempts: (1) to interpret Hall as a transitional figure trying to preserve a humanistic tradition in the study of the mind while emancipating the discipline from old metaphysical allegiances; (2) to bring together and examine the major tenents of Hall's "genetic" theory of psychology; and (3) to consider the main reasons for Hall's failure and his significance for our own time. Without attempting to pass judgment on whether "scientific humanism" is a contradiction in terms, it is argued that Hall failed mainly because his monistic system was too ambitious and romantic, but that he correctly sensed that those who were trying to drain scientific psychology of all moral and spiritual meaning were not only dehumanizing the discipline, but—in their abstractionism and in their failure to take adequate account of the vital wholeness of the life of the mind— were themselves behaving unscientifically.