"Giving up maleness": Abraham Maslow, masculinity, and the boundaries of psychology.

Abstract

Ian A . M . N icholsonS t. T hom as U niversityP sychology's boundaries consist of a netw ork of m ethods, categories, and institu-tional practices. S trategically important , these m arkers distinguis h the field fromcom m on sense and popular psychology . A lthough psychologists have attem pted todefine them selves in term s of natural science, gender considerations have also beenw oven into the fabric of the field. T his article exam ines psychology's genderidentity throug h a consideration of the career of A braham M aslow . T rained as anexperim entalist, M aslow is widel y know n for his attem pt to expand the discipline'sboundaries into hum anistic dom ains. H e w as convinced that psychology had be-com e too m asculine for its ow n good, yet he struggled to find a w ay to softenpsychology w ithout com pletely underm ining its rigorous foundation. H is w orkhighlights the connection betw een m asculinity and science and the difficulty ofredraw ing psychology's boundaries w ithout underm ining its credibility.In recent years, historians of psychology have becom e increasingly sensitiveto the w ays in whic h the discipline has been shaped by com petition from rivalform s of psychological know -how . L ike all academ ic disciplines, psychology hasm ade a series of claim s to a particular dom ain of expertise and , like other fields,its claim s have not gone uncontested. C om m on sense, popular psychology,spiritualism , and other academ ic fields have encroached on the discipline's claim sand threatened its professional authority, financial support, and institutionalrecognition (C oon, 1992; G ieryn, 1983; M oraw ski & H ornstein, 1991). T he fieldhas responded to these threats by constructing an intellectual and professionalboundary using the m ethods and language of natural science (B urnham , 1987;R om anyshyn, 1971; T oulm in & L eary, 1985). In so doing, psychologists haveendeavored to position them selves as objective observers of psychological naturew hile portraying their rivals as self-interested am ateurs m ired in custom andm ysticism .A lthough not entirely unsuccessful, the use of the idiom of natural science asa boundary has created difficulties for a discipline com m itted to exam ining thepsychological com plexities of hum an nature (A sh, 1992). T he pursuit of scientificobjectivity has often been done at the expense of hum an interest, and in the pastthe field has sacrificed a great deal of cultural ground to psychoanalysis, popular