486 Ethnic Minorities
They rule out independent volition and choice as important
contributors to behavior. It should be noted, however, that the
humanistic view is seen as complementing and extending
rather than replacing mechanistic frameworks. For the hu-
manist, the latter views are seen as incomplete as ways of
accounting for human experience. This is because the exercise
of choice and the conceptions guiding these choices are often
not always apparent from the external observer’s view of a
given set of behaviors.
This is illustrated in a passage from the opening pages of
Ellison’s important American novel,Invisible Man(1952). A
family is gathered around the deathbed of an old southern
Black man. In his dying words to his son the man says, “I
want you to overcome ’em with yeses, undermine ’em with
grins, agree ’em to death and destruction.” The family was
stunned. “They thought the old man had gone out of his mind.
He had been the meekest of men” (pp. 19–20, italics added).
Obviously this man was advocating, among other things,
lulling his white bosses into complacency in the hope that
their system would deteriorate and blacks would then be free
of it. His underlying intent—an intent which kept him
going—was hostile, quite at variance with his superficially
obsequious manner. In addition, referring back to our earlier
discussion of meaning, this old man had taken a “dialectic”
perspective on his situation throughout his life without any-
one being quite aware of it, and he was now advocating such
a view explicitly to his family. That is to say, recognizing
fully the nature of his oppressive circumstances, this old man
had acted one way, but at the same time he had quite the op-
posite mental perspective on the racial situation. This was his
way of sustaining his human qualities “despite and in rejec-
tion of the obstacles and meannesses” that had been imposed
upon him. And he was urgently trying to pass that strategy on
to his family as a part of his legacy.
Thus, we cannot understand this man’s behavior unless we
take an “introspective” or “first-person” view. And so it is
with African Americans: If we are to have “true to life” psy-
chological descriptions, in addition to our more “objective”
descriptions, we must learn to conceptualize and align our-
selves with the inner worlds—the subjectivity—of people of
color if our theory and practice is to be relevant to their expe-
rience. This is the opportunity that the “fresh winds” in psy-
chology have brought us—the possibility of including into
our discipline a more proactive conception of the human
being that will contribute to the understanding and advance-
ment of people in all of their plurality.CONFRONTATIONS AND CHANGEGEORGE W. ALBEEOpportunities in psychology were slim for African American,
Hispanic American, Asian American, Native American, and
other minorities, before the middle of the twentieth century.
Since its founding in 1892, American psychology had al-
ways been a white, male, experimentally-oriented academic
discipline. Its association, the American Psychological Asso-
ciation (APA), was run by presidents, boards, and council
members from Academe and non-academic applied psychol-
ogists were not numerous. Most of those calling themselves
“clinical psychologists” worked in schools and, occasionally,
in state mental hospitals and in institutions for the retarded
and epileptic.
Doctoral programs in psychology supplied new (white
male) faculty members for universities as replacements
were needed. Recruitment involved an “Old Boy” system of
phone calls to colleagues. Jobs in universities were rarely ad-
vertised. College jobs often asked for “Christian gentlemen”
candidates (see “Positions Available” in the early years of the
American Psychologist). Psychology was a laboratory sci-
ence before World War II and not particularly popular with
undergraduates. Then World War II suddenly created a
demand for people with skills in testing, personnel classifica-
tion, and clinical interventions. These demands were multi-
plied after the war when many of the millions of veterans
were in need of treatment for “mental disorders.” I have told
this story in some detail (Albee, 1998). The post-war explo-
sion in numbers of clinical psychologist occurred in a context
of medical domination and the insistence by psychiatry on
the established medical model and traditional treatment in
medical-psychiatric clinics and hospitals.
Between 1920 and 1966, the 10 most prestigious depart-
ments of psychology in the United States awarded just eight
PhDs in psychology to Negro [sic] candidates while confer-
ring 3,767 doctorates. Six of these 10 departments had not
had a single Negro PhD. Of all programs, fewer than 1% of
the doctorates were awarded to minorities (Albee, 1969).