George A. Kelly

Humanistic Methodology in Psychological Research

Humanism is usually regarded as the guiding motif in the intellectual transitions that took place in Western Europe during &dquo;The Humanistic Century&dquo; of 1450 to 1550 A.D. During those years the cultures of Classical Greece and Rome were examined in a new light. Whereas the medieval scholastics had rationalized the classics, the humanists put themselves in the place of the men who wrote them. When they did they caught glimpses of the freedom, innovation and variety that had made the great classical achievements possible. To the extent that humanism grasped an outlook rather than re-

The Threat of Aggression

THIs conference has been convened to consider the topic of humanism in psychology. But I am not sure I have a very clear idea of what humanism is. Ostensibly it has something to do with man, though I have often doubted that it had to do with anyone I know. Nevertheless, I suppose that when psychologists get together and say that we ought to revive humanism it is because they are alarmed by the tendency of their discipline to ignore man, except as an inexhaustible source of data, and to become preoccupied, instead, with their own bibliographies, expendable animals, and the rituals of laboratory science. A humanistic turn of events would, then, be one, I presume, in which the focal importance of living man would be reaffirmed, and psychology would no longer be pursued for its own sake. Those who attempt to revive humanism are likely to point to the culture of classic Greece as an example of what they would like to restore. That culture, as I understand it, was characterized by mans audacity in the face of adversities imposed by the gods or by nature. Its heroes asserted themselves as men, as men they dared challenge what their history and their gods told them was inevitable, and as men they often suffered frustration and defeat. Yet while history, more often than not, continued to reaffirm its verdicts, the men we as humanists want to remember are those who refused to acquiesce to the facts of life.