Existential-Phenomenological Perspectives in Psychology: Exploring the Breadth of Human Experience

358 Pages·1989·12.418 MB·English

by  Ronald S. Valle, Mark King, Steen Halling (auth.), Ronald S. Valle, Steen Halling (eds.)

Existential-Phenomenological
. Perspectives in Psychology
Exploring the Breadth of Human Experience
With a Special Section on Transpersonal Psychology
Existential-Phenomenological
Perspectives in Psychology
Exploring the Breadth of Human Experience
With a Special Section on Transpersonal Psychology
. Edited by
Ronald S. Valle
John F. Kennedy University
Orinda, California
and
Steen Halling
Seattle University
Seattle, Washington
With a Foreword by James F. T. Bugental
PLENUM PRESS • NEW YORK AND LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Existential-phenomenological perspectives in psychology: exploring the breadth of
human experience: with a special section on transpersonaI psychology I edited by
Ronald S. Valle and Steen Halling; with a foreword by James F. T. Bugental.
p. CID.
Bibliography: p.
Includes indexes.
ISBN-13: 978-0-306-43044-2 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4615-6989-3
001: 10.1007/978-1-4615-6989-3
1. Phenomenological psychology. 2. Existential psychology. 3. TranspersonaI
psychology. I. Valle, Ronald S. II. Halling, Steen.
BF204.5.E94 1989 88-39126
ISO.19'2-dcl9 CIP
1098765432
© 1989 Plenum Press, New York
A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation
233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10013
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
To Christin and the Only One
-RV
To my parents, Poul and Margit Halling
-SH
Contributors
Marc Briod, Department of Philosophy, Oakland University, Rochester, Minnesota
Emily Davies, P.O. Box 671264, Chugiah, Alaska
Judy Dearborn NiII, Department of Journalism, Seattle University, Seattle, Washington
Constance T. Fischer, Department of Psychology, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
William F. Fischer, Department of Psychology, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Robert Frager, Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality, Holy Names College, Oakland, Cal-
ifornia and Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, Menlo Park, California
Amedeo Giorgi, Saybrook Institute, 1772 Vallejo Street, San Francisco, California
Steen Halling, Department of Psychology, Seattle University, Seattle, Washington
Bernd Jager, New School for Psychoanalysis, Santa Rosa, California
Mark King, School of Social Work, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Michael Leifer, Seattle Mental Health Institute, Seattle, Washington
Ralph Metzner, California Institute of Integral Studies, 765 Ashbury Street, San Francisco,
California
Donald Moncrieff, 84 Glendale Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Donald Moss, Haight Clinic Psychological Services, 109 South Jackson Street, Spring Lake,
Michigan
Donald E. Polkinghorne, Graduate Department of Counseling! School Psychology, California State
University, Fullerton, California
Dianne Powers, Highline Evaluation and Treatment Center, Seattle, Washington
Robert D. Romanyshyn, Department of Psychology, University of Dallas, Irving, Texas
Jan O. Rowe, Department of Psychology, Seattle University, Seattle, Washington
Susan Schneier, Graduate School for the Study of Human Consciousness, John F. Kennedy Univer
sity, Orinda, California
Ronald S. Valle, Graduate School for the Study of Human Consciousness, John F. Kennedy Univer
sity, Orinda, California
Jeanne van Bronkhorst, Pierce County Health Department, Tacoma, Washington
Rolf von Eckartsberg, Department of Psychology, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
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viii CONTRIBUTORS
Frederick J. Wertz, Department of Social Sciences, Fordham University, College at Lincoln Center,
New York, New York
Brian J. Whalen, University of Dallas, Rome, Italy
Bryan Wittine, Graduate Program in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology, John F. Kennedy
University, Orinda, California
Foreword
When I began to study psychology a half century ago, it was defined as "the study of behavior and
experience." By the time I completed my doctorate, shortly after the end of World War II, the last two
words were fading rapidly. In one of my first graduate classes, a course in statistics, the professor
announced on the first day, "Whatever exists, exists in some number." We dutifully wrote that into
our notes and did not pause to recognize that thereby all that makes life meaningful was being
consigned to oblivion.
This bland restructuring-perhaps more accurately, destruction-of the world was typical of its
time, 1940. The influence of a narrow scientistic attitude was already spreading throughout the
learned disciplines. In the next two decades it would invade and tyrannize the "social sciences,"
education, and even philosophy. To be sure, quantification is a powerful tool, selectively employed,
but too often it has been made into an executioner's axe to deny actuality to all that does not yield to its
procrustean demands.
The objectivist view of psychology is very like the precolumbiam view of the world: It regards all
that is not familiar as dangerous, mythical, or nonexistent. The whole western hemisphere of human
life, the subjective, is thus feared, treated as illusory, or denied. (I use this term, subjective, to refer to
the whole' 'internal" or personal realm of experiencing.) Such subjective or experiential processes as
values, purpose, ideals, intention, dreams, fantasy, love, courage, and dread are reduced to epi
phenomena by the radical objective view. (Strange that those who so vigilantly-and often
ruthlessly-advance this myopic view seldom note their own subjective processes!)
In this vein, it is worth remembering the words of Paul Tillich: " 'Man resists objectification, and
ifman'sresistance is broken, man himself is broken" (1951, p. 98). Clearly, the very essence of being
human is the capacity for subjectivity, for inner living, inner experiencing, and inner intending.
In the 1950s, the effort to model psychology on nineteenth century physical science came
increasingly to dominate academic and research centers. Yet in consulting rooms there was a less
visible but growing counterforce: the movement of psychologists from preoccupation with testing into
the practice of psychotherapy. Thus the experience component of our field was being kept alive.
The cultural revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s brought further attention to emotional
responses, fantasy, and consciousness (especially its altered states). These are, of course, subjective
experiences, and so the way was prepared for the reentry of the exiled dimension of life.
Today we are beginning to emerge from what is, in the long view, a relatively brief interregnum
of radical positivism and its consort, psychological behaviorism (Bugental, 1975-1976). The
emergence is certainly far from complete, and many academic citadels are still occupied by those who
doggedly seek to produce a science in the model of an earlier century's notion of physics. Still the
recognition that this is a truncated and distorting perspective is gaining ground steadily.
It is astonishing to see a well-known objectivist researcher forced to attack caricatures of view
points that value inner experiencing in an. effort to excuse the paucity of results from his or her own
orientation-one that rejects all but overt behavior (Skinner, 1987). Still it is instructive to observe
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x FOREWORD
how feeble a psychology becomes when it tries to deny human inner life. Behaviorists so readily slide
into an objective-subjective dichotomy that smacks of the good-evil preachments of fundamentalist
religionists!
More can be learned about this change by comparing the contents of this book with an earlier,
related volume. A clear evidence of the renewal of concern with internal processes was the 1978
publication of Existential-Phenomenological Alternativesfor Psychology (Valle & King). A decade
has passed since then, and the title of the present volume is Existential-Phenomenological Perspec
tives in Psychology. The difference between alternativesfor and perspectives in signals a significant
evolution in our discipline. No longer is the existential-phenomenological perspective an outsider
that may optionally be considered. It has become a recognized view in psychology-a development to
which that earlier volume significantly contributed.
Looking back again, we need to note that 30 years ago Rollo May's Existence burst on the
psychotherapy scene with an impact that caused many to reexamine, and a number to open, their
conceptual frameworks (no small achievement that!). For me and for others, May's words spoke to
what we were daily experiencing in our consulting rooms but what seemed to be blind spots in the
dominant literature of the psychoanalysts and behaviorists. (Rogerian thinking had been helpful but
too incomplete and light-sided for the deeper, more tragic and destructive material into which our
work took us.)
The 20 years between Existence and the first of the two books I compared before saw the rise of
many psychotherapeutic schools and systems. Though they shared little else, many of these neces
sarily gave priority to the subjective realm. While psychoanalysis and behaviorism, essentially efforts
to objectify human beings, largely dominated the field, this earlier book marshaled the evidence of the
consulting room to support the appropriateness of the more subjective perspective.
Change continues, of course, and so our conception ofthe subjective realm has grown as well. A
significant portion of the 1978 volume was given to six existential therapists. An almost equal portion
is now given to the developing field of transpersonal psychology-a topic not even listed earlier in
either the table of contents or the index. Clearly, experience, in all its myriad fonns, is an important
area of psychology again.
What does it mean to be concerned with experience as contrasted with behavior? It means to
attend to the person as a subject rather than an object. It means to recognize that this subject is indeed a
source of what is actual and not solely the receptacle of contingency. It means to affinn that the human
is a different order of phenomenon than any other. It means that the hope of an objective impersonal
science is revealed as vain, partial, and self-defeating.
Many years ago, Franz Kafka pointed out a primary difference between an object and a
person-to understand why a stone rolls down a hill, we must look to see what force loosened it from
its place at the top, but to see why a person climbs the hill, we must discover what that person seeks at
the top. It is the contrast between causation and intention that distinguishes the subjective or experien
tial realm.
Because humans are physical objects in part, we are subject to gravity as are all objects.
However, because we are not only objects, we can also make gravity subject to our intent. Thus
although the law of gravity has not been repealed-we are able to use its force to send our kind to the
moon, to send a probe through and beyond our solar system.
The key to this more-than-objective nature of the human lies in our reflexive awareness. The
sunflower is aware-but probably not conscious-as it follows its lord across the sky. The deer is
aware as it evades the hunter, and it is conscious is some measure. But the human-when most truly
human-is not only aware but aware of being aware. This throws wild cards into the deck and
provides a powerful counterforce to contingency.
Narrow scientistic psychology has had to deny the reality of reflexive awareness. It simply would
ruin most research designs. Similarly, the human "organism" must usually be treated as though it is
empty and inert until the experimenter "stimulates" it. The fact that a person is a process, always
intending, always evolving, and continually observing and reinterpreting what is going on puts
persons quite completely outside of the range of anything like adequate experimental controls. So the
FOREWORD xi
experimentalist prefers to pretend none of this is true, and in the laboratory reduces the human to an
object.
In the ecology of our world, human beings playa unique and important part: We are-so far as
we know-the only creatures to be aware of being aware. This is the miraculous quality of our
subjectivity. From this gift (which can often seem a curse) come our capacities to have intentions, to
reinterpret experience, to bring into being newness, and to create/discover meaning. The universe is
not meaningless, for we are part of the universe and we are the meaning creators.
Subjectivity, inner experiencing, the essence of being human, demand that we take account of
experience. Only in that neglected realm can we come to grips with the great issues of our lives. The
neglect has resulted in our understanding of ourselves falling far behind our understanding of the
physical world. We must mobilize all our potential if we are to prevent that discrepancy from
destroying us all. It is to this task that this book contributes as it celebrates the subjective with skill,
breadth of vision, and wisdom.
REFERENCES
Bugental, J. F. T. (1975-1976). Toward a subjective psychology: Tribute to Charlotte Buhler. Interpersonal
Development, 6, 48-61.
Skinner, B. F. (1987). Whatever happened to psychology as the science of behavior? American Psychologist. 42.
780-786.
Tillich, P. (1951). Systematic theology (Vol. I). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Valle, R. S., & King, M. (Eds.). (1978). Existential-phenomenological alternatives/or psychology. New York:
Oxford U ni versity Press.
James F. T. Bugental
Novato, California
Preface
If my heart could do my thinking
And my head begin to feel,
I would look upon the world anew
And know what's truly real.
-Van Morrison
This volume is both a new book and a revised version of Existential-Phenomenological Alternatives
for Psychology (Valle & King, editors), published in 1978 by Oxford University Press. Twelve of the
20 chapters contained herein are completely new, and the 8 chapters retained from the original have
been updated and substantially revised. Plenum Press is now the publisher, a section on transpersonal
psychology has been added, and one of the editors, Steen Halling, is new to this project.
Even with these substantial changes, however, the book's basic format remains much the same,
as does the impetus behind the book's development. Our aim is to provide a unified and accessible
presentation of the existential-phenomenological approach to a wide range of topics in psychology
that may be helpful to students as well as our colleagues. It is as true today as it was in 1978 that there
are few, if any, psychology texts that provide a comprehensive overview of this approach at an
introductory level (i.e., one that does not assume prior knowledge of existential phenomenology). In
terms of its content, this book addresses many of the standard topics in psychology (e.g., research,
perception, learning, development, personality, social psychology, psychopathology, and psycho
therapy) from an existential-phenomenological perspective. In addition, there are chapters address
ing issues central to human life (i.e., forgiveness, the passions, aesthetic consciousness, and spiritual
awareness) that have received little if any systematic attention in mainstream psychology.
Since 1978, the existential-phenomenological approach has gained much ground and has be
come an increasingly significant and accepted force in most psychological circles. We have chosen
the word perspectives (rather than alternatives) for this book's title to acknowledge this growth and
reflect the nature of this change in our field. Signs of this development include the greater number of
presentations on existential-phenomenology and related topics at the annual convention of the Ameri
can Psychological Association; articles that present and discuss the existential-phenomenological
approach in the APA 's principal journal, American Psychologist .. the existence of at least four journals
in North America that focus on phenomenology (the Journal of Phenomenological Psychology,
Methods, Phenomenology and Pedagogy, and the Review of Existential Psychiatry and Psychology);
and the continued success of professional gatherings such as the International Human Science Re
search Conference (held annually since 1982). In addition, discussions of existential phenomenology
are more common (even if often less than adequate) in textbooks for courses in abnormal, social,
developmental, and introductory psychology.
Even with this increased visibility, however, misunderstandings of existential-phenomenolog
ical psychology continue to abound. The discussions in textbooks are seldom written by scholars with
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