DEBATE

Is psychoanalysis humanistic?A correspondence between John Rowan and Bob Hinshelwood

[This is a recent correspondence between John Rowan of the Association of Humanistic Psychologyand the Editor of the Journal, which comes out of a slipshod comment in one of the recent editorials -Ed.]

Dear Bob HinshelwoodI was amazed in a recent issue of the Journal (Winter 1987) to see your editorial statement:`... psycho-analytic theory is not the only framework for thinking about our work, yet it isthe only framework that derives from the study of human beings'.

This seems to deny the existence of humanistic psychotherapy. And in the rest of theeditorial this denial is repeated in that there are copious mentions of learning theory,objective science, non-human research, the medical and pharmacological approach and soon, but no mention of humanistic psychology.

Yet you have published a paper by me which was nothing to do with psycho-analysisand was purely humanistic so you must know that the humanistic approach exists. Youmention the Rugby Conference so you must know that the humanistic contingent there isquite active and vocal, and second in size to the psycho-analytic contingent.

Where does humanistic psychology come from? In the early days one man was thepioneer of this way of looking at the world: Abraham Maslow. Later the movement he hadstarted was joined by others such as Carl Rogers, Charlotte Buhler, Roberto Assagioli,Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, Kurt Goldstein, Sidney Jourard, Rollo May, Clark Moustakas,Ira Progoff, Alvin Mahrer, Jean Houston, Charles Hampden-Turner, David Boadella andothers.

Carl Rogers does not owe his origins or his theories to psycho-analysis, and neither didAbraham Maslow. Yet these two founding fathers of humanistic psychology have beenquoted and analysed and examined in university courses, psychotherapy courses, institutesand centres all over the world, and honoured by many accolades from people in psychologyand psychotherapy as having made extremely valuable contributions. For example, theyhave both been elected president of the American Psychological Association at differenttimes.

Jacob Moreno had nothing to do with psycho-analysis, yet his development ofpsychodrama contributed one of the most useful ways of working with groups and hismethods are now being approached with great interest by some psycho-analysts.

Fritz Perls, the originator of gestalt therapy - a very popular and well-developeddiscipline - did start out from psycho-analysis, but his main relationship with it was alwaysa negative one, and gestalt therapy does not refer to or depend on psychoanalysis. AlvinMahrer, who has probably made the biggest contribution to humanistic theory sinceMaslow, hardly mentions psycho-analytic ideas and is mainly inspired by existentialistphilosophy; his humanistic psychodynamics are both simpler and potentially deeper thanthe older and more well-known psycho-analytic versions. David Boadella in this countryhas made a very important contribution in synthesising the various body-work approachesso central to humanistic psychotherapy, and showing how effective this approach can he inactually dealing with people's problems;

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this work does derive from a psycho-analyst (Wilhelm Reich) but goes beyond it in itsdevotion to the body. Roberto Assagioli contributed a spiritual aspect to the work whichagain takes off from an analyst (Carl Jung) but goes further and is perhaps more effectiveas well as deeper.

This is not to mention the offerings of people like Frank Lake, Stan Grof and BillSwartley, who took psycho-analytic theory very seriously, and then proceeded to take itfurther than the psycho-analysts ever intended and certainly further than most of them feelcomfortable with. If Klein and the object-relations school take experience back to the firstmonths, after birth, these people take experience back to birth itself and life in the wombbefore birth. We can not only have `bad breast' experiences - we can have `bad womb'experiences too, which are just as common. The whole field of birth is quite fascinating,and so much data is coming out now from international conferences on pre- and peri-natalpsychology, all showing that birth is a consciously experienced process, that no-one isgoing to be able to ignore it much longer. And as a review of Grof in the same issue says,those who have taken the trouble to go into this matter for themselves have found that as aresult a huge and deeply relevant area of work is opened up. What the review does notmake clear is that psychotherapy naturally goes into this area as soon as clients arepermitted to do it, and that LSD or hypnotism are not at all necessary.

This is not the place to argue the various merits and demerits of the humanisticapproach, but simply to place on record the fact that it does exist, it does have a great dealto say about psychotherapy, and much of it is not dependent on or derived frompsychoanalysis. Please do not try to ignore it or deny its existence.Yours sincerely

John Rowan

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Dear John RowanI think it must obviously be true that `humanistic psychology' derives from working

with human beings. I have wondered about humanistic psychology and where it comeswithin the multi-dimensional field of psychotherapy - and indeed your own article in theJournal (Summer 1985) was an interesting attempt to define the field of psychotherapies.My hesitancy in retracting completely the phrase that you complain about is that I am notsure that you are altogether correct in implying such a radical division between psycho-analysis and humanistic psychotherapy.

The act of appropriating the term `humanistic' for one sector only of psychotherapy isitself a little provocative - it tends to imply that other psychotherapies are inhuman! I don'tsuppose you really intend to convey that, although the term `humanistic psychology' did, Ithink, grow up in opposition to forms of psychology that were probably less humane. Iwrite out of ignorance but my impression is that humanistic psychotherapy arose as amovement in the United States and in opposition to the psycho-analytic establishmentthere, which has over the decades been profoundly influenced by the mechanistic forms ofpsychology, particularly behaviourism. In that context a move towards a more humaneattitude was entirely appropriate, and to some extent psycho-analysis in the United Stateshas taken the point (the attempt to develop a psychology of the self, for instance; andBettelheim's Freud and Man's Soul). It has seemed to me that this development of anopposition has, typically for oppositional

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movements, taken much of its character from what it is in opposition to; either byabsorption of certain psycho-analytic concepts without really noticing, or the absorption ofthe opposites of certain other psycho-analytic concepts.

I am therefore of the view, formed in the midst of a considerable ignorance, that thedevelopment of the humanistic psychology movement was exactly fashioned in many of itsaspects by psycho-analysis.

Now, when we come to this country, psycho-analysis as you may know is not at all likepsycho-analysis in the United States. The character of the British schools of psycho-analysis (like many of the Continental ones) is deeply humanistic and is concerned withthe struggling human being, and has left behind all the mechanistic trappings that Freud'snineteenth-century background encumbered him with. You may know that for some yearsthere has been an active committee working in the British PsychoAnalytical Society to re-translate the Standard Edition of Freud, to eliminate the mechanical and impersonalterminology that crept into the original translation in the 1940's. With a humanistic style topsycho-analysis in this country, humanistic psychology from the United States issomething of an import that is rather out of context. The opposition between psycho-analysis and humanistic psychology has so much less relevance over here.

The relatively weak tension in this opposition in this country, and the tendency ofmany forms of humanistic psychology to use psycho-analytically related concepts, makes itvery much more difficult to distinguish humanistic from other psychoanalytically derivedforms of psychotherapy. It is indeed true that humanistic psychology does embody ideasthat do not come from psycho-analysis, nevertheless I am of the impression that such ideasare absorbed, and thoroughly moulded by, the European psycho-analytic way of thinking.

What would Moreno's psychodrama be now if the ideas of the unconscious, projection,and object-relations etc., had not become part of the general psychotherapeuticbackground thinking? It is even more true of all those psychologies you mention that haveclearly derived from psycho-analysts but which have departed from the main stream -Perls, Reich, Jung - people who were clearly formed in the mould originally.Yours sincerely

Bob Hinshelwood

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Dear BobI agree with you that psycho-analysis in this country is not as reactionary as it is in the

States, but it is still very conservative. You have only to scratch the surface to find thatattitudes are quite hard and unshakable in spite of a surface appearance of softness andbonhomie. There is still a big contrast in other words between humanistic psychology andthe psycho-analytic approach, in spite of the greater flexibility of the British schools.

And this difference has to do with the origins of the two orientations. In myencyclopaedia article on humanistic psychology (in The Encyclopaedic Dictionary ofPsychology, Rom Harre and Roger Lamb (eds), Oxford: Basil Blackwell), I say that itemerged from the confluence of ten different streams: Lewin's group dynamics; Maslow'sself-actualisation; Rogers's person-centred approach; Reich's emphasis on

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the body; Existentialism, particularly through Perls and Laing; the experience of mind-expanding drugs; Zen; Taoism; Tantra; and the whole idea of peak experiences asrevelatory. Now we could argue about the details of this, but surely it is obvious that theseare very different origins from those of the psycho-analytic schools?

Also the practice is very different. I have just brought out a booklet on the humanisticapproach, which includes amongst other things sections on: the personcentred approach;gestalt awareness; encounter; co-counselling; drama approaches; body work; primalintegration; transpersonal approaches; dream work; feminist therapy; humanisticeducation; humanistic management; humanistic research. Surely you can't maintain thatmuch of this is `absorbed into, and thoroughly moulded by, the European psycho-analyticway of thinking'?

You ask a rhetorical question as to what Moreno's psychodrama would be now if theideas of the unconscious, projection, object-relations, etc., had not become part of ourbackground thinking. The answer is that it would be just what it always was - anindependent invention. In fact, one of the greatest problems for Moreno was that psycho-analysts kept on stealing his ideas and claiming them as their own. It was he, for example,who developed the idea, and the name, of group psychotherapy which people like Slavsonand Foulkes later claimed to have invented.

I don't want to make this reply too long, but I think this is sufficient to show thathumanistic psychology is a genuinely different tradition from psycho-analysis and does notdepend on it in any substantial degree.Yours sincerely

John

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Dear John,My view about psychoanalysis is not just that it is more flexible in this country than in

the United States, but that it is humanistic here whereas in the United States it istechnological. My own view is that it is to do with the relations with the dominant techno-commercial culture; in the USA psycho-analysis is very much part of that dominantculture (or has been) and has contributed a view of mankind that fits the technologicalperspective. In this sense I think the humanistic project is quite right. It is merely that inthis country psycho-analysis has never been identified with the dominant culture - thenearest it got was a tangential contact with the Bloomsbury group in the 1920's and 1930's.Consequently psycho-analysis has been pushed into a more oppositional enclave withinthe culture at large. With the development of the `alternative society' in the 1960's and itsderivatives since, psycho-analysis should be more open to the increasing numbers of `alternatives'. It may be true that many psycho-analysts are behind the times and do not seethese cultural developments in our society, but it is no reason to set up an opposition topsycho-analysts as dyed-in-the-wool conservatives.

In my view because of the central importance of psycho-analysis - as a counterculture- the ideas have deeply influenced the way we think about ourselves as human beings; andthis may be as technological systems or as struggling human beings. Psycho-analysis iscapable of supporting both versions. The point is that unconscious determinants of ourexperiences and actions, transferences to 'mother-figures' and 'father-figures' and manyother ideas are now general currency, imported into the common culture and also intohumanistic psychology.

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Incidentally, as to the Eastern philosophers, is it not true that they have been mined bypsychotherapists and psychologists for just those aspects which will fit and express currentWestern preoccupations (now suffused in my view with the influence of a century ofpsycho-analytic ideas)? On the whole there seems to be a cloudy view of what the needsare for a humanistic psychology in the West. To throw out psycho-analytic thoughtbecause the people who practise it appear conservative is not going to promote clarity ofthought about our intellectual inheritance. To import fragments of alien Easternphilosophies (most of them, incidentally, anti-humanist in original character), merelybecause they are alien, is not in the best traditions of academic work. It is these emotiveand rivalrous aspects of the debate which make me uneasy about stirring up anoppositional view. In fact the differences that exist between psycho-analysis andhumanistic psychology are so embedded in our common roots in Western culture that wedo violence to each of our traditions by pretending to such fervent independence from eachother.

The human and the technological trends in Western society have given rise to acultural strain between them since mediaeval theology crumbled and the Cartesian agebegan. We cannot neglect the fact that psychology is the vulnerable spot in the outlook ofour age since the Renaissance; and we cannot fudge it over with therapeutic stickingplasters taken from extraneous philosophical systems. All of us who engage in helpingpeople are driven by a humanistic endeavour, and all of us who practise a technique,psycho-analyst or humanistic psychotherapist, are caught in our own technological spider'sweb. There is a real problem in this divide, and we should join together to peer over theedge into it.

Clearly these things would take a long and interesting correspondence to sort outbetween us, but I think it may be better to broaden it out for comment from other readers. Ithink that if you agree I would like to put together these letters for a small section in one ofthe issues. It would be nice, and perhaps quite important, to have wider views about thistopic.Your sincerely

Bob Hinshelwood

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Dear BobIn your letter you seem to make three main points: one that psycho-analysis in this

country is a human discipline as distinguished from a technological one, and that thereforeit comes into the same bracket as humanistic psychology; two, that Eastern philosophy isnot needed and not wanted; and three, that it would be wrong to throw out psycho-analyticthought because the people who practise it appear conservative.

Let us dispose of the third one immediately. I am not contending, and have nevercontended, that we should throw out psycho-analytic thought. My own book The RealityGame has more entries in the index for Freud than any other person. Obviously Westernculture in general, and humanistic psychology in particular, owes a great deal to Freud interms of general background understanding of what human beings are like. We can nevergo back to a pre-Freudian understanding of these matters because the Freudian shift is anhistorical change which has affected all of us in one way or another. All I am contendingfor is that some of' the most important roots of humanistic

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psychotherapy are independent of, rather than dependent upon, psycho-analysis and thatmuch of its content would be disowned by psycho-analysis.

Your second point rather confirms this, because you are contending for a blanketdismissal of Eastern philosophy. This is just one example of how psycho-analysts mayoften disown what is important to humanistic psychology. In my book Ordinary Ecstasy Idescribe at some length the contributions of Zen, Tao (or Dao, as we should saynowadays) and Tantra, and all three seem to have influenced humanistic psychology quiteimportantly. Whether these things are anti-humanist as you seem to be suggesting seemsopen to question. Certainly Erich Fromm would not agree with you about Zen, and Tantrahas recently been looked upon with some favour by feminists like Barbara Walker. Jungmentions Taoism with approval every now and then, and so does Heidegger on theexistentialist side. My view would be that some of this stuff has become just as much apart of the common culture as Freud himself has.

And this brings us back to the first of the points you make. It may well be the case, asyou say, that in this country psycho-analysis is not the same as it is in the States. Withoutknowing too much about it I would be prepared to grant that the two things aresignificantly different. But even so, I do not think that puts psycho-analysis andhumanistic psychotherapy into the same bracket so far as this country is concerned. It issometimes said that `My enemy's enemy is my friend', but this is not always the case andcertainly does not logically have to be the case. The two things are different in origin,different in spirit and different in practice. Consequently I do not agree that humanisticpsychotherapy can be reduced to a version of, or an offshoot from, or a child of psycho-analysis. It is an independent tradition, with its own advantages and disadvantages, itsown good points and failings, its own strengths and weaknesses, in all cases different fromthose of psycho-analysis.

Let me finish by putting this question to you. If we said that the relationship betweenpsycho-analysis and humanistic psychotherapy in this country could be described in termsof a Venn diagram of the logical overlap of sets, how big do you think the overlap wouldbe? My own feeling is that the overlap would be neither tiny not huge, but quite modest insize. Peculiar to psycho-analysis would be things like the id, the central importance of thetransference, the abstinence rule, the rule of free association and so on; the overlap wouldinclude things like projection, the importance of countertransference, emphasis on thetherapeutic alliance, use of therapy for the therapist and so on; and peculiar to humanisticpsychotherapy would be things like emphasis on the body, a holistic approach, activeinterventions, touching the client and so on. If you had to draw a similar diagram, wouldyou really put the humanistic circle inside the psycho-analytic one? That is really whatyou seem to be suggesting more than once. What would your diagram look like?

All best wishes

John

[Well ... if you have read this far, now let us have your views, Venn diagrams, or simply B's' fromyour bonnets - Ed.]