It’s Premature to Write the Obituary for Humanistic Psychology
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-2-2011
Originally Published In
Journal of Humanistic Psychology
Volume Number
51
Issue Number
4
Page Numbers
424 - 427
Abstract
Humanistic psychology has often been misportrayed as obsolete, especially by some positive psychologists who have tended to minimize their humanistic roots and to co-opt the humanistic psychology agenda through unfairly accusing it of various errors while pursuing a narrowed version of humanistic psychology. Through this distancing from and denigration of humanistic psychology, positive psychology has garnered considerable benefits that might have otherwise inured to humanistic psychology, including attracting many talented students and scholars, gaining lucrative funding, and receiving ample media attention. Consequently, humanistic psychology needs to explicitly challenge such attacks to remain viable, as well as to continue to be innovative in fostering a holistic perspective in diverse areas of psychology, including methodology and neurobiology, which are discussed as examples.
