Humanistic and Positive Psychologies: The Continuing Narrative After Two Decades

Abstract

Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi launched the “positive” psychology movement with a conspicuously negative strategy: the seemingly deliberate character assassination of humanistic psychology. Their critical remarks, not at all original, appeared designed to distance positive psychology from humanistic psychology and (ironically) to paint a portrait of positive psychology as being more original than it really was. Seligman has since apologized for disparaging humanistic psychology, and this article assesses both the content of that apology and its value in the ongoing discussion concerning the relationship between humanistic and positive psychologies. The apology was found to be superficial and laced with more extensive explicit and implicit negative assessments of humanistic psychology. These assessments were found to range from theoretically biased partial truths to completely unfounded claims, all unworthy of scientific discourse and in need of fact checking. The unabated dissemination of these arguably damning and unsubstantiated views is framed in terms of van Kaam’s observations concerning the collectivist leanings of postindustrial psychological science, which fly in the face of the humanistic revolution.