When I Use the Term Humanistic Psychology...

Abstract

All societies need ways to account for the existential facts of life. Humanistic psychology may be viewed as a recent attempt to provide a coherent story acceptable to an increasingly secular society. The author believes that even after 25 years, humanistic psychology is not yet a discipline but is what Kuhn refers to as "preparadigmatic." It is an amorphous field of inquiry in which there are no general axioms, no consensus as to the important questions or standards of evaluation, and wherein quite different forms of utterance are made about the nature of human reality. The boundaries between religious-type utterances and propositions made as scientific fact are frequently blurred. The author discusses how this creates the possibility both for fanaticism and for the recent court ruling in Alabama declaring secular humanism a religious belief and thereby prohibited in the public schools. Also discussed is the concept of an autonomous self that is held by humanistic psychology as a psychological "fact" even though it can be shown to be culturally given.

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