Brent Dean Robbins

What is the Good Life? Positive Psychology and the Renaissance of Humanistic Psychology

Positive and humanistic psychology overlap in thematic content and theoretical presuppositions, yet positive psychology explicitly distances itself as a new movement, despite the fact that its literature implicitly references its extensive historical grounding within humanistic psychology. Consequently, humanistic psychologists both celebrate diffusion of humanistic ideas furthered by positive psychology, and resent its disavowal of the humanistic tradition. The undeniably close alignment of these two schools of thought is demonstrated in the embracing of eudaimonic, in contrast to hedonic, conceptions of happiness by positive psychology. Eudaimonic happiness cannot be purely value-free, nor can it be completely studied without using both nomethetic and idiographic (i.e., quantitative and qualitative) methods in addressing problems of value, which identifies positive psychology clearly as a humanistic approach, despite its protestations.

The Negative Shadow Cast by Positive Psychology: Contrasting Views and Implications of Humanistic and Positive Psychology on Resiliency

Resiliency is the ability to survive, or even thrive, during adversity. It is a key construct within both humanistic and positive psychology, but each sees it from a contrasting vantage. Positive psychology decontextualizes resilience by judging it as a virtue regardless of circumstance, while humanistic psychology tends to view it in a more holistic way in relationship to other virtues and environmental affordances, clarifying how resiliency can actually be either a virtue or a vice depending upon circumstances. Adolf Hitler is presented as an example of a resilient person who would not be seen as virtuous, and the US Army Comprehensive Soldier Fitness study training warfighters in resiliency illustrates possible ethical problems with a decontextualized view of resiliency.

A cultural-existential approach to therapy: Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment and its implications for practice

Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological philosophy provides the basis for a form of cultural-existential therapy. Through an examination of Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the phantom limb and anosognosia, we develop a cultural-existential approach to “psychopathology” and its treatment. In the course of this analysis, ego-syntonic labels are seen in the light of culture-syntonic considerations, depth analysis is married to breadth analysis, empathic understanding is re-understood through a dialectical mode of understanding, medical and psychological analyses are recast within a cultural analysis, and being is resituated within a flesh ontology. Whereas a cultural-existential psychotherapy may compassionately rally around a therapy of situated individuals, it also calls for mindful attention to a therapeutics of culture.

An Empirical, Phenomenological Study: Being Joyful

Publisher Summary This chapter provides insights into the applicability of theories of subjective well-being for understanding joy. The participants of the study described what could be construed as a sense of being fulfilled, and one could make tentative inferences about how the fulfillment of certain needs may have led the participants to feel that way. The participants felt an intimate connection with others, which would support the hypothesis that joy and other positive effects result from fulfillment of the need to belong. Other needs that might have been met include a feeling of freedom and a sense that one has been affirmed as a person. The chapter sheds some light on how the fulfillment of such needs might appear from a first-person experience. The results of the analysis yield some unexpected findings that will stimulate more research on these themes.

The Delicate Empiricism of Goethe: Phenomenology as a Rigorous Science of Nature

Abstract Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s approach to natural scientific research has unmistakable parallels to phenomenology. These parallels are clear enough to allow one to say confidently that Goethe’s delicate empiricism is indeed a phenomenology of nature. This paper examines how Goethe’s criticisms of Newton anticipated Husserl’s announcement of the crisis of the modern sciences, and it describes how Goethe, at a critical juncture in cultural history, addressed this emerging crisis through a scientific method that is virtually identical to the method of contemporary empirical-phenomenological research in the human sciences. Goethe’s practice of science shares with phenomenology a participatory, morally-responsive, and holistic approach to the description of dynamic life-world phenomena. Delicate empiricism has its own version of the phenomenological epoché, and, like Husserl’s technique of imaginative variation, it strives to disclose the essential or archetypal structure of the phenomenon through the endowment of human imagination. However, a close reading of Goethe suggests that the tendency amongst some scholars to distinguish phenomenology as human science from the natural sciences is actually a costly error which unwittingly falls prey to implicit Cartesian assumptions. Goethe, however, manages to avoid these problems by performing from the first a phenomenology of nature’s sensibility.Johann Wolfgang von Goethes approach to natural scientific research has unmistakable parallels to phenomenology. These parallels are clear enough to allow one to say confidently that Goethes delicate empiricism is indeed a phenomenology of nature. This paper examines how Goethes criticisms of Newton anticipated Husserls announcement of the crisis of the modern sciences, and it describes how Goethe, at a critical juncture in cultural history, addressed this emerging crisis through a scientific method that is virtually identical to the method of contemporary empirical-phenomenological research in the human sciences. Goethes practice of science shares with phenomenology a participatory, morally-responsive, and holistic approach to the description of dynamic life-world phenomena. Delicate empiricism has its own version of the phenomenological epoche, and, like Husserls technique of imaginative variation, it strives to disclose the essential or archetypal structure of the phenomenon through the endowment of human imagination. However, a close reading of Goethe suggests that the tendency amongst some scholars to distinguish phenomenology as human science from the natural sciences is actually a costly error which unwittingly falls prey to implicit Cartesian assumptions. Goethe, however, manages to avoid these problems by performing from the first a phenomenology of natures sensibility.

The Self-Regulation of Humor Expression: A Mixed Method, Phenomenological Investigation of Suppressed Laughter

This study utilized a mixed method, phenomenological approach to better understand the lived experience of suppressed laughter. Study 1 utilized an empirical, phenomenological analysis of 17 first-person descriptions of suppressed laughter, which identified various essential themes, including the key findings that suppressed laughter occurred within a social context in which laughter was not appropriate and in which the presence of a confidant increased the pressure to laugh. Study 2 was a follow-up, experimental study, which included 107 participants who read 4 pairs of second-person perspective narratives. Participants found scenarios to be more humorous when a friend was present and when the social context was laughter-inappropriate. In addition, participants were more likely to endorse emotion suppression in laughter-inappropriate contexts, but less likely to endorse suppression when in the presence of a friend.

The Heart of Humanistic Psychology Human Dignity Disclosed Through a Hermeneutic of Love

Through a philosophical analysis, guided by phenomenology, humanistic psychology is interpreted as a way of knowing that is guided by an interpretive stance of love. Hermeneutics, the study of interpretation, understands that interpretation is guided by certain moods or dispositions. Agape love, or a good will toward others, is an interpretive stance, or hermeneutic, by which others can be understood through an empathic attitude of charitability, which provides a safe space for the other person to disclose himself or herself. An approach to science and practice, when it is grounded in a hermeneutic of love, can be understood to be guided by a recognition that human beings have dignity, which calls us to an ethic of caring. As humanistic psychology is understood to be guided by a hermeneutics of love, its basic philosophical presuppositions are revealed with regard to its ontological, epistemological, and ethical foundations. Whereas dignity is a central concept of humanistic psychology, a hermeneutics of love may be a unique method of access for revealing concretely the reality of human dignity as a foundation for social ethics.

Enactive Cognition and the Neurophenomenology of Emotion

This chapter introduces enactive cognition, an approach that integrates dynamic systems theory with first-person, phenomenological methods of investigating human experience and neurophenomenological method. Neurophenomenology is an extension of enactive cognitive theory, which integrates first- and third-person perspectives in ways that allow them to inform and constrain each other. Insights from these approaches are discussed, which include the finding that perception and cognition are inseparable and cannot be understood apart from the body’s interactions with the ecological context of its activities. The author argues that the enactive approach calls into question an old paradigm of the theory of emotion, which conceptualizes emotion and cognition as distinct functions located in separate regions of the brain. An account of emotion, instead, needs to preserve the meaning of the experience of emotion as it appears within the lifeworld context of the person, rather than being based on inferences drawn only from laboratory conditions. Enactive and neurophenomenological approaches are promising avenues for bringing forth an affective, experiential revolution in psychology.

Introduction to the Special Issues on Diagnostic Alternatives

To those familiar with the terrain of 20th-century psychiatry, the contemporary landscape might indeed look like that of a different planet. Faith in the orthodox diagnostic system, once seen as the bedrock of the mental health professions, has given way to mounting scientific doubt. Epistemological categorizations once believed to classify diseases that were awaiting empirical validation—perpetually “just around the corner”—are now seen as arbitrary placeholders, “at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels [...] [t]he weakness is its lack of validity” (Insel, 2013, para. 2). Contemporary research on psychiatric diagnosis has all of the elements of a classic paradigm crisis:

DSM-5 Reform Efforts by the Society for Humanistic Psychology

Since 2011, the Society for Humanistic Psychology (Division 32 of the American Psychological Association) has taken a lead in organizing an international coalition of organizations and individuals that share major criticisms of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders–Fifth edition (DSM-5) diagnosis and the search for alternatives. Inspired by the British Psychological Society’s public criticism of the DSM-5, Society for Humanistic Psychology began by drafting an Open Letter that outlines criticisms of the DSM-5. The Open Letter went on to receive endorsements from over 50 national and international organizations, and was signed by over 15,000 individuals, primarily mental health professionals. The effort to reform the DSM-5 shifted gears in 2013, when the Society’s efforts began to pivot toward efforts to organize discussions about legitimate alternatives to medical model, DSM diagnoses of human suffering. The culmination of this project was the Global Summit on Diagnostic Alternatives, which persists in several fronts to provide guidelines for the development of diagnostic manuals, and to promote scientifically and ethically sound approaches to understanding and alleviating human suffering.