Due to the disastrous Wenchuan earthquake that hit Sichuan, China, on May 12, 2008, approximately 70,000 people died, around 400,000 were injured, 18,467 were missing, and millions were left homeless due to the collapse of their homes. The substantial trauma and loss in the disaster area posed a challenge for disaster relief work focused on survivors’ psychological health. Many of the psychological interventions were based on Western or urban outpatient populations and were thus inappropriate for the uneducated, agriculturally based population of rural China, potentially limiting patient care and sensitivity during this postdisaster relief. This article discusses the therapeutic issues involved and finds that the collectivist nature of the rural Chinese culture and indigenized ways of working with the earthquake survivors are of paramount importance. It adds to the research literature by discussing the importance of relationships through the Chinese concept of Guanxi in the context of disaster relief work in rural China. Consistent with the concept of Guanxi, disaster relief volunteers must fully respect the world of the survivors while remaining flexible and creative in their work to build deeper connections and relationships.
Wuhua philosophy is rooted in Taoism. Zhuangzi described the practice of Wuhua as the "fasting of the heart mind" (心斋). Humanistic psychology and analytical psychology describe the "fasting of the heart mind" as a path leading to ZhiMian. The resolution of the boundary between conflicts is built on a dialogue between differences that is characterized by effort and an open attitude. The key to the Wuhua experience is Qi. In the experience of Qi, mankind humbly aims to understand the world from the heart mind position to explore how the self is related to the world and to define the self and the other interdependently and relatively. Wuhua therapy fosters experience in all dimensions, concentrating on the natural emergence and movement of Qi, and waits for it to lead to the dissolution of boundaries and to generate its creative healing nature. The method of Wuhua therapy involves noninterpretation, careful observation, and faithful reflection. This article describes a case that illustrates the method and discusses the resonance between Wuhua philosophy and humanistic psychology.
Experiences of profound existential or spiritual significance can be triggered reliably through psychopharmacological means using psychedelic substances. However, little is known about the benefits of religious, spiritual, or mystical experiences (RSMEs) prompted by psychedelic substances, as compared with those that occur through other means. In this study, 739 self-selected participants reported the psychological impact of their RSMEs and indicated whether they were induced by a psychedelic substance. Experiences induced by psychedelic substances were rated as more intensely mystical (d = .75, p < .001), resulted in a reduced fear of death (d = .21, p < .01), increased sense of purpose (d = .18, p < .05), and increased spirituality (d = .28, p < .001) as compared with nonpsychedelically triggered RSMEs. These results remained significant in an expanded model controlling for gender, education, socioeconomic status, and religious affiliation. These findings lend support to the growing consensus that RSMEs induced with psychedelic substances are genuinely mystical and generally positive in outcome.
"Psychedelic art" can be defined as artwork manifested in the context of the ingestion of LSD-type drugs and related substances. There is a long history of such work dating back to ancient times (picturing mushrooms and other plants with psychedelic effects) as well as more recent anecdotal first-person accounts and various collections of psychological data resulting from experiments and interviews. One such collection includes the studies by Krippner of over 200 artists, writers, and musicians who referred to their artistic productions as "psychedelic" because they had some connection with their occasional or frequent use of these substances. Although there were no commonalities characterizing all of their paintings, films, poems, novels, songs, or other works, several frequent themes were noted following content analysis of the interview reports. The results of this group of studies, as well as those of more structured explorations, attests to the importance of this topic for humanistic psychology with its emphasis upon creativity, human potential, and exploring the wide range of human experience.
Research activity on the potential clinical value of classic hallucinogens and other psychedelics has increased markedly in the past two decades, and promises to continue to expand. Experimental study of hallucinogen-assisted treatment, and any future clinical use, requires the development of psychotherapeutic models that are appropriate to the disorder being treated and effectively integrated with the pharmacologic component of the treatment. To provide a framework for thinking about possible treatment models, we provide an overview of the history of psychedelic-assisted treatment, review what is known about the therapeutic mechanisms of these treatments, and consider the various purposes of psychotherapy in the context of both research and clinical use of psychedelic-assisted treatment. We then provide a description of a therapy model we have developed and are currently using in a trial of psilocybin-assisted treatment for alcoholism. Finally, we discuss advantages and disadvantages of a range of alternative models, emphasizing the need for research to determine the most effective treatment models for any indications for which efficacy becomes established.
The "dark turn" evident in Ernest Becker’s final two major works (The Denial of Death and Escape From Evil) is described and explained in terms of its content and possible sources in the author’s work and life from 1971 to 1973. Becker’s mature philosophical anthropology, anthropodicy, and theory of evil are discussed, related to, and contrasted with his previous work and considered in the context of his life experiences, including his terminal illness.
Presented at a conference titled "Psychedelic Science 2013," highlighting the resumption of investigations with psychedelic substances (i.e., psilocybin, DMT, LSD, MMDA, etc.) in the United States and Europe after a dormant period of more than two decades, the author presents insights and perspectives gleaned from his 25 years of clinical research experience. After acknowledging the vastness and potential significance of this research frontier, the article focuses on the "cartography of inner space"; the unique therapeutic potential of transcendental states of consciousness; the entelechy of the interpersonally grounded psyche; the importance of integration in drug-free therapy sessions; the roles of expectation, religious education and faith; the role of music; and future research directions.
In this brief tribute to Abraham Maslow, a founder of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, his interests in psychedelic research are described by the author who served as his research assistant from 1966 to 1967.
Existential themes and meaning in life are often embedded in all types of psychotherapy, but can be difficult to handle in a systematic way. This article presents a method of assessing and exploring sources of personal meaning with a client during a 1-hour session. The method is rooted in existential theory as well in contemporary empirical psychology on sources of meaning. The Sources of Meaning Card Method comprises three stages. (a) From a total of 26 cards with printed statements concerning possible sources of meaning, the clients are asked to select 3 to 5 cards of most important personal content. (b) With each of these cards, a semistructured conversation is initiated with regard to the statement’s meaning, personal significance, actual importance, threats, and possibilities for personal change. (c) The therapist summarizes the client’s priorities, decisions, and essential parts of the conversation at the end of the session. The method is presented in four language versions.
This study is focused on the process of constructing the meaning of a spiritual emergency experience. In the context of this study, spiritual emergency is understood as an experience of psychotic nature, defined by criteria such as good preepisode functioning, nonordinary states of consciousness, awareness of the intrapsychic nature of the process, or preserved ability to cooperate. In-depth interviews with 13 participants who experienced an episode of spiritual emergency were analyzed using the grounded theory method. The analysis yielded a core category titled "The incorporation of a spiritual emergency experience into a client’s worldview." The process of incorporation was conceptualized by two complementary paths: (a) a Suppressive path characterized by an effort to mitigate or eliminate symptoms, considering them as a personally meaningless pathology, and return to a previous state of functioning and (b) a Facilitative path characterized by an acceptance of symptoms, a search for their meaning, and eventually, the adoption of a new perspective. The results are discussed in relation to different theoretical approaches to psychotic experiences.
This article provides an overview of a qualitative study that focused on psychotherapists’ experiences of working with people struggling with psychosis. I interviewed four therapists in private practice about their experiences working with this population and describe many aspects of their work including how they understood the nature of psychosis, how they envision process of psychotherapy, and challenges they have faced. I used interpretive phenomenological analysis to analyze the therapists’ interviews. The findings of this project highlight the necessity of a supportive therapy relationship and the therapists’ genuine interest and respect for their clients.
In this article, we propose "autopsychography" as a form of self-narrative inquiry. Autopsychography seeks to track the shaping of creative paths when reflecting on lived experience as opposed to simply reporting what happened. We illustrate three major theoretical implications underpinning this concept: its rootedness in humanistic psychology that frames the human subject as the "whole person"; its emphasis on "change" and "growth," core to educative experience; and its arts-informed features. We situate our discussions of autopsychography in the context of self-narrative approaches and we underscore its distinctiveness through comparisons with autoethnography as an already well-recognized methodology. We then present an autopsychographic study into Yanyue’s experience after submitting the softbound copy of her PhD thesis in which she experimented with an "oral diary" and the use of "found poetry" as ways of presenting data.
The aim of this article is to address the question, "What kind of future society would we, in the humanistic psychology movement, want to see?" The article argues that a "good" society is one in which people can actualize their wants to a maximum extent, and where each person has an equal opportunity to do so. The article suggests that this maximization of wants can be achieved through the development of synergies: means of actualizing wants that help, rather than hinder, others from actualizing their own wants. On this basis, it is argued that a future society should encourage the actualization of wants that are inherently synergetic—such as the desire for relatedness and compassion for others—while also helping people find non-dysergetic ways of actualizing more individualistic wants. In particular, it is argued that a society that values creativity and diversity can help people actualize their desires for competence and significance without undermining this in others. Finally, the article considers strategies for ensuring equality of opportunity to actualize wants, before discussing the role that humanistic psychology can play in this process.
Authors agree that a range of different existential therapies exist. However, not much has been written about what is characteristic and distinctive of each existential therapy, and the few claims that have been made are mainly hypothetical. Practitioners from the four main branches of existential therapy were asked about the authors and texts that have most influenced their practice and the practices they considered most characteristic of existential therapy. From all over the world, 29 daseinsanalysts, 82 existential-humanistic, 573 existential-phenomenological, and 303 logotherapy and/or existential analysis practitioners participated in this study. Data show that the scope of influence of an author is pretty much limited to the branch he or she is related to and only a few authors, in particular Frankl and Yalom, influence practitioners from all four branches. Five categories of practice are shared among the main existential branches as the most characteristics of existential therapy, with phenomenological practices being the most shared category: But the frequency of each of these categories of practice differs significantly depending on respondents’ training or affiliated branch. Data corroborate the idea of different existential therapies, with logotherapy and/or existential analysis being the most markedly different branch of them all.
Given the great importance of creativity in society, and in health psychology in particular, investigating how creativity can be enhanced is a valuable area of research. Interventions that enable individuals to become more creative vary in their focus from increasing divergent thinking to task reactivation during sleep. This article introduces psychosynthesis psychology as an additional theoretical and therapeutic approach for enhancing creativity through its concept that creativity originates from different levels of the unconscious. We show that the subpersonality model, one of the fundamental psychosynthesis techniques, is an effective intervention for aiding creative expression as it helps people connect to different levels of their unconscious creativity. It is assumed that through the use of this technique, clients are able to release and unblock energies that not only allow them to rebuild their personal identities but also become actively creative in their daily lives. We support this assumption with qualitative findings that include testimonies from eleven clients in The Netherlands who received psychosynthesis counseling. In addition, qualitative data of a case study demonstrates subpersonality integration and its role in helping clients to become more creative in their personal and professional lives. The present article is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to demonstrate the beneficial effects of using psychosynthesis to facilitate creativity. The framework of psychosynthesis psychology, its techniques (which include the subpersonality model), and its therapeutic approach are viable methodologies for anyone searching to unblock and activate new creative energy and achieve personal and professional growth.
This article follows and expands upon the description of an intervention that attained promising results with depressed and anxious patients in a feasibility study run in a U.K. primary care setting. This protocol for short-term existential therapy will also represent the primary reference for training and supervision of an ongoing pilot. The therapeutic approach described here aims to address in a constructive way the issues raised by the topical criticism around the application of the medical model in psychology. At the same time, this article will address the theoretical issues emerging, while trying to describe in a pragmatic way, how to apply an existential and phenomenological approach to low-intensity short-term psychological therapy. This short-term intervention aims to promote a proactive and creative engagement with clients with their personal difficulties and to attain recovery as a result of a greater sense of empowered resilience.
This study explored the day-to-day experiences of female Filipino domestic workers in Singapore, including their working conditions, employee–employer relationships, and psychological health. In-depth interviews were conducted with 18 women. Using grounded theory, the emergent themes revealed high levels of variation, both within and between women, suggesting that the quality of domestic workers’ lives depends largely on the personal characteristics of their employers or the workers themselves, rather than on any system of protection. More importantly, participants displayed positive and resilient coping strategies which enabled them to thrive despite restrictive circumstances. Implications pertaining to capabilities and empowerment development were discussed.
This exploratory, phenomenological qualitative study was designed to investigate the phenomenon of social justice identity by understanding respondents’ lived experiences with social justice efforts. Data analysis yielded four themes describing the lived experiences of respondents’ social justice identity. Implications for training, supervision, and research are included.
Humanistic psychology’s ontological and historical mission has been to assist people in pursuing their fullest potential. Yet the literature has shown that healthy human growth and development are severely constrained by economic injustice and its socioeconomic discourses and structures. Humanistic psychology and professional counseling have remained largely silent on issues of classism ignoring the economic realities of poverty on human potential. The purpose of the article is to help restore classism to the foreground of humanist priorities and concerns. Practical strategies to address economic injustices will be discussed.
Queer theory is a postmodern critical theory that grew out of the women’s, gay, and queer studies’ movements of the 1990s. As a critical theory, queer theory explores the disconnect between biological sex, gender, desire, identity, and culture, and how the discrepancies between each can speak to the multiple forms of reality present within the world, and instability of binary positions. Although queer theory has been widely adopted in fields such as literature, philosophy, and critical cultural studies, little attention has been given to this theory within the fields of counseling and psychology. This article will begin by presenting queer theory and describing the tenets, followed by a discussion of how the tenets of queer theory align within the humanistic paradigm within counseling and psychology. The authors will explore the utility and application of queer theory into humanistic counseling practice, education, and discuss the possibility for future research. A pronounced focus of the article will center on the social justice implications of queer humanistic work, and the utility of the theory to promote self-exploration, holistic integration, and validation of all clients’ human potential.
Contemporary protests movements, which are distinguished from historic movements by relying on decentralized leadership and utilizing social media and technology, have a central role in addressing social justice issues. Black Lives Matter represents one of the most influential and controversial of the contemporary protests movements. Much of the controversy is connected to misunderstanding, distorted portrayals, and attempts to discredit the movement. Through an examination of the history of Black Lives Matter, and consideration of issues such as privilege and polarization, it can be recognized that the Black Lives Matter movement is providing a healthy cultural critique and creative use of pain, anger, and suffering to advocate for human dignity and positive cultural change. Furthermore, the principles of existential–humanistic psychology can be used to deepen the understanding of Black Lives Matter and other protest movements, while also offering important guidance on how to avoid various potential risks to the movement’s success.
There are some who criticize mainstream mental health approaches and point out that individuals in distress appear to be getting worse, as opposed to better, while in treatment. Ex-patients often advocate for a person-centered, humanistic approach to working with emotional distress, while clinicians tend to offer a disease-based, deficit-focused model. This article is an exploration of the dynamics between patients and professionals that may be contributing to conflicting perspectives on what constitutes helpful intervention. Specifically, concepts of terror management theory are used to explore how the existential anxieties experienced both by individuals with serious emotional difficulties as well as their treating clinicians, which are consciously or unconsciously avoided in treatment, can reciprocally trigger distressing anxiety in the other. Suggestions are offered as to what could help mitigate this existential stalemate in the psychotherapeutic context.
Peace on earth is not to be expected. First, at least in its subhuman form, the law of nature is survival of the fittest, not self-deferential cooperation. Second, a philosophical consensus to provide needed epistemological agreement and ethical criteria for peace is nonexistent in the postmodern world. Third, conflicting beliefs among the world’s religions and a sharp decline in religious affiliation incapacitate the traditional agencies of support for transcendent values, including peace. Thus, the daunting challenge has become the nonreligious and even nontheological spiritualization of secular society. Only this hope remains as history forces humanity to mature: Elaborate and rely on a humanistic basis for lofty values. In evocative terms, philosophers and humanistic psychologists have narrated that hope. More incisively, Bernard Lonergan has detailed the humanistic basis of that hope: distinctively human consciousness or spirit, the self-transcending dimension of the human mind, a bimodal, quadrilevel, epistemologically and ethically normative dynamism. But no agency exists to implement this hope, and peace still, depends ultimately on elusive human goodwill. Still the empirical specification of a philosophical foundation at least provides needed guidance, which, coupled with today’s scientific, medical, psychological, and sociological technology, does sustain hope for peace.
Courtrooms in the United States whether family court or criminal court fall far short of being either developmentally or trauma sensitive. While there is growing recognition that vulnerable child witnesses are at risk of retraumatization by court procedures and some judges have used their discretionary powers to render courtrooms less toxic to children, the system was designed by adults for adults, and certainly not for children. The court process especially in criminal trials does not typically take into account the developmental constraints of children nor do they fully understand trauma in children and the risks to testifying child witnesses. Humanistic psychology has long stood for social justice and compassion toward our most vulnerable humans, especially children, but the long and slow-to-change traditions of the court system in the United States creates an environment that is inhospitable to children and even older victims as illustrated by the low rate of prosecutions in rape cases. This article outlines the distressing conditions that await child victims/witnesses in this country in comparison with other developed countries and an innovative, out-of-the box solution that does not interfere with the rights of the accused.
A surprising development over the past half-century has been the revival of the ancient tradition of shamanism. Evidence for the renaissance is everywhere. But what is going on? I offer a structural view, suggesting that a global–historical conjuncture is responsible. The most important structures of civilization—governments, religions, sciences—have all suffered from popular alienation, most recently failing to adequately address global crises, prompting many in developed and developing countries, facilitated by global infrastructure, to reach back to their ancient spiritual roots. At the same time, in response to popular alienation, currents within these very structures have converged to buoy the movement. Traditional shamans, for their part, in spite of criticism at home for teaching modern peoples, say that the spirits have played a key role in rekindling shamanic practices.
This article will compare and contrast the author’s theory of Habitual Boredom with a phenomenological account of Unipolar Depression. The habitually bored show more external ambivalence, passive avoidance, and shame, as well as a tendency toward passive hope and identity confusion. The depressed show more internal ambivalence, willful (but futile) determination, and guilt as well as tendency toward hopelessness and identity objectification. The article also discusses some of the experiential similarities and developmental differences between the two phenomenon as well as some aspects of the defensive structure that initially prevents the bored from becoming depressed.
Confronted with any kind of critical event, people tend to develop an urgent need for answers that provide a useful interpretation of what they experience as a painfully intruding disaster. This urge results from the often-unbearable suffering and the disruption of everyday life, routines, and relations. Moreover, dreams and aspirations one had for the future, the realization of which they perceived as important in leading a meaningful life, may be lost or have to be reconsidered. Accompanying feelings of disappointment, demoralization, or even desperation are often treated as symptoms of depression. This approach is called into question by the concept of demoralization, which points to the presence of healthy modes of functioning in a state of lucid awareness of one’s condition. In this article, we focus on the case of schizophrenia, as we suppose that having to deal with recurring psychotic episodes constitutes such a pervasive experience, possibly leading to meaning deficiency. We propose then a treatment perspective that integrates care for the processes of mourning and of meaning making. This view, described here in the case of schizophrenic psychosis, is offered as a paradigm that can serve the approach to other serious conditions requiring prolonged care.
Approaching the human condition of shame from an ethical point of view, this essay traces the problems involving the relationship between shame and guilt, and between shame and the social field. Drawing on a phenomenological approach to shame phenomena, the essay explores moral and philosophical theories of shame underpinning our humanistic and psychological appreciation of this most basic human experience, one that, as we suggest, has both positive and negative valences.
While adapting to a new culture, North Korean defectors may develop their own coping strategies and utilize coping resources to deal with acculturative stress. The purpose of this study was to identify the stress-coping strategies utilized by North Korean defectors. Using semistructured in-depth interviews, three salient themes as the major coping strategies were identified: (a) engagement in meaningful activities, (b) emotional and social support, and (c) personal growth. This study suggested that leisure professionals in South Korea create and provide a variety of recreational programs through which North Korean defectors can engage with host individuals in order to increase their health and well-being.
All human beings experience life’s givens or the ultimate concerns of death, isolation, freedom, and meaninglessness. Whether there is awareness or not, these givens influence how individuals interact and relate to self, others, and the world. Failure to understand these existential concerns can lead an individual to behave inauthentically in relation to her core values. This article will illuminate the role of existential psychotherapy in revealing the effect of life’s givens on an individual’s lived experience. First, this article will ground existential therapy within its philosophical roots. Second, it will highlight the use of the phenomenological method in existential psychotherapy as a means of building a strong therapeutic alliance between therapist and client. Attention to the client’s lived experience in a value-free way will provide space for the client to work through his or her existential anxiety toward authenticity. The client, in feeling deeply understood will be able to respond more authentically to the therapeutic relationship and by extension to others in his or her world. A framework for understanding how life’s givens can manifest across the physical, personal, social, and spiritual life dimensions are presented. This framework is used to conceptualize a case study of a client struggling with existential issues.
This article explores the historical tendencies of male rites of passage and the modern expression of rite of passage as lacking the central component of transcendental death acknowledgement (Memento Mori) as seen for years past in various cultures. This article examines the necessity of developing an attunement toward objective transcendentalism among youth upon which an understanding of death may be appropriately developed. Without such a foundation, Memento Mori formulates hopelessness and fear within the boy, stunting his rite of passage into manhood. After offering cultural examples of death acknowledgement, we shall enter an analysis of Memento Mori on today’s cultural relativistic subjectivism to underscore the importance of objective transcendentalism before the incorporation of death acknowledgement within the rite of passage of the boy. This article concludes by offering insight into modern incorporation of Memento Mori within local communities.
This article offers an existential-integrative framework to working with anorexia nervosa within an equine-facilitated psychotherapy setting. The discussion provides an overview of how existential-integrative theories can be blended into equine-facilitated psychotherapy and offers an existential-integrative perspective of anorexia nervosa. A case study illustrates the theories behind this blended approach in praxis.
Life after a traumatic experience is never easy. This is certainly the case for victims. For many offenders, committing a crime might be a traumatic experience as well, and incarceration may confront them even more with the consequences of their deeds. Humanistic therapies are very suitable for encouraging clients to embark on an explicit meaning-making process. In this article, we explore with a case study how experiential–existential therapy can foster meaning making and posttraumatic growth in prisoners. With Diana, we started with identifying her global meanings, which had been threatened by her own actions. The therapy offered her a safe nonjudgmental space where she could learn to explore all aspects of the crime she committed and its consequences. By processing her past in an experiential mode, she generated new meanings about herself, about others and about the meaning and purpose of her own life. Diana found new ways to meet her basic existential needs. She developed a more nuanced set of meanings and a richer pallet of coping skills that enable her to live her life in a more meaningful and in a better adjusted way.
Evidence that even very brief writing exercises can change the way people see themselves and promote more positive mental and physical health has led to increased interest in their use in school settings and elsewhere. To date, however, research designs rely heavily on samples of college students and experimental studies of writing tasks carried out in the lab. There has been less investigation of the potential impact of more naturally occurring expressive writing exercises that exist in places like schools and that focus on adolescents. The current study was a process evaluation of the Laws of Life Essay, a values-based narrative program that was part of participants’ secondary school experience. It examined participants’ views of the impact of the program on their personal growth and, given the age range of participants, allowed for process evaluation of its perceived short- and long-term effects. Qualitative, semistructured interviews with 55 adolescent and adult participants were collected. Themes in participants’ responses included the importance of reflection and reappraisal of values, adversity, and relationships. Participants also discussed the importance of an audience for their writing, a novel finding that suggests one possible way to increase the impact of other narrative programs. Participants described variability in their engagement with expressive writing. This is one of the few studies that examined participants’ own views of the value of expressive writing and their responses suggest directions for future research and implications for designing expressive writing tasks to support social emotional learning and character education in schools and promote well-being at key developmental moments.
Neuroessentialism is the view that the definitive way of explaining human psychological experience is by reference to the brain and its activity. This leads to the view that psychological disorders, such as depression, are fundamentally brain disorders. Neuroessentialism has grown increasingly popular for academic and public audiences. It has also attracted critics. This article describes neuroessentialism, the reasons for its rising prominence, and the theoretical and clinical concerns it raises. It connects these concerns to evidence from empirical studies that suggest that neuroessentialistic conceptualization of depression can have negative clinical impacts that need to be considered by mental health professionals.
The issue of successfully reintegrating ex-prisoners into society is a critical one. To assess the process of successful reintegration, we interviewed five male ex-convicts about their past versus present lives. Their responses were coded for self-oriented (agency) and community-oriented values. We found a shift away from "unmitigated" agency, toward community values from past to present, and also an integration of agency with community similar to that found in moral exemplars. This increase in integration was not found in a demographically matched control group. The transitions exemplified in these ex-convicts’ narratives help define potential paths for successful reintegration into society.
Thomas Szasz was peerless in criticism of psychiatric establishmentarianism, particularly its embracing of "psychiatric slavery" (interventions imposed on persons by force). Selected from his matchless oeuvre, some fundamental points in his thinking—Szaszian thought—were scrutinized to evaluate whether they jibe with dictates from centered African Psychology which mandate setting afoot a new African descent person, particularly as depicted in Daudi Ajani ya Azibo’s leading works about African personality theory and practice. Results were mixed and suggest that Szaszians and African personality scholars may learn from each other.
Rollo May left a body of profound and incisive written work, laying a foundation for existential psychotherapy for years to come. His insightful reflections on the cultural, philosophical, and psychological dilemmas of contemporary human beings raise themes of which psychotherapists need to remain mindful and address in our practices. This article explores the implications of Rollo May’s thought for effective psychotherapy, therapy that does not content itself with simply managing symptoms but touches the root causes of the many dilemmas clients bring with them as their "presenting problems." Underlying all these is the search for being. Rollo May viewed contemporary times as an age of anxiety; yet he also normalized anxiety as encountered in living any life. However, not knowing who one really is, not being able to engage in life from the depths of one’s being, inevitably creates conflicts that surface in psychotherapy. Effective psychotherapists must do their own inner work, inhabiting a therapeutic presence in the encounter with clients, helping them wrestle with the daimon with which they contend. May states succinctly, "A life is at stake." This is the seriousness of the call of the psychotherapist. This article highlights meanings one student has gleaned from May’s contribution.
Human suffering is a salient theme in psychology, but the construct itself remains undefined and opaque. Suffering, in psychology literature, is often difficult to tease apart from pathology. It is often assumed to be inherently bad, thus the emphasis on alleviating the suffering through various therapeutic and medicinal techniques. There is a wealth of literature, however, which indicates that people grow through the experience of suffering. Therefore, suffering, although painful, may prove to be beneficial to the sufferer in the end. I hope to provide a theoretical outline of how a radical relational approach in therapy may not only afford a unique understanding of suffering that may be unavailable from other therapeutic orientations but also influence the therapist’s response to the sufferer in a transformative and healing way.
Two studies examined the characteristics of the Rogerian fully functioning person from the positive psychology perspective. Based on the findings of extant research in support of the Rogerian metatheoretical model, indicators were selected to represent characteristics constituting the fully functioning person. Using confirmatory factor analysis, a single factor structure of the fully functioning person was assessed with young adults aged 16 to 19 years (x{macron} = 16.86). Participants of both studies completed measures of life satisfaction, positive thoughts and feelings, authenticity, organismic valuing, aspirations, basic psychological needs, anxiety, and strengths use. Participants of Study 2 also completed a measure of character strengths endorsement. Analyses revealed that variables consistent with the Rogerian fully functioning person loaded positively on a single "fully functioning person" factor. Overall, results suggest that the fully functioning person is high in life satisfaction, has increased positive thoughts and feelings and decreased negative thoughts and feelings, low anxiety, and moves toward intrinsic values rather than extrinsic values. The fully functioning person component was positively correlated with the character strengths of enthusiasm, bravery, honesty, leadership, and spirituality and negatively correlated with modesty and fairness. Results supplement research indicating strong links between positive psychology and the person-centered theory of Carl Rogers.
This qualitative study offers an examination of the learning experiences of six individuals, each of whom initially learned for self-interested purposes, but later experienced a shift in their desire and pursued learning to benefit others. We conducted interviews that described this phenomenon and provided insight into the following question: What is the experience of a learner who transitions from learning out of self-interest to learning for the sake of another? Findings of this study include narrative case summaries for each participant and a cross-case analysis that includes six major themes regarding participants’ transition to altruistic forms of learning: humility as a prerequisite, communal learning, emphasis on the success of others, becoming more self-confident, becoming a more effective learner, and becoming more other centered. Overall, participants in this study found the most meaning by helping recipients achieve their own growth and development rather than by merely accomplishing tasks.
There is an ongoing and obvious problem of reintegrating war veterans into family, community, and society. A selective review of the supporting literature provides a foundation for the offered solution: "dignity for the enemy" (DFTE). DFTE is a method for retraining the mind to be calm, transforming the perception of who the enemy is, and thereby altering the combat veteran’s negative thinking and behavior. The DFTE practice is based on ancient sources and is offered as a specific solution to some difficult combat veteran reintegration issues generally related to violence. The "DFTE" practice emerges from the combination of the "enemy to friend spectrum" and the "elements of dignity." The enemy to friend spectrum allows the combat veteran to identify feelings toward pertinent relationships. The elements provide choices of appropriate higher attitude(s) or emotions toward identified groups of people along the spectrum from negative to positive, enemy to friend. Through the application of the practice, relationships are transformed. Positive changes in relationships can reduce agitation, anger, and lower a heightened sense of danger. The result for the combat veteran is calmness and for the enemy is dignity. With calmness comes a reduction in violent and abusive behavior.
This article describes the insidious impact of the cultural silencing of child victims of sexual abuse. Children exposed to sexual violence encounter a multitude of factors that force them to experience and respond to their victimization in silence. Those children able to break their silence in the form of disclosure are often thrust into a parallel process of silencing perpetuated in the United States by the current design of our criminal justice and court systems. Child witnesses within these systems are silenced in both subtle and overt ways throughout the judicial process and are expected to function under conditions of extremely high stress and anxiety. This intense and adversarial atmosphere overwhelms children’s resources and shuts down their ability to effectively communicate on the stand, leading to repeated experiences of silencing that can ultimately have devastating long-term consequences. In addition, secondary wounding is often inflicted because of the insensitivity of our institutional practices to both developmentally and trauma-sensitive treatment of these vulnerable children. This article describes an application of humanistic psychology to the court system in the United States as well as an attempt at building a coordinated community response to address the problem of silencing. Recommendations for addressing inequities in the child justice process and mobilizing professionals and agencies are offered in the humanistic tradition.
This article applies the existential–phenomenological analysis of schizoid persons in R. D. Laing’s The Divided Self to the phenomenology of closeted gay individuals, as described by various autoethnographies and memoirs about the lived experience of being in the closet. It explores how schizoid and closeted gay individuals employ similar defenses and suffer similar traumas as they attempt to survive within a persecutory social world. The purpose of this comparison is to help psychologists gain understanding of what being-in-the-world is like for members of a marginalized population who lack a world in which it is safe to really be. Psychologists are thereby invited to question mainstream assumptions about clinical diagnoses and to consider reframing individual psychopathology as social pathology, particularly among patients whose psychic distress may be symptomatic of the daily trauma of trying to conform to hostile sociocultural contexts that enforce oppressive social norms.
In research, the standard view of credibility seeks to illuminate what the researcher did with the data vis-à-vis collection, analysis, and interpretation. This works well in standard research where data can be checked through conventional validity measures (internal validity, external validity, reliability, replicability, and objectivity). It does not work well in heuristic self-search inquiry (HSSI) method where the data are in the researcher. In previous HSSI works, there is a level of uncertainty regarding the use of the method in knowledge exploration. It seems that there is still a need for the development of methodological understanding, particularly in terms of those who favor the use of multiple participants in HSSI, as opposed to those who do not. In this article, I compared four studies to clarify HSSI’s utility in knowledge production for future use.
Various aspects of meditation have been studied for more than 50 years, but little research has explored the lived experience of meditation in long-term meditators and examined what meaning this practice holds for the meditators. This interpretative phenomenological study examined the lived experience of the practice of meditation in the lives of six women who have practiced meditation daily for more than 10 years. This study addressed the questions of how the long-term practice of meditation is experienced and adhered to, how long-term meditators are motivated, what benefits practitioners receive, and what meaning they attribute to their practice. Data were gathered using telephone interviews and analyzed using the interpretative phenomenological process. Eight superordinate themes arose including (a) consistent and mindful adherence to ritual and technique; (b) role of a teacher/mentor; (c) cultivation of self-awareness; (d) increased equanimity, compassion, and acceptance of self and others; (e) transcendent, peak experiences; (f) cultivation and deepening of personal spirituality; (g) life purpose and meaning; and (h) challenges and barriers to meditation. This study provides descriptions of the challenges and benefits of maintaining a long-term meditation practice. It points toward the potential of regular, long-term meditation to serve as a complementary healing modality.
This article is about ethics, specifically, the myriad of unethical practices characterizing recruitment for psychiatric trials. Using a case study approach, honing on recruitment material, and examining the typical, the author explores recruitment in two studies—one involving electroconvulsive therapy, the other, a psychiatric drug. The bulk of the article is on these trials. The ethical problems which surface include minimization of risk; euphemism; lack of transparency; false and misleading claims, unfair inducement; failure to mention most of the common and serious negative effects; and a predatory quality. The author also identifies some worrisome new trends. Of special interest to the humanistic counselor is the attempt to implicate people’s own counselors and therapists in recruitment. The article ends with reflections on the onus that such practices place on all practitioners striving to be ethical. The author concludes that it is critical that counselors and therapists not be complicit and beyond that they take it on themselves to confront and expose. Concrete practice suggestions include adopting an explicit policy against such referrals, alerting any clients who may be considering such trials of the danger, and countering false claims.
Deeply rooted in Western and Eastern civilization, reverence is a cardinal virtue that embraces meaning and purpose in life. It is also a self-transcending positive emotion, associated with specific worldviews that may determine the context in which an individual senses it. To date, few psychological studies have addressed this concept. To address the gap, we drew two different study samples to validate a contextualized Sense of Reverence scale (SOR). Capitalizing on the cardiac data of older patients, Study I extended the validation of the twofold scale, reverence in religious and secular contexts (R- and S-reverence), by correlating it with measures of general religiousness and positive attitudes. Study II confirmed the structure and further validated the scale in healthy Canadian and U.S. students. Using structural equation modeling, Study II evaluated differential associations of R- and S- reverence. S-reverence was related to spiritual support from nontraditional sources, a belief in death as a natural end, and psychological functioning connected with growth, as indicated by openness, creativity, and personal growth. R-reverence was associated with spiritual support from traditional sources, a belief in a rewarding afterlife, and psychological functioning connected with adjustment, as indicated by agreeableness, conscientiousness, and personal adjustment. Both forms of reverence were positively related to self-transcendence.
The experiences of obsessive–compulsive individuals as expressed in first-person accounts have not been adequately explored. In this study, I used the heuristic self-search inquiry (HSSI) method and integral psychology framework to explore the process of self-healing during my encounters with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). In previous heuristic works, researchers reported their thoughts and feelings from inner-dialogue, but the actual internal dialogue was not accessible to the reader. In this study, I self-dialogued my thoughts and feelings in real-time self-to-self conversation in which I was both "I-Researcher" (IR) and "I-Participant" (IP). In this format, the conversation between IR and IP was impromptu and immediately available to the readers of this article. Together, these approaches comprised a unique method for exploring my OCD experiences. The self-dialogue data were autobiographical and collected via informal conversational style, using hand-written notes and without audio recordings. I analyzed data with a dialogic/dialectic approach and with Moustakas’s analytic phases/processes. Interpretations revealed my experience of a curative transformation through reasoned (dialectical) and relational (dialogical) HSSI. The results indicated that my own OCD healing did not depend on corrective actions (as the biomedical model posits), but instead depended on changes in my own contextual existence. These findings suggest that dialogic/dialectic integrated HSSI is a useful tool for researchers, professionals, and people who face OCD daily because the results demonstrated that belief in one’s abilities can flourish in the presence of confusion and despair and can have profound positive effects in the healing process. This research provides a helpful contribution to the therapist-centered literature on OCD by providing a client-based perspective of the disorder and a potential pathway for self-healing.
Chandler, Lalonde, Sokol, and Hallett created the Personal Persistence Interview in an effort to determine how persons defend their sense of personal persistence. In other words, these researchers wanted to determine the means by which one’s present self and past self can remain subjectively similar in spite of change. A modified version of that research tool is presently used to obtain narratives not only of personal persistence but also of its absence. As of yet, there are no open-ended descriptions of how and why one’s past and present self-experience could be wholly different. These narratives are colloquially presented as they relate to change, time, and culture. Maturation and perspectival changes putatively induced more than half the sample of 177 college-aged participants to report an absence of personal persistence. Still, others, also acknowledging substantial change, continued to feel personally persistent. Change within early and late modernity, as well as change as it is expressed in theories of self, will be compared with change as it is present in these life narratives.
Evidence from existential–humanistic psychology suggests that addiction is a response to boredom, loneliness, meaninglessness, and other existential struggles. This research is a case study of an existential, meaning-centered therapy practiced at an addiction treatment facility. Meaning therapy assumes that addiction is a response to a life that lacks personal meaning. The solution, therefore, is to help the client live a fulfilling life. The research question asked if, and in what ways, meaning therapy influenced how participants made sense of their addiction and recovery. The study used a mixed-methods design. Sources of qualitative data were pretreatment and posttreatment interviews, psychiatric reports, researcher field notes, and participants’ life stories. Quantitative data were pretreatment and posttreatment measures of items relevant to meaning and symptom reduction. Eleven participants volunteered for the study. Themes that emerged during a grounded theory thematic analysis revealed that therapy positively influenced nine (81.8%) participants in developing self-definition, interpersonal relatedness, and intrinsic motivation. Quantitative analysis revealed significant increases in measures of meaning and decreases in symptoms and daily problems for seven participants (63.6%). About 6 to 9 months posttreatment, eight participants (72.7%) who pursed self-definition, relatedness, and intrinsic motivation reported abstinence since discharge, fewer symptoms and problems in daily life, and the pursuit of personal goals. This study provides therapists with a better understanding of meaning therapy and suggests implications for addiction treatment.
A hermeneutic phenomenological analysis reveals the complexity of bipolar disorder. Operating at biological, psychological, and social levels this phenomenon creates dilemmas and people must account for their choices in a moral order. Two participants suffer from the condition, whereas a third is employed to deliver mental health treatment. Three themes are identified showing that all the participants struggle to feel they are competent and consistent decision makers. They feel exposed, fearing that others will impose interpretations on their behavior. They resist the imposition of a medical model, wanting to believe that choices are personal and related to life experiences. This person-centered interpretation is favored because it offers the potential for learning, for achieving autonomy, and growth. By attending to the interpersonal aspects of emotion and subjectivity, this analysis challenges the idea that autonomy can be undermined by a disease process in a simple manner. It is suggested that mental health care systems need to deliver services in which the personal and interpersonal aspects of recovery are adequately managed.
Alan Watts has been accused of never seriously practicing any of the spiritual disciplines that were central to the Eastern philosophies that he popularized in the West. This article puts forward a view of Alan Watts as practicing his general philosophical outlook through the "aesthetics" of his life—his possessions, friends, habits, and general lifestyle. Particularly in the second half of this essay, I explain that Watts built his life around people, places, and things that could not neatly fit into those three categories. For instance, he valued objects that had some humanity to them, while at the same time were deeply rooted in nature. This general example and many others that follow support the argument that the aesthetics of Watts’ lifestyle enacted the mystical blurring of lines between individuals and between individuals and their environments. In preparation for that point, this article offers a discussion of the complexities that important criticisms of Watts bring out, as well as the responses to those criticisms that are built into Watts’ work. Put together, the two strokes of this article offer a qualified defense of Watts as an important and interesting philosopher worthy of more credit than simply introducing many beatniks, counterculturalists, and new-agers to Zen, Daoism, and Hinduism.
This article explores the cognitive process and awakening experience associated with natural recovery from alcohol or drug addiction in English-speaking Hong Kong residents. It is an exploratory study using qualitative research methods. Advertising and snowball sampling recruitment methods yielded two English-speaking Hong Kong residents, one White male expatriate from the United States and one female native Hong Kong resident who is half Chinese and half White American. Reported natural recovery process was evolutionary, occurring over a long period of time with intervals of cognitive appraisal and quit attempts. Awakening interpretations included having a greater insight about their cognitive process, addiction behavior, or emotional experience. The awakening experience played a role in natural recovery and may be used to enhance already existing interventions.
Empathy is fundamental for interpersonal relationships, and therapy. There is some theoretical dissensus about its underlying process. This study investigated the lived experience of understanding another person through an innovative combination of qualitative methods. The design involved making video recordings of interpersonal interactions between pairs of volunteers. The recordings were then used for a same-day cued-recall interview. During the interview, both volunteers were asked to discuss their interaction experiences. Four in-depth case studies, involving eight participants, were conducted using this technique. The interviews were then subjected to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The results illuminate the multi-dimensional characteristics of interpersonal understanding. Namely, understanding another person was experienced as a phenomenon with three main aspects to it: 1) intuitive; 2) shared/sympathetic; and 3) imaginative/intellectual. Interestingly, shared/sympathetic and imaginative/intellectual understandings were more strongly connected with insights accessed via verbal communication, and with more self-based understandings. On the other hand, intuitive understandings were typically linked to the nonverbal communication domain, and with more other-based, intersubjective or pre-reflective forms of understanding. We argue that intuitive understandings have been under-represented in the empathy literature, and should be acknowledged as an important experiential component of this phenomenon, to be distinguished from intellectual and sympathetic understandings.
Only two published studies, both from the early 1980s, have specifically examined psychologist attitudes toward the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The current article rectifies this by presenting the results of a recent survey of attitudes toward the DSM-IV-TR and DSM-5. Though the DSM has changed over the years, psychologist attitudes toward it have remained remarkably consistent. Although more than 90% of psychologists report using the DSM, they are dissatisfied with numerous aspects of it and support developing alternatives to it—something that psychologists over 30 years ago supported, as well. The finding that almost all psychologists use the DSM despite serious concerns about it raises ethical issues because professionals are ethically bound to only use instruments in which they are scientifically confident.
This article is adapted from an invited address sponsored by European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Soren Kierkegaard’s birth. In this article, I show how Kierkegaard’s philosophy—in particular that depicted in Fear and Trembling and the Sickness Unto Death—runs through each of my major books on existential psychology and practice, from The Paradoxical Self to my latest work The Polarized Mind. I conclude that Kierkegaard, like William James succeeding him, is one of those rare philosophers who is likely to have as much impact on philosophy and psychology’s future as he had on their past.
In order to examine for features of posttraumatic growth, this preliminary and exploratory study adopted a case study method with three individuals who had endured a traumatic event, as a consequence of the political violence in Northern Ireland. Most of the extant research carried on this topic has focused on the pathogenic effects that result from the conflict. Little is known about whether growth following political adversity in Northern Ireland has occurred or even likely, given the ongoing political violence, which serves as a constant reminder of what has happened before and what may still occur, regardless of the peace process. Employing Tedeschi and Calhoun’s model of growth, findings reveal that certain features of growth are evident in the domains of a greater appreciation of life and changed relationships, which has lead to new possibilities. Two of the three participants reported change in the domain of personal strength and all reported ongoing psychological distress, which served to temper the degree of growth experienced. Differences in the growth domain relating to religion and spirituality set the three cases apart. Findings may serve as a springboard for future research in this neglected area within trauma research in the Northern Irish context.
Psychology’s infatuation with precision, objectivity, universality, refutability, and verifiability brought about a focus on the legitimacy of the perspective of the knower namely the expert who, at the center of discourse of power, could collect and analyze the data and then embark on generalizing the information for the sake of generative theories. The article argues that mainstream psychology has mainly acted from the perspective of the observer and not perspective of the actor and this has largely silenced the reality of the actor. While focusing on the underlying components of the perspective of the expert, the article calls for questioning the unquestionability of the perspective of the observer and indicates how the process of questioning may help us understand the often concealed-to-oblivion dimensions of the actors.
This qualitative study examines the coexistence of vicarious resilience and vicarious trauma and explores the inclusion of intersectional identities in trauma work with torture survivors in specialized programs across the United States. A constructionist framework and a method of constant comparison discovered themes that speak about the effects of witnessing how clients cope constructively with adversity, and intersectional identities in social context. The data suggest that trauma therapists can be potentially transformed by their clients’ resilience in positive, but not painless, ways. Choosing to work in the trauma field with survivors of torture and politically motivated violence involves immersion in profound ongoing experiences of intertwined pain, joy, and hope, and expanding the boundaries of self—personally and professionally.
The "real scientist" brings not only investigative ingenuity but also courage and integrity that permit a challenging of the status quo. Here, three issues and their relationship are considered: (a) Taboo Topics as per Norman Farberow’s 1963 book, where conscious/unconscious fears and prohibitions can hinder scientific progress, (b) creative qualities catalyzing open-mindedness and pursuit of truth, and (c) factors heightening or lowering resistance to paradigm shift as per Thomas Kuhn—including sudden change when the data become overwhelming. A key illustration involves parapsychology and the work of Stanley Krippner and colleagues—showing long-standing and rigorous research, plus efforts to disseminate findings and to open minds.
This article explores the psychological and literary aspects of the Der Doppelgänger, The Double. A Double is related to the concept of multiple personality. Such mental conditions are classified as instances of dissociation. However, a much earlier history of a Double exists in literature rather than in psychology. In the literary past, a "Double-Personality" embodied the creative imagination of writers. Aspects of this condition have been reported in all cultures. In some societies a "Double-Personality" is thought to manifest great power whereas in others it represents illness. After Freud, writers fostered psychoanalytic speculations about this condition. The dynamic issues of this condition are discussed together with literary examples by world famous authors. Persons manifesting this condition frequently employ symbols, allegory, and other creative devices. While reason, observation, and experiment are the modes of science, appreciating the symbolic behavior associated with this condition is also important. Clinicians and others should carefully attend to how symbolic behavior may be employed by patients to describe symptoms of their condition not easily conveyed with clarity by complete rationality. There is special value in recognizing how persons may utilize this condition to further their fictive goals. Without this understanding, treatment may be less effective and improvement may not occur.
What feels like spiritual experience to believers could seem like psychosis, a break from reality, to another. Validating measures that discriminate spiritual experiences from psychopathology reduce iatrogenic effects of misdiagnosis. We tested the reliability and validity of the Spiritual Emergency Scale (SES), assessing internal consistency, test–retest reliability, structural, convergent, and divergent validity. The reliability and validity of the Experiences of Psychotic Symptoms Scale (EPSS) were tested to explore potential convergent and divergent relationships between SE and psychosis. Feedback from a spiritual pilot sample prompted scale amendments to the SES and EPSS, whereby 5-point Likert-type scales replaced true–false options. We sampled 98 people from online spiritual forums, 94 undergraduate psychology students, and 20 of their friends and family. Scales included the following: SE, positive symptoms of psychosis, alogia (disfluency of thought and speech), spirituality, depression, anxiety, stress, and mysticism (experiences of connectedness that escape language). The SES-R and EPSS-R exhibited good internal consistency and structural validity, adequate test–retest reliability, and convergent and divergent validity. SE emerges as a distinct measurable construct, overlapping with positive symptoms of psychosis, distinguishable from the negative dimension of psychosis by its divergent relationship with alogia.
Person-centered spiritual maturation has conceptual and historical roots in my work with Carl Rogers, as a staff member of the Person-Centered Approach Project. It is a person-specific process of psychospiritual development that can be mentored in communities where belief systems and cultural identities are diverse. It enables individuals to deepen engagement with contemplative practices from spiritual traditions that hold personal salience, while building inclusive, respectful communities. This multidimensional model emerges from three decades mentoring person-centered spiritual maturation with university students in the service of their growth as professionals and socially responsible citizens. Growth includes (a) behavioral self-regulation through mindfulness; (b) cognitive understanding of humanity’s chain of pain that supports social justice; (c) social–emotional development that repairs broken attachment templates and promotes compassionate attunement to self and others; (d) contemplative practice that strengthens secure existential attachment and taps the human capacity for unconditional altruistic love; and (e) formation of a resilient worldview, confidence in life and self, that helps people confront life’s existential, interpersonal, and intergroup tensions with sufficient internal composure to derive maturational growth. This model provides a cohesive multidimensional explanation of person-centered spiritual maturation that highlights its prosocial value, integrates relevant neuroscience, and offers researchers a conceptual framework for future investigations.
Although resistance takes many forms, this article elucidates the primary source of resistance in psychotherapy as well as the fundamental resistance to leading a fulfilling life. The ultimate resistance to change, in both cases, originates in the anticipatory fear of arousing existential angst. To varying degrees, most individuals retreat from life and adopt defense mechanisms in an attempt to avoid reawakening suppressed feelings of terror and dread they experienced as children in early separation experiences, and, in particular, when they first learned about death. As clients dismantle their defenses during therapy and move toward increased individuation and self-fulfillment, these unconscious fears threaten to emerge into conscious awareness, and core resistances come into play. Certain events and circumstances, both positive and negative, arouse or intensify latent death anxiety, whereas other circumstances and defenses relieve it. There are numerous defenses that help ameliorate the core anxiety including the fantasy bond—an illusion of connection or fusion with another person, persons, groups, or causes—addictions, microsuicidal behavior, and literal and symbolic methods of denying one’s eventual demise. Although these defenses provide a measure of security and a sense of immortality, they adversely affect one’s psychological adjustment, emotional well-being, and interpersonal relationships.
The disclosure of gay identity is considered an important step in the process of gay identity development. However, disclosure—especially to parents—is stressful for sexual minority individuals. Research suggests that most parents respond negatively to the news of their son’s gay identity, and that such negative reactions pose significant risks to that child’s well-being. In this article, the author presents selected findings from his dissertation research, a poetic inquiry into the lived experience of facing negative parental reactions to the disclosure of gay identity. The article begins with a review of the gay identity development, sexual minority stress, and family disclosure literature. Next, the author describes his selected method, poetic inquiry, as an approach to research that aligns with humanistic psychotherapy. In the results section, six poetic transcriptions detailing four participants’ narratives about postdisclosure interactions with parents provide an in-depth look at the challenge gay men face when negotiating negative parental reactions. Finally the article concludes with a brief summary and a discussion of the reasons that poetic inquiry was chosen for research on this topic.
Is instinct a viable concept for contemporary psychology? At the turn of the 20th century the concept of human instinct was the focus of extensive discussion. Today instinct has been all but forgotten. This article explores the historical circumstances that led to the rejection of the concept of human instinct. It then turns a critical eye to a number of presuppositions that continue to equate instinct with preprogrammed genetic mechanisms. An expanded and holistic understanding of instinctual life that includes the subjective reality of the organism is then explored. It is suggested that such an expanded account may be a valuable and necessary theoretical tool for broadening our understanding of human psychology as intimately connected to its evolutionary past.
This article details the history, possibility, limits, and ethics of cross-cultural travel as a qualitative method in psychology. The article provides a brief overview of the ambiguous relationship between psychology and culture and develops an account of the history of travel methods in psychology. It then analyzes an exemplary case of travel research involving Medard Boss’ sojourn to India and his encounters with Indian sages. This article argues that the history of psychology is, in many ways, a history of the exiled, the dispossessed, and the traveler (e.g., Freud, Fromm, Fanon, Jahoda, Rogers, Jung, and others). The article concludes with reflections on using travel methods in an increasingly globalized world and in an ecologically sensitive way.
Humanistic psychology and counseling psychology share many of the same core values. This article focuses on three specific common characteristics: strength-based approaches, qualitative methodology, and multiculturalism. In contrast with the prominence of the medical model, both domains work from a holistic understanding of the person. Additionally, most of the development and progress within qualitative research methodologies has taken place in counseling and humanistic psychology. Third, these areas of psychology value culture, context, and members of underrepresented groups. Finally, suggestions are provided for future communication and collaboration.
The psychiatric survivor movement is an international coalition of grassroots organizations that work for human rights in the mental health system. Previous research has examined how the survivor movement has critiqued and envisioned alternatives to traditional mental health services. The current study focused on a unique group of individuals who identify as both psychiatric survivors and work as therapists in the mental health system. I interviewed several people with this dual-identity to better understand their approaches toward activism and psychotherapy. This article focuses on one of the survivor-therapist’s experiences, and I explore the broader clinical implications for both survivors and mental health professionals and next steps for developing viable alternatives to the traditional system.
This study broadens the construct of gratitude by exploring the lived phenomenal experience in a targeted sample of 51 participants with diverse demographic profiles. Participant descriptions of gratitude experience revealed both thematic patterns in somatic experience and a range of appraisals that included joy, love, awakening, release, awe, and feeling blessed. Cognitive appraisals showed significant correlation between meaning and intensity of gratitude affect, and their influence on relationship boundaries between "self" and "other." Conclusions point to (a) the need for an expanded definition of the transactional nature of gratitude that accounts for the affective range of emotional experience, (b) the intentionality of gratitude focused on a transpersonal "other," (c) the frequency and characteristics of the occurrence of an overwhelming emotional experience of gratitude associated with awe, and (d) the potential impact of gratitude on relational boundaries between self and other.
Despite Ernest Becker’s claim, nearly 40 years ago, that the denial of death has relevance to the depth of the individual psyche as well as to human bonding behaviors, death anxiety continues to be heavily denied in its clinical application. This denial largely persists in the field of psychology and the practice of psychotherapy as death anxiety is reserved for comprehensive, philosophical, and ontological concerns but rarely informs the organization of the therapeutic dyad or the treatment of patients. The purpose of this article is to illustrate that death anxiety acts as a bonding agent to the close psychotherapeutic relationship and that mortality salient dyadic encounters can be assessed and used by the psychotherapy practitioner. This article introduces death anxiety experiments and theories (mostly contributions of Terror Management Theory) that have more recently demonstrated the buffering and mitigating potential of close relationships on an individual’s death fears. Additionally, this article illuminates the significance of the close relationship, which is a commonly accepted psychotherapeutic agent of change and also, paradoxically, produces death fears. The article concludes by suggesting that death anxiety plays a dominant role in the socially constructed mind and should therefore play a prevalent role in clinical depth work.
Health and illness are complex constructs for which a biomedical approach alone is insufficient. The purpose of the present study was to explore how personal attitudes toward health and illness affect health experience. By adopting a constructivist perspective, we carried out individual semistructured interviews with 15 persons enrolled in a yoga class in northern Italy. We analyzed the interview data using interpretative phenomenological analysis and found that participants’ attitudes toward health and wellness were linked to their experiences and perceptions of health and illness, their somatic awareness, and their constructions of themselves and of their relations. The findings point toward the importance of people taking responsibility for their health. In addition, they suggest that health care should be personalized: approaching people as a complex unity and health and illness as inextricable parts of their lives.
This article connects two rich but distinct literatures on personal transformation and well-being that can benefit from cross-fertilization. It explores the intersection of posttraumatic growth (PTG), a model of positive changes following traumatic events, and gerotranscendence, a theory of positive changes related to aging. The two conceptualizations of positive change are compared on multiple dimensions. These include the philosophical base, domains, trigger, mechanism, and correlates of change, as well as the connection of change with wisdom and life satisfaction. The analysis reveals many similarities between the two paths to personal transformation with the key difference being the trigger for growth. Whereas PTG connects growth to traumatic events, gerotranscendence connects the growth to normative later life experiences. The similarities identified imply that PTG could be viewed as part of normative adult development and as an accelerator of gerotranscendence. The analysis also indicates that transformation in normative development is likely fueled in part by stressful losses and existential suffering. The article suggests that PTG and gerotranscendence may be viewed as two facets of the universal human striving toward self-transcendence or emancipatory knowledge. The critical role of the sociocultural context in personal transformation is also highlighted. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.
Asian immigrant adolescents have a difficult time adapting to unfamiliar customs and cultural values as well as interacting with other ethnic groups. During intergroup contacts and acculturation, Asian immigrant adolescents have negative experiences such as discrimination experiences, intergroup anxiety, interracial tension, and limited social support. In spite of such stressful and negative life experiences, some research has shown that individuals may develop the ability to thrive or grow from stressful life events. Using grounded theory, we explored the characteristics of positive psychological changes that occurred as the result of stressful intergroup contacts and acculturation from the perspective of Korean immigrant adolescents. We captured three main themes related to stress-related growth: (a) psychological thriving, (b) cultural and ethnic understandings, and (c) culturally attuned relationships. This finding implies that stressful intergroup contacts and acculturation provide an opportunity in which Korean immigrant adolescents develop coping abilities and enhance a sense of personal growth.
A police officer is sometimes required to literally make a potentially life or death decision and act on it under rapidly evolving and dynamic circumstances involving a variety of mental, physical, and emotional aspects of the deadly force experience. Because the act of using deadly force is so personally influencing, the descriptive phenomenological psychological method was used in this study to provide a qualitative, holistic, and personal viewpoint from the officers’ perspective in their lived experiences. Three city police officers were interviewed and each gave a descriptive account of their experiences with deadly force. It was found that police officers experience complex decision-making challenges requiring rapid interpretations and understandings of the situation as a lethal encounter. The phenomenological psychologically pertinent constituents found in the general structure of their experiences are Perceptions of Bullets Hitting the Suspect, Surreal Experience, Noticing Body Damage to the Suspect, Making Meaning out of the Experience, and Officer’s Understanding the Suspect(s) as Adversaries. Police officers are forced to confront death and later reflect on its personal and social meanings. The emotional impact of deadly force encounters seems to transform the officer and the deep emotional impacts may not ever become resolved.
Experiences of interpersonal trauma are not uncommon in families where there is a child with a brain injury, as are escape mechanisms that are used for the purposes of fleeing from unbearable suffering and traumatic memories. Through the courageous path of Zhi Mian, there is an opportunity for siblings to resist the temptation to flee and to choose an alternate path toward perceiving identity and finding meaning. Zhi Mian, facing life courageously and authentically, expands the horizons of consciousness, and opens the way to receive what the "wounded" child may offer a family and to how "relationship" may be understood in various ways. This article was part of the authors’ submission for their presentation at the Second International Conference on Existential Psychology in Shanghai, China.
This article presents the results of a qualitative case study on the diaries of Etty Hillesum. The focus of this investigation is on the way her inner development leads to increased sensitivity. This research revealed that Etty’s inner development is characterized by a transformation from great opacity to transparency in three phases. Whereas she is at first lost in inner chaos, she shows an impressive serenity and inner peace at the end of her writings. It is argued that in each of the three phases, Etty adapts her strategies to the new challenges she has to face in life. The main processes involved here are "mental cleansing," "mental slimming," and "mental emptying." Going through these processes, she codevelops the sensitivity as well as the firmness she needs to face reality in all its aspects.
There has been little research devoted to understanding the sporting experience of Adventure Racing (AR) participants. Given the possible psychological benefits of AR participation, this investigation was undertaken to obtain additional insight into these competitors’ experience of participating in the Everglades Challenge. Existential phenomenological interviews were conducted with 10 participants ranging in age from 34 to 64 years who took part in the 2011 Everglades Challenge. Qualitative analysis of the transcripts revealed a total of 498 meaning units that were further grouped into subthemes, majors themes, and a primary ground. A final thematic structure revealed Adventure as the primary ground for the four major themes of Pushing Limits, Community, Preparation, and Natural Elements. The results suggest that AR can be transformational in many ways and that it provides an avenue for exploring personal meaning and promoting psychological benefits.
The cultural anthropologist and humanist Ernest Becker spent the final four and a half years of his life at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in British Columbia, Canada. During these years, Becker’s thought and work underwent a profound transformation that resulted in the publication of the Pulitzer Prize–winning book, The Denial of Death, and a highly praised companion book, published posthumously, Escape From Evil. However, surprisingly little has been known about Becker’s final years at SFU. In this biographical essay, based on Becker’s papers and letters, university records and documents, and interviews with several of those who knew him best during this period of his life, Becker’s years at SFU are revealed as a professional, existential struggle, one that was both heroic and tragic—a struggle in which his work merged with his life as both drew to an end.
The current work examines some notable women in existential psychology, with a discussion of their contributions to the field and how they incorporated the work of previous existential philosophers and clinicians. The analyses are based on their own writings, dating back to the 1950s, as well as some secondary source material that reviewed their work. What the research reveals is first that there are many more women in the history of existential psychology than most people currently know about—especially from the 1950s and 1960s. Second, the "feminine" version of existential psychology really stresses the emphasis on depth, presence, and being. Even nonexistential theorists, including Winnicott and Guntrip noted that this idea of being with rather than doing for the client splits along gender lines—feminine for "being" and masculine for "doing." But in a world where the many of the existential psychologists currently practicing are male—in 2011, the Society for Humanistic Psychology had 60.8% male members to only 39% female—bringing this feminine component to existential therapy by introducing the work of these female practitioners is vital to make existential psychotherapy a richer practice not just for women but for everyone.
This article makes the argument that humanistic psychology remained a vibrant movement even after it lost much of its high-profile reputation and sociopolitical power toward the close of the 1970s. More specifically, the author makes an argument for the contemporary relevance of humanistic psychology, demonstrating how humanistic psychology has been having a quiet, yet notably significant influence on the diverse areas of the field since the 1990s. In addition, this article demonstrates that there are recent developments occurring in psychology that are highly commensurate with a humanistic viewpoint, even if these developments did not occur via a direct encounter with humanistic psychology. In short, humanistic psychology is shown to be more important to 21st century psychology than many might have realized.
Experiences of 17 female Iraq War veterans were explored to understand the challenges of reintegrating into civilian life and the impact on mental health. All respondents completed preliminary electronic surveys and participated in one of two focus groups. High levels of distress exist among veterans who are caught between military and civilian cultures, coping with war experiences, feeling alienated from family and friends, and attempting to negotiate gender and identity. Narrative is identified as a means of resolution. Recommendations include development of social support and transition groups; military cultural competence training for therapists, social workers, and college counselors; and further research to identify appropriate military response and paths to successful reintegration into society.
Much research work on motives has been based on the taxonomy of psychogenic needs originally proposed by Murray and his colleagues in 1938. However, many of these needs have received little attention, and some of them may be less relevant now than they were 70 years ago. Two studies were conducted to investigate current motives. In Study 1, we used the Striving Assessment to elicit the personal strivings of 255 undergraduate university students. Murray’s taxonomy was unable to account for 50% of the 2,937 strivings. These strivings were thematically groups into 11 new categories and combined with 7 Murrayan needs to form the Comprehensive Motivation Coding System (CMCS). In Study 2, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) stories produced by 143 undergraduate student participants were coded by these two systems. Murray’s system was unable to fully account for 42% of motives identified in the TAT stories, but the CMCS was able to account for 89%. These findings suggest that Murrayan needs may not adequately describe contemporary motivations and that the CMCS has the potential to do so. However, due to the limited demographics of our sample, further investigations are needed.
The authors present an overview of a therapeutic perspective for school therapists (counselors, psychologists, social workers) based on humanistic and social justice principles called Advocating Student-within-Environment (ASE). An ASE-influenced school therapist is directed by the assumption that the student has to be a participant in any social change that is proffered on that student’s behalf. To operate on this assumption, an ASE school therapist is concerned with maximizing student agency by supporting the development of the student’s regulatory and connectedness skills, while advocating for that student with stakeholders and through relevant social structures. In this article, the philosophic bases will be introduced, in addition to recommendations for incorporating this approach into practice in schools.
Most contemporary theorizing in psychology rejects the possibility of genuine altruism by endorsing explanations that assume psychological egoism. We seek to reframe psychological inquiry on the question of altruism by exploring an alternative, nonegoistic conceptual framework, within which genuine altruism is possible and whereby the meaning and moral dimensions of altruism can be more fruitfully explored. Two central features of our analysis are (a) the conceptual necessity of human agency for the preservation of the possibility of meaning in human affairs and (b) an examination of the ontological necessity of a genuinely social and moral understanding of personhood that preserves the possibility of altruism. Once these two issues have been addressed, an alternative conceptual framework for exploring the question of altruism drawing on the work of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas is briefly presented.
A popular model of psychotherapy as a rational, linear, and instrumental treatment that can be mastered and planned by the therapist is critiqued as an idealized fantasy. This model, which often underpins cognitive behavioral therapy and a medical approach to therapy, is contrasted with an alternative model based on attentiveness to the therapeutic process defined as an emergent and unpredictable thirdness between therapist and client. Three principles of a process-oriented therapy are described and illustrated through case vignettes. Each of these principles is shown to contradict the assumptions of a rational/planning approach to therapy and therefore to undermine the rational endeavor to "plan" treatment. A process-oriented model of therapy is argued to be a more ethical choice due to the fact that it avoids the moralism and authoritarianism of the rational/planning approach to therapy and has a more radical therapeutic aim that circumvents conventional definitions of what good outcome is or should be.