The Humanizing of Psychology 485A number of other psychologists were developing outlooks
with similar implications for the human image. Abraham
Maslow (1968) is familiar to us as one who stressed the need
for a “third force” in psychological theory which would sys-
tematically acknowledge the importance of human strivings
for personal growth and self-realization and would supplement
the psychoanalytic and behaviorist positions. Of particular in-
terest to me was the work of Harvard psychologist, Robert
White, who also leveled a critique at both experimental and
psychoanalytic psychologies. He wrote, “Something important
is left out when we make drives the operating forces in animal
and human behavior (1959, p. 297).” To bring back what is
“left out,” White developed his view that organisms, partic-
ularly the higher mammals, strive for “competence” in their
efforts to interact “effectively” with their environments. As I
became more familiar with how these newer currents touched
various facets of psychology, I came to feel that such “human-
istic” perspectives, broadly defined, offered promise for gain-
ing a fuller grasp of the human personality in general. It also
seemed to me that such a framework would be more suitable
for capturing the functioning of African Americans as well.
The trend of thinking that is opposed to a mechanistic view has
been growing considerably in the last 15 years, well beyond
the earlier terms of this discourse (see, for example, Faulconer
& Williams, 1985; Howard & Conway, 1986; Martin &
Sugarman, 1999; Messer, Sass, & Woolfolk, 1988; Polking-
horne, 1990; Richardson, Fowers, & Guignon, 1999; Robin-
son, 1991; Rychlak, 1994].)
In my efforts to find a corrective to the traditional psycho-
logical view of the African American (Jenkins, 1995), I have
drawn on the extensive theoretical and empirical work of
Joseph Rychlak and his students (1968, 1994). His frame-
work, which he originally called a psychology of “rigorous
humanism,” furnishes a detailed conceptual perspective on
how persons are able to inject themselves into the “causal
process” of the world around. In Rychlak’s view, an agent is a
being who can behave so as to go along with, add to, oppose,
or disregard sociocultural and/or biological stimulations
(Rychlak, 1988). Key ideas that elucidate this definition are,
first, that subjectively held intentions and purposes are as im-
portant as “objective” environmental contingencies in gov-
erning the way people behave. It is in this way that the human
individual is an important causal force in his or her own life.
As we try to understand the intentions that contribute to an
individual’s actions, we necessarily take an “introspective”
point of view on that person’s life that is, a view from the
actor’sperspective. This is a “teleological” or “telic” perspec-
tive on human behavior because it emphasizes that human
behavior is always governed in part by the goal or end(telos)
the actor has in mind. A second elucidating point is that the
agent’s mentality is actively structuring, not simply passively
reactive, as it “comes at” experience. We actively organize
the world into meaningful units and then relate mentally to the
“reality” that we have constructed. “While ‘real’ external
reality may be presumed to exist independently of its appre-
hension, it cannot be known except symbolically—as part...
of psychic reality” (Edelson, 1971, p. 27). This is consistent
with recent “constructivist” approaches to knowledge
(Howard, 1991). Thus, people are very muchengagedin the
process of coping with the world.
Third, and of particular importance in this framework,
“dialectical” thinking, the innate capacity to imagine alterna-
tive or opposing conceptions of life situations, is frequently
used by people to guide their behavior. With this capacity,
people have an independent ability to determine the meaning
of a given situation. In principle, they can fashion concep-
tions of a situation that are contradictory to those given by the
tradition of a particular authority. This mode of thought sup-
plements the capacity that we also have to define our con-
structions of the world in straightforward and unambiguous
terms in order to negotiate our circumstances (what might
be called “demonstrative” modes of thought, in Aristotelian
terms). The point here is that African Americans have sur-
vived their oppressive history in the United States because
they have actively and intentionally brought to their lives
conceptions of their competence that have been at variance
with the judgments made of them by the majority society.
Let’s pursue this perspective a bit further and conclude
with an illustration. Traditional psychological analysis has
tried to identify the factors, such as biological drives or other
kinds of contingent considerations, that necessarilydeter-
mine behavior. The telic-humanistic perspective by contrast
is among those that argue that many human events happen
in a context of possibilityrather than necessity (Slife &
Williams, 1995). That is to say, from a psychological point of
view many situations in our lives, even from birth, are full of
potentialitiesfor action.This quality of open alternatives in experience demands that the
human being affirm some...meaning at the outset for the sake
of which behavior might then take place...[Affirmation is]
one of those active roles assigned to mind by humanists because
which...item of...experience is singled out for identification
is up to the individual and not to the environment. (Rychlak,
1988, p. 295)Such a conception highlights the place of choice and
responsibility in human action. By contrast, mechanistic
views try to account for behavior exclusively in terms of envi-
ronmental contingencies and/or constitutional drive factors.