Posted By Steve Wolf
One of the first classes I attended at the Humanistic Psychology Institute (now known as Saybrook), where I earned my Doctorate in 1986, was “Humanistic Psychology’, taught by Dr. Jim Bugenthal, one of the patriarchs of the Humanistic Psychology movement, which burst into our society in the mid 1950’s.
One might say that Humanistic Psychology’s greatest contribution to Psychology and to our society at large was in the recognition of the drive toward “self actualization”: the drive toward becoming “the best we can be”, toward developing and fulfilling our potential as human beings,
to be an essential component of what it means to be a human being.
Believe it or not, this was a major shift in the foundations of psychology because until that time Psychology was either rooted in post Freudian-Psychoanalytic ideas that a human being is composed of id (primal impulse), ego (functioning personality) and superego (internalized ideas of right and wrong, good and bad) or, based on the soulless concepts of Behaviorism, as described by Drs. John Watson and BF Skinner who understood all behavior to be determined by how we are influenced by reward and punishment, beginning as infants, which later determines our behavior as adults.
Watson said, “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#cite_note-21)
Today, more than half a century later, we take the notion of the Drive for Self Actualization for granted as well as ideas that we human beings are a product of both “nature” (individual attributes, genetic and otherwise), and “nurture” (effects of our environment).
The first assignment in that first “Humanistic Psychology” class was to write a one page definition of, “What is a Human Being”.
I believe that all therapists, counselors, or coaches owes it to themselves and their clients to clarify this question for themselves because, until one has clarified “What is a human being” for one’s self, one is not ready to clarify what it is she or he is trying to accomplish for themselves and for the clients they are working with and for.
I invite you to do that assignment.
Write a one page description of “What is a human being” and send it to us at steve@shrinkdifferentradio.com, or call me on Monday’s at 4:30 Pacific time, to talk about it .