Brief History of Humanistic Psychology

Historians typically credit Abraham Maslow as the central figure who initiated the movement that would come to be designated as humanistic psychology (Decarvalho, 1990, 1991, 1994; Grogan, 2008; Robbins & McInerney, 2013; Shaffer, 1978). Due to a growing dissatisfaction with the two reigning approaches to psychology in the first half of the 20th century, behaviorism and psychoanalysis, Maslow was in search of a Third Force that could offer a viable alternative. His initiative began as a modest effort to maintain a mailing list of those who shared his dissatisfaction, and that list grew to about 125 names (Decarvalho, 1990). Maslow referred to this mailing list, in which papers were exchanged, as the “Eupsychian Network,” and this group would eventually become the subscription base for the Journal of Humanistic Psychology in 1961 (DeCarvalho, 1992). Allport and Rogers were two important influences on Maslow at this time. One of Maslow's primary concerns with psychoanalysis was its tendency to build psychological theory on the basis of case studies of people who were clearly dysfunctional. He strove to create a psychology that would be based not only on those who were dysfunctional, but also upon those who were fully living the extent of their human potential (Maslow, 1973). It was this effort to scientifically describe the optimal potential of the person that Maslow (1987) himself coined “positive psychology” four decades prior to Seligman's use of that term.

A key moment in the development of humanistic psychology was the formation of the American Association for Humanistic Psychology (AAHP) in 1962 (Schulz & Schulz, 2011) and shortly thereafter the Old Saybrook Conference, which was held in Connecticut and included key figures such as Gordon Allport, Carl Rogers, James Bugental, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, Charlotte Bühler, George Kelly, Clark Moustakas, and Henry Murray, among others (DeCarvalho, 1990). On the tails of these developments came the formation of various graduate programs with humanistic orientations, such as at Sonoma State University and Duquesne University, and finally, the founding of Division 32 of the American Psychological Association, now known as the Society for Humanistic Psychology.

Through the early figures of humanistic psychology, it is possible to trace the most seminal theoretical roots of the movement. These strands include phenomenology, personalism, and existentialism (Robbins & McInerney, 2013). These were European philosophical movements that at the time were just beginning to have an impact in the United States.

From Hedonic to Eudaimonic Well-Being

In positive psychology, the shift from a hedonic view of well-being to a eudaimonic perspective is clearly a shift in a more humanistic direction and is explicitly inspired by the humanistic philosophy of Aristotle (Ryan & Deci, 2001). Whereas hedonic well-being is defined in terms of the ratio of pleasure to pain in one's life (Diener, 2000; Kahnemann, Diener, & Schwartz, 1999), eudaimonic well-being is understood to be a reflection of a person who is flourishing in terms of his or her character strengths and virtues, including, among other things: autonomy, mastery of the environment, personal growth, positive interpersonal relationships, purpose in life, and self-acceptance (Keyes, Shmotkin, & Ryff, 2002; Ryff, 1989). The concept of eudaimonic well-being derives from Aristotelian virtue theory. Aristotle (trans. 2004) and his followers conceptualized well-being as composed of an individual's virtuous traits, and only a happiness that flows from legitimate harmony of the virtues was thought to be a genuine happiness. All other forms of happiness were understood to be superficial and fleeting.

Because positive psychology was originally identified by many psychologists as a hedonic approach to psychology, it was subject to quite a bit of criticism for being too “Pollyanna” (Lazarus, 2003), for succumbing to our culture's “tyranny of the positive attitude” (Held, 2002), and for failing to appreciate the adaptive and constructive aspects of unpleasant states of mind (Held, 2002; Lazarus, 2003; Woolfolk, 2002). Research nevertheless has suggested quite strongly that hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being, when measured quantitatively, are independent even if moderately correlated constructs (Compton, Smith, Cornish, & Qualls, 1996; King & Napa, 1998; McGregor & Little, 1998). To be subjectively well does not necessarily mean one has cultivated those characteristics and qualities that enable a person to live an authentically good life. If one is living an authentically good life, however, one enhances the capacity for deep, enduring, and mature expressions of happiness and joy (Robbins, 2006a).

If we look to the empirical evidence, the findings suggest that the motivation to maximize pleasure and avoid pain is, at best, a very weak predictor of well-being, whereas being engaged and immersed in one's projects and finding meaning in one's life are relatively much better at predicting well-being (Peterson, Park, & Seligman, 2005; Vella-Brodrick, 2007). To be engaged, to find meaning in that engagement, and to find pleasure through the fulfillment of that meaning and engagement is to live a “full life” rather than an “empty” one, according to Peterson et al. (2005).

By coming to this insight that eudaimonic well-being is key to any understanding of the good life, positive psychologists have more explicitly shifted to a humanistic frame of reference. What the neo-Aristotelians call “Eudaimonic well-being,” Maslow (1978) and Rogers (1961) called “self-actualization” and “fully-functioning,” respectively. And as humanistic psychologists have been noting for years, authentic well-being or self-actualization is far from anything resembling manic bliss or undifferentiated positive attitudes; on the contrary, it implies an individual's capacity to feel deeply the entire emotional spectrum so as to live life fully, vibrantly, and meaningfully.

Epistemology and Methodology in Positive and Humanistic Psychology

Although humanistic psychology is grounded within a phenomenological epistemology, this does not preclude humanistic psychology from drawing upon quantitative as well as qualitative methods of investigation. As Friedman (2008) has demonstrated, humanistic psychology does have a tendency to value qualitative methods, and positive psychology seems to emphasize quantitative methods. But mixed methods are found in both humanistic and positive psychology.

From the very beginning of humanistic psychology, Allport, Maslow, and Rogers stressed not a rejection of science, but an expanded view of science that appreciated the value of both qualitative and idiographic methods as well as quantitative and nomothetic approaches (Friedman, 2008). Within the field of humanistic psychology can be found some of the earliest quantitative approaches to the study of happiness, represented by the work of Fordyce (1977, 1983), whose measure has been found to have superior validity to other measures (Compton et al., 1996). Experimental and quantitative methods have also informed humanistic approaches to transpersonal psychology, meditation, and humanistic psychotherapy (Friedman, 2008). What makes humanistic approaches distinct is the emphasis on holism and the rejection of positivism as a reductive philosophy of science, not quantitative methods per se. Descriptive, eidetic, and hermeneutic phenomenological methods are best viewed as complementary to, rather than a replacement for, traditional empirical psychological methods. What we would want to avoid, however, is rushing too quickly to accept simple formulations of well-being that may be seductive as abstract conceptions of happiness but turn out to be false and misleading, such as the critical positivity ratio (Brown, Sokal, & Friedman, 2013).

Virtue Theory

Positive psychology has received much criticism for its sometimes incoherent and muddled considerations of its philosophical assumptions regarding the ethical foundations of its activity. Philosopher Mike W. Martin (2007) has written an especially astute commentary on the virtue hypothesis in positive psychology. The virtue hypothesis predicts that happiness is derived from the cultivation of virtue. Martin's primary concern is that Seligman's positive psychology appears to lack consistency in the way it articulates the virtue hypothesis: Sometimes positive psychologists claim value neutrality, but at other times they seem to combine science with normative ethics. Positive psychology engages in the activity of normative ethics to the extent that it aspires to a eudaimonic concept of ethics, which identifies the state of happiness with the acquisition of virtue. By taking on a eudaimonic conception of ethics, positive psychology can no longer consider itself merely a descriptive and predictive science, but should also acknowledge that it is engaged in the activity of prescriptive valuation. Again, positivism provides a problematic framework for the full and coherent expression of positive psychology, due to its fact–value dichotomy.

Martin (2007) seems to believe it is possible to achieve scientific neutrality in positive psychology. This can be achieved, he argues, if positive psychologists restrict definitions of happiness to a hedonic definition—essentially, subjective well-being—and then seek to identify any relationships between hedonic happiness and various character strengths and virtues. By doing so, psychologists could test the virtue hypothesis and discover whether there is a causal relationship between virtue and happiness. However, if eudaimonic happiness is used to define happiness, any suggested causal link between happiness and virtue would be tautological, because in that case virtue could not be said to be an independent variable distinct from happiness. Nevertheless, although it is true that virtue and subjective well-being can be identified as independent and related constructs, as we have already discussed, well-being itself cannot be reduced to hedonic well-being, for the reasons I have already cited.

In contrast to Martin, most humanistic psychologists hold that a value-neutral position is not a realistic aspiration for a researcher or therapist (e.g., Kottler & Hazler, 2001). Even if the researcher defines well-being in terms of hedonic well-being, the endorsement of hedonic well-being as a goal worth pursuing and the decision as to whether hedonic well-being is essential to “the good life” cannot help but become a normative ethical stance. The point is not to exclude normative ethics as a background assumption of research endeavors, as if that were possible; on the contrary, the route to integrity is to make one's ethical assumptions and codes as explicit as possible, which can serve as a means to alert colleagues and consumers of psychological science that they may exercise their own critical faculties to discern whether those normative ethics are justified. The failure to explicate one's ethical assumptions, which is the case in professed “morally neutral” positions, serves only to conceal one's moral framework. And in the hands of influential professionals with status and power, this concealment can be tyrannical and even abusive in cases in which groups are marginalized or persecuted as a result. If this stance seems misguided, consider what happened to homosexuality under the lens of the early diagnostic manuals of the American Psychiatric Association.

As it has been articulated by Seligman (2002), eudaimonic happiness is thought to derive from the identification and cultivation of signature strengths and virtues. As noted by Schwartz and Sharpe (2005), Seligman treats the virtues as if they were “logically independent” (p. 380). But, as they argue, a genuinely Aristotelian perspective demands that the virtues be understood holistically as interdependent constituents of the good life. One cannot pick and choose virtues as if from a menu; the activation of the virtues in the everyday circumstance of living requires the guidance of practical wisdom, or phronesis, the “master virtue, without which the other virtues will exist like well-intentioned, but unruly children” (Schwartz & Sharpe, 2005, p. 385). This holistic approach to the good life, in which virtues are understood to be interdependent, is more true to the Aristotelian roots of positive psychology and is a hallmark of humanistic psychology. The emphasis on formal and final causality in Aristotle's physics demands that virtues be understood in a way that is contextual and as having normative aims. This can be accomplished by a more holistic and nonreductive approach to the virtues. A virtue such as resilience, for example, like wisdom or phronesis, could be understood as a master virtue that becomes realized as a virtue only through it's relation to other personal strengths and when deployed toward genuinely moral ends (Robbins & Friedman, 2011).

When Carl Rogers (1961) asked about what it means to be a good therapist, he was asking both an empirical and an ethical question. He was asking, in effect, what it means to be a virtuous therapist—essentially, raising the question of optimal functioning within the specified practice of psychotherapy. However, he went about answering this question in an inductive, open-ended, and empirical way, and by doing so, he long anticipated more contemporary insights that therapeutic interventions are less important than common factors, such as client–therapist rapport, across models of treatment (Frank & Frank, 1991; Miller, Duncan, & Hubble, 2005; Wampold, 2001). Rogers (1961) found that the virtuous therapist is one who cultivates a growth-promoting climate through the acquisition of three essential traits: congruency, unconditional positive regard for the client, and empathic understanding. Notice that these virtues are interdependent. For example, empathic understanding can be used by psychopaths as a means to manipulate and control other people, but when coupled with unconditional positive regard, empathy becomes a benevolent and powerful conduit for interpersonal healing. A congruent therapist may have the integrity and honesty to confront a client about his or her faults, but without unconditional positive regard and empathy, these confrontations are likely to be harsh and damaging rather than constructive avenues for therapeutic change. Although Rogers did not explicitly recognize his approach to therapy as grounded in a neo-Aristotelian conception of virtue, his work nevertheless provides a perfect example of its application.

In addition, humanistic psychology has also been acutely aware of the importance of idiographic approaches to empirical and ethical questions and has repeatedly warned against the dangers of an entirely nomothetic approach to human behavior and experience (Wertz, 2001). If we want to derive generalities about aggregates of people, if we wish to identify relations among variables for the sake of reducing error in predictions, and if we wish to develop the ability to make causal inferences, we must rely on nomothetic, quantitative procedures, without which we would be lost. For this reason, humanistic psychology should embrace quantitative psychological research methodology. However, within the context of Aristotelian ethics, the identification of essential, interdependent virtues and their interrelations is not enough; we also need the practical wisdom (phronesis) that will allow us to understand how to utilize those virtues in particular, concrete situations. Idiographic approaches, including case studies, biographies, discourse analysis of diaries, and other qualitative approaches to data analysis, are uniquely equipped to impart the practical wisdom necessary to exercise the virtues in a way that can account for the highly contextualized particularities of specific, concrete, human problems, such as those encountered daily by psychotherapists and other clinical practitioners.

When idiographic and qualitative methods of analysis are combined with nomothetic analysis, we have a winning combination. When taken in the abstract, and especially when accounting for all of the variation among cultures and individuals, any categorical description of the virtues runs a great risk of being so generic that it becomes anemic and bereft of practical use-value. Doing so, we are in danger of taking the wonderful richness and complexity of concrete human lives and reducing their meanings to overly simplified formulas (May, 1996), in effect confusing the map with the countryside (Merleau-Ponty, 1995). Yet, when we ground the science of psychology in a philosophy that gives ontological priority to the reality of concrete lives, and in their meanings and values within the contextual significance of those lives, we are able to preserve meaning and value from getting swallowed up in a reductive scientism (Robbins, 2006b). In order to carry out such a psychology, we must take great care to avoid the tendency to reduce multiplicity to uniformity (Bortoft, 1996, p. 147). For this reason, humanistic psychologists have articulated an approach to human phenomena that, through holistic seeing, is able to capture a multiplicity in unity rather than an impoverished unity—that is, an approach that has the capability to identify general, essential categories of understanding that nevertheless preserve the integrity of, and recognize their existential debt to, the concrete particularities that give rise to those categories.

Conclusion

Perhaps the greatest danger for positive psychology lies in its potential to misappropriate Aristotelian ethics within an epistemological framework that subtly and effectively undercuts the most fundamental presuppositions and requirements for a properly Aristotelian application of virtue theory for the human sciences. Humanistic psychology has much to offer positive psychologists if they are willing to more closely and seriously engage the expansive literature of humanistic psychologists in this area.

Summary Points

• Mutual criticisms of positive psychology and humanistic psychology are typically based mainly on straw man arguments, and when examined closely, these approaches share more in common than many may be otherwise led to believe.
• Although humanistic psychology is informed by a phenomenological epistemology and much of positive psychology operates within a positivist framework, this does not imply that differences in philosophical presuppositions should preclude meaningful dialogue between these two approaches to well-being and the good life. On the contrary, by adopting a humanistic approach to positive psychology, it may be possible for positive psychology to resolve what may be internally incoherent positions, such as the inherent discord between positivist epistemology and Aristotle's virtue theory. Phenomenology, in contrast, may be better able to appropriate Aristotle's ethical theory within a more contemporary philosophical context.
• A humanistic approach to positive psychology would draw upon the theoretical roots of humanistic psychology, including phenomenology, personalism, and existentialism. One advantage of this approach would be not only an appreciation of human potentials, such as the virtues, but also a recognition of the intrinsic worth of human beings by virtue of their dignity—a concept that has become important for preserving philosophical and legal frameworks that establish and protect human rights.
• A humanistic approach to positive psychology would tend to endorse a eudaimonic rather than a hedonistic approach to well-being. However, a humanistic approach, consistent with Aristotle's philosophy, would more heavily emphasize the holistic and integral nature of the virtues as guided by practical knowledge or wisdom.
• Both qualitative and quantitative approaches to positive psychology, informed by humanistic psychology's phenomenological epistemology, have the potential to provide internally coherent and integral approaches to investigating virtue theory and eudaimonia as the basis for a humanistic positive psychology.
• The humanistic approach to psychotherapy and clinical practice, as developed by Rogers, can be understood to be the cultivation of a virtuous therapist. In this case, however, the virtues are interdependent and work toward healing only in their combination. These virtues include unconditional positive regard, empathy, and congruency.

References

1. Allport, G. (1922). An experimental study of the traits of personality: With special reference to the problem of social diagnosis. Harvard University Archives HU, 90.
2. Allport, G. (1961). Pattern and growth in personality. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
3. Allport, G. W. (1979). The nature of prejudice: 25th anniversary edition. New York, NY: Basic Books.
4. Barrett, W. (1990). Irrational man: A study in existential philosophy. New York, NY: Anchor/Doubleday.
5. Bohart, A. C., & Greening, T. (2001). Humanistic psychology and positive psychology. American Psychologist, 56, 81–82.
6. Bortoft, H. (1996). The wholeness of nature: Goethe's science of conscious participation in nature. Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press.
7. Brown, J. H. L., Sokal, A. D., & Friedman, H. L. (2013). The complex dynamics of wishful thinking: The critical positivity ratio. American Psychologist, 68, 801–813.
8. Buber, M. (1958). I and thou. New York, NY: Scribner. (Original work published 1937)
9. Burston, D. (2003). Existentialism, humanism, and psychotherapy. Existential Analysis, 142, 309–319.
10. Burtt, E. A. (2003). The metaphysical foundations of modern science. New York, NY: Dover.
11. Compton, W. C., Smith, M. L., Cornish, K. A., & Qualls, D. L. (1996). Factor structure of mental health measures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 406–413.
12. Decarvalho, R. J. (1990). A history of the “third force” in psychology. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 30, 22–44.
13. Decarvalho, R. J. (1991). The founders of humanistic psychology. New York, NY: Praeger.
14. Decarvalho, R. J. (1992). The institutionalization of humanistic psychology. The Humanistic Psychologist, 20(2–3), 124–135.
15. Decarvalho, R. J. (1994). The institutionalization of humanistic psychology. In F. Wertz (Ed.), The humanistic movement: Recovering the person in psychology (pp. 13–23). Lake Worth, FL: Gardner Press.
16. Diener, E. (2000). Subjective well-being: The science of happiness and a proposal for a national index. American Psychologist, 55, 34–43.
17. Fordyce, M. W. (1977). Development of a program to increase personal happiness. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 24(6), 511–521.
18. Fordyce, M. W. (1988). A review of research on the happiness measures: A sixty second index of happiness and mental health. Social Indicators Research, 20(4), 355–381.
19. Frank, J. D., & Frank, J. B. (1991). Persuasion and healing: A comparative study of psychotherapy (3rd ed.). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
20. Friedman, H. (2008). Humanistic and positive psychology: The methodological and epistemological divide. The Humanistic Psychologist, 36, 113–126.
21. Friedman, H., & Robbins, B. D. (2012). The negative shadow cast by positive psychology: Contrasting views and implications of humanistic and positive psychology on resiliency. The Humanistic Psychologist, 40, 87–102.
22. Froh, J. J. (2004). The history of positive psychology: Truth be told. NYS Psychologist, 16, 18–20.
23. Gendlin, E. (1962). Experiencing and the creation of meaning. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
24. Gillham, J. E., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1999). Footsteps on the road to positive psychology. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 37, 163–173.
25. Grogan, J. L. (2008). A cultural history of the humanistic psychology movement in America (Doctoral dissertation). The University of Texas at Austin.
26. Held, B. S. (2002). The tyranny of the positive attitude in America: Observation and speculation. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58, 965–991.
27. Held, B. S. (2004). The negative side of positive psychology. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 44, 9–46.
28. Henckmann, W. (2005). “Geitige Person” bei Viktor E. Frankl und Max Scheler. In D. Batthyany & O. Zsok (Eds.), Viktor Frankl und die philosophie (pp. 149–162). Vienna, Austria: Springer.
29. Kahneman, D., Diener, E., & Schwarz, N. (Eds.). (1999). Well-being: The foundations of hedonic psychology. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
30. Kaufmann, W. (1956). Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre. New York, NY: New American Libraray.
31. Keyes, C. L., Shmotkin, D., & Ryff, C. D. (2002). Optimizing well-being: The empirical encounter of two traditions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 1007–1022.
32. King, L. A., & Napa, C. K. (1998). What makes life good? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 156–165.
33. Kottler, J. A., & Hazler, R. J. (2001). The therapist as a model of humane values and humanistic behavior. In K. J. Schneider, J. F. T. Bugental, & J. Fraser Pierson (Eds.), The handbook of humanistic psychology: Leading edges in theory, research, and practice (pp. 355–370). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
34. Lazarus, R. S. (2003). Does the positive psychology movement have legs? Psychological Inquiry, 14, 93–109.
35. Linley, P. A., & Joseph, S. (2004a). Applied positive psychology: A new perspective for professional practice. In P. A. Linley & S. Joseph (Eds.), Positive psychology in practice (pp. 3–14). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
36. Linley, P. A., & Joseph, S. (2004b). Preface. In P. A. Linley & S. Joseph (Eds.), Positive psychology in practice (pp. xv–xvi). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
37. Linley, P. A., Joseph, S., Harrington, S., & Wood, A. M. (2006). Positive psychology: Past, present, and (possible) future. Journal of Positive Psychology, 1, 3–16.
38. Martin, M. W. (2007). Happiness and virtue in positive psychology. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 37(1), 89–103.
39. Maslow, A. H. (1971). The farthest reaches of human nature. New York, NY: Viking.
40. Maslow, A. H. (1973). Self-actualizing people: A study of psychological health. In R. J. Lowry (Ed.), Dominance, self-esteem, self-actualization: Germinal papers of A. H. Maslow (pp. 177–201). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
41. Maslow, A. H. (1987). Motivation and personality. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
42. May, R. (1962). Dangers in the relation of existentialism to psychotherapy. In H. M. Ruitenbeek (Ed.), Psychoanalysis and existential philosophy (pp. 179–187). New York, NY: Dutton.
43. May, R. (1996). Psychology and the human dilemma. New York, NY: Norton.
44. May, R., Angel, E., & Ellenberger, H. R. (1958). Existence. New York, NY: Basic Books.
45. McGregor, I., & Little, B. R. (1998). Personal projects, happiness, and meaning: On doing well and being yourself. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 494–512.
46. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1995). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). London, England: Routledge.
47. Miller, S. D., Duncan, B. L., & Hubble, M. A. (2005). Outcome-informed work. In J. C. Norcross, & M. R. Goldfried (Eds.), Handbook of psychotherapy integration (2nd ed., pp. 84–102). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
48. Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2005). The concept of flow. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 89–105). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
49. Peterson, C., Park, N., & Seligman, M. E. (2005). Orientations to happiness and life satisfaction: The full life versus the empty life. Journal of Happiness Studies, 6(1), 25–41.
50. Peterson, C., Seligman, M. E. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Washington, DC: APA Press.
51. Rathunde, K. (2001). Toward a psychology of optimal functioning: What positive psychology can learn from the “experiential” turns of James, Dewey, and Maslow. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 41, 135–153.
52. Resnick, S., Warmoth, A., & Serlin, I. A. (2001). The humanistic psychology and positive psychology connection: Implications for psychotherapy. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 41, 73–101.
53. Rich, G. J. (2001). Positive psychology: An introduction. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 41, 8–12.
54. Robbins, B. D. (2006a). An empirical, phenomenological study: Being joyful. In C. T. Fischer (Ed.), Qualitative research methods for psychologists: Introduction through empirical studies (pp. 173–211). San Diego, CA: Elsevier Academic Press.
55. Robbins, B. D. (2006b). The delicate empiricism of Goethe: Phenomenology as a rigorous science of nature. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 6, np. Retrieved from http://www.ipjp.org/SEmethod/Special_Edition_Method-01_Robbins.pdf
56. Robbins, B. D. (2008). What is the good life? Positive psychology and the renaissance of humanistic psychology. The Humanistic Psychologist, 36, 96–112.
57. Robbins, B. D. (2013a). Dignity, personalism, and humanistic psychology. The New Existentialists. Retrieved from http://www.saybrook.edu/newexistentialists/posts/08-16-13
58. Robbins, B. D. (2013b). Human dignity and humanistic values: A call to humanistic psychology's mission. The New Existentialists. Retrieved from http://www.saybrook.edu/newexistentialists/posts/12-19-13
59. Robbins, B. D., & Friedman, H. (2008). Introduction to our special issue on positive psychology. The Humanistic Psychologist, 36, 93–95.
60. Robbins, B. D., & Friedman, H. (2011). Resiliency as a virtue: Contributions from humanistic and positive psychology. In K. M. Gow & M. J. Celinski (Eds.), Continuity versus creative response to challenge: The primacy of resilience and resourcefulness in life and therapy. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science.
61. Robbins, B. D., & McInerney, R. G. (2013). Humanistic psychology: A brief history. Unpublished manuscript, Point Park University, Pittsburgh, PA.
62. Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person. London, England: Constable.
63. Rogers, C. R. (1965). Toward a science of the person. In T. W. Mann (Ed.), Behaviorism and phenomenology: Contrasting bases for modern psychology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
64. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 141–166.
65. Ryff, C. D. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 1069–1081.
66. Scheler, M. (1973). Formalism in ethics and non-formal ethics of values: A new attempt toward the foundation of an ethical personalism. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
67. Schneider, K. (2011). Toward a humanistic positive psychology: Why can't we just get along? Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis, 22(1), 32–38.
68. Schulz, D. P., & Schulz, S. E. (2011). A history of modern psychology. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.
69. Schwartz, B., & Sharpe, K. E. (2005). Practical wisdom: Aristotle meets positive psychology. Journal of Happiness Studies, 7, 377–395.
70. Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Authentic happiness. New York, NY: Free Press.
71. Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55, 5–14.
72. Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410.
73. Shaffer, J. B. P. (1978). Humanistic psychology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
74. Shapiro, S. B. (2001). Illogical positivism. American Psychologist, 56, 82.
75. Skinner, B. F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity. New York, NY: Bantam Vintage.
76. Slife, B. D., & Williams, R. N. (1995). What's behind the research? Discovering hidden assumptions in the behavioral sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
77. Spiegelberg, H. (1972). Phenomenology in psychology and psychiatry. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
78. Sugarman, J. (2007). Practical rationality and the questionable premise of positive psychology. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 47, 175–197.
79. Sundararajan, L. (2005). Happiness donut: A Confucian critique of positive psychology. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 25, 35–60.
80. Taylor, E. (2001). Positive psychology and humanistic psychology: A reply to Seligman. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 41(1), 13–29.
81. Turner, B. S. (2006). Vulnerability and human rights. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
82. United Nations. (1948). The universal declaration of human rights. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
83. Vella-Brodrick, D. A. (2007). Orientations to happiness as predictors of subjective well-being. Unpublished manuscript, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
84. Wampold, B. E. (2001). The great psychotherapy debate: Models, methods, and findings. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
85. Waterman, A. S. (2013) The humanistic psychology—positive psychology divine: Contrasts in philosophical foundation. American Psychologist, 68, 124–133.
86. Wertz, F. J. (2001). Humanistic psychology and the qualitative research tradition. In K. J. Schneider, J. F. T. Bugental, & J. F. Pierson (Eds.), The handbook of humanistic psychology: Leading edges in theory, research, and practice (pp. 231–246). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
87. Williams, T. D. (2005). Who is my neighbor? Personalism and the foundations of human rights. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America.
88. Wong, P. T. P. (2011a). Positive psychology 2.0: Towards a balanced interactive model of the good life. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 52, 69–81.
89. Wong, P. T. P. (2011b). Reclaiming positive psychology: A meaning-centered approach to sustainable growth and radical empiricism. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 51, 408–412.
90. Woolfolk, R. L. (2002). The power of negative thinking: Truth, melancholia, and the tragic sense of life. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 22, 19–27.
91. Woolfolk, R. L., & Wasserman, R. H. (2005). Count no one happy: Eudaimonia and positive psychology. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 25, 81–90.