An Investigation Of The Development Of Humanistic Approaches In Western Psychology

Humanistic approaches to psychology, as opposed to scientific approaches to psychology, form a non-mainstream lineage of development in the history of Western psychology. This kind of approaches concerns not only the fundamental issues of the direction and path of psychology's progress, but also such basic theoretical problems as the disciplinary character, subject matter, scientific tasks, and research methods of psychology.The purpose of the humanistic approaches is, starting from the foundational idea of psychology as a"human science", to make psychology what it should be. To paraphrase, what the humanistic approaches pursue is the construction of a really scientific human psychology. Thus, all humanistic approaches to psychology cherish the traditional humanistic spirit of"seeing nobility in man"and"treating man as the foundation", placing the nature and value of human being at the utmost height among psychology's subject matters. Historically, the humanistic approaches to psychology try to make a rapprochement between objective-experimental and subjective-experiential paradigms of psychological research, in an effort to transform psychology from its materialized presence to its humanized presence.In Western psychology, humanistic thinking has a long past with a short history. Seen from a historical perspective, the humanistic thinking in psychology can be roughly divided into the following three periods.The first period covered the long history from ancient Greek and Rome to early modern Europe, during which the philosophical-psychological humanistic thinking germinated. This was also the period for the emergence of psychology's humanistic thinking. The Greeks proposed to"know thyself". This was the first sign of the emergence of humanistic thinking in the ancient history of West psychology. The Aristotelian proposition of"man is the political animal"promoted human being's self knowledge to the new height of socio-historical reflection. During the Middle Ages, European humanism proceeded from"man nobler than things"to"man nobler than God", resulting in the flourish of increasing theorization and philosophization of European humanistic thinking of psychology.The second period was the initiating and evolving of humanistic approaches in the milieu of modern scientific psychology. It was also a period for psychology as a science to develop its humanistic thinking. It started with the Wundtian humanism in the emergent modern scientific psychology, followed by Brentano's act psychology, Dilthey's comprehensive psychology, the personality psychology of Stern and Spranger, Goldstein's organismic psychology, the spiritual psychology of James and Hall, Wertheimer's Gestalt psychology, and the psychodynamic psychology of Sigmund Freud.The third period is the matured development of humanistic approaches in contemporary Western psychology. This is also the period for theoretical systematization of psychology's humanistic approaches. This period is represented by the new developments of humanistic-existential psychology, which is called the third force in the history of psychology, the transpersonal psychology, sometimes called the fourth force, different brands of postmodern psychology, and the positive movement in psychology.The main features of humanistic approaches of Western psychology can be described as following:a) As for psychology's subject matter, all humanistic approaches emphasize human being's subjectivity as the subject matter of psychology. Human subjectivity includes the nature of human being, human potentials, the needs, motivations, and values of human being, personality, and the higher order transcendental mental activities. Thus, they are in opposition to the objectivism, mechanism, and reductionism of the scientistic mainstream psychology.b) Axiologically, all humanistic approaches to psychology insist on the inner values rooted in humanity, such as the values of individual growth and self-realization, the value of returning to authentic being, and the value of transcending one's individual self. Thus, they are in opposition the externally shaped values expounded by the so-called first force in psychology, e.g., behaviorism, and the internal values of the so-called second force in psychology, e.g., psychoanalysis.c) Methodologically, humanistic approaches stand in line with phenomenology, hermeneutics, and holism, thus opposing the scientism, elementalism, and methodolotry of mainstream psychology.The contribution of humanistic approaches to psychology as a whole lies in: a) breaking up the stifled, self-closed thinking style in an effort to construct a more optimistic, positive model of human nature and provide a more widened and opened frame of reference for psychology; b) attacking the one-sided perspective of materialistic monism of scientistic psychology and, in place of which, providing the new idea of fusing the objective-experimental and subjective-experiential paradigms of psychology.The humanistic approaches carry with them their own shortcomings and inadequacies, too. These include their inadequate positivistic investigation, lack of reality test, and the characteristics of idealization and philosophization. Seen from this point of view, this kind of approaches have not being matured enough to be a systematized psychological approach, and there still remains much to be done.