Carl Rogers, 1962
By the late 1950's a "Third Force" was beginning to form. In 1957 and 1958, at the invitation of Abraham Maslow and Clark Moustakas, two meetings were held in Detroit among psychologists who were interested in founding a professional association dedicated to a more meaningful, more humanistic vision. They discussed several themes - such as self, self-actualization, health, creativity, intrinsic nature, being, becoming, individuality, and meaning -which they believed likely to become central concerns of such an approach to psychology. In 1961, with the sponsorship of Brandeis University, this movement was formally launched as the American Association for Humanistic Psychology. The first issue of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology appeared in the Spring of 1961.
In 1964, at old Saybrook, Connecticut, the first invitational conference was held, an historic gathering that did much to establish the character of the new movement. Attendees included psychologists, among whom were Gordon Allport, J.F.T. Bugental, Charlotte Buhler, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, Gardner Murphy, Henry Murray and Carl Rogers, as well as humanists from other disciplines, such as Jacques Barzun, Rene Dubos and Floyd Matson. The conferees questioned why the two dominant versions of psychology did not deal with human beings as uniquely human nor with many of the real problems of human life. They agreed that if psychology were to become more than a narrow academic discipline limited by the biases of behaviorism, and if it were to study human attributes such as values and self-consciousness that the depth psychologists had chosen to de-emphasize, their "Third Force" would have to offer a fuller concept and experience of what it means to be human. By this time the term "human psychology" was in general use. It reflected many of the values expressed by the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Renaissance Europeans, and others who have attempted to study those qualities that are unique to human life and that make possible such essentially human phenomena as love, self-consciousness, self-determination, personal freedom, greed, lust for power, cruelty, morality, art, philosophy, religion, literature, and science.
Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and Rollo May, who had participated in the conference at Old Saybrook, remained the movement's most respected intellectual leaders for the decades that followed. Maslow developed a hierarchical theory of human motivation which asserted that when certain basic needs are provided for, higher motives toward self-actualization can emerge.
Rogers introduced person-centered therapy, which holds that intrinsic tendencies toward self-actualization can be expressed in a therapeutic relationship in which the therapist offers personal congruence, unconditional positive regard and accurate empathic understanding.
Thus Maslow and Rogers embraced self-actualization both as an empirical principle and an ethical idea. Their vision of human nature as intrinsically good became a major theme of the "human potential" movement, but was criticized by some other humanistic psychologists as an inadequate model of the human experience.
Rollo May represented the European currents of existentialism and phenomenology that became influential in humanistic psychology and emphasized the inherently tragic aspects of the human condition. His books provided an enduring philosophical perspective and much-needed insight into questions involving the enduring presence of evil and suffering in the world, the nature of creativity, art and mythology, and the value of the humanities as psychological resources.
Humanistic psychology expanded its influence throughout the 1970s and the 1980s. It's impact can be understood in terms of three major areas: 1) It offered a new set of values for approaching an understanding of human nature and the human condition. 2) It offered an expanded horizon of methods of inquiry in the study of human behavior. 3) It offered a broader range of more effective methods in the professional practice of psychotherapy.
task:
make a plan of the text;
give definitions of the words in bold.