Critical Perspectives on Personality and Subjectivity 193were inconsistent with the conservative methodology of behaviorism and
the conservative theory of psychoanalysis” (p. 45).
Buss contends, similarly to Pavón-Cuéllar and Orozco Guzmán, that
Behaviorism and Psychoanalysis hypostasized the social contradictions
informing their genesis within their theories, which had the undesirable
effect of perpetuating these social contradictions under the guise of a
universal theory of the human psyche or the science of (human) behavior.
Humanistic Psychology reacted to Psychoanalysis and Behaviorism with a
liberal and even radical response—the proposition of the inherent tendency
towards self-actualization—that nevertheless reflected social
contradictions particular to the United States during the 1940’s and 1950’s.
Buss argues that Maslow’s study of self-actualizing individuals who
could serve as models for a positive and inspiring vision of human
potential all demonstrated supposed psychological characteristics that
could be understood as reflecting not simply Western Individualistic values
but also particular political values—values that were consonant with liberal
ideology. What Maslow was describing was not a loose knit group of
individuals—the self-actualized 1%—but rather an elite social group
which had been recently theorized by social science. Buss describes how
during the 1940’s and 1950’s, the central assumption of democracy—that
the masses would naturally protect liberal values—was all but shattered by
the rise of totalitarian social movements across the globe. The clear
propensity of the masses to be swayed by the temptation of totalitarianism
suggested to some social theorists that only a ‘democratic elite’ could
effectively maintain liberal values and liberal political democracy. As Buss
(1979) summarizes:
Whereas earlier liberals had believed that liberal values such as
liberty, freedom, individual development, tolerance, and pluralism were
to be defended and preserved through increasing franchise and individual
rights, post-war liberals began to take the exact opposite view. Liberalism
was endangered by further democratization, and it needed a “power elite”
to safeguard its existence. (p. 50)