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Encountering America: Humanistic Psychology, Sixties Culture, and the Shaping of the Modern Self – Maslow, May, and the Movement That Revolutionized Therapy
A dramatic narrative history of the psychological movement that reshaped American culture-from the countercultural revolution of the 1960s through the Me Generation/New Age movements of the 1970s and beyond
The expectation that our careers and personal lives should be expressions of our authentic selves; the belief that our relationships should be defined by openness and understanding; the idea that therapy could help us reach our fullest potential-these ways of understanding our lives have insinuated themselves so deeply into the fabric of American culture and consciousness that it's impossible to imagine our world without them.
In Encountering America, cultural historian Jessica Grogan reveals how these ideas stormed the barricades of our culture through the humanistic psychology movement-the work of a handful of maverick psychologists who revolutionized American culture in the 1960s and '70s. Profiling this diverse and fascinating array of thought leaders-including Abraham Maslow, Rollo May and Timothy Leary-Grogan draws on volumes of untapped primary sources to explore how these minds and the changing cultural atmosphere of the '60s combined to create a widely influential movement. From the New Age culture of yoga and sensitivity training, to perennial American anxieties about wellness, identity, and purpose, Grogan insightfully traces how humanistic psychology continues to define the way we understand ourselves.
The expectation that our careers and personal lives should be expressions of our authentic selves; the belief that our relationships should be defined by openness and understanding; the idea that therapy could help us reach our fullest potential-these ways of understanding our lives have insinuated themselves so deeply into the fabric of American culture and consciousness that it's impossible to imagine our world without them.
In Encountering America, cultural historian Jessica Grogan reveals how these ideas stormed the barricades of our culture through the humanistic psychology movement-the work of a handful of maverick psychologists who revolutionized American culture in the 1960s and '70s. Profiling this diverse and fascinating array of thought leaders-including Abraham Maslow, Rollo May and Timothy Leary-Grogan draws on volumes of untapped primary sources to explore how these minds and the changing cultural atmosphere of the '60s combined to create a widely influential movement. From the New Age culture of yoga and sensitivity training, to perennial American anxieties about wellness, identity, and purpose, Grogan insightfully traces how humanistic psychology continues to define the way we understand ourselves.
- GenresPsychologyHistory
432 pages, Paperback
First published December 26, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 26, 2013
I read a lot of non-fiction books, love psychology (in fact it was one of my majors in college), and am quite interested in the 60s culture, so I thought this book would be a great fit for me. Unfortunately it's extremely dry, to the point where I couldn't even get through it. There were some interesting thoughts and tidbits when I could slog through a chapter, but in my opinion this author needs to work on developing her story-telling skills so the reader is interested in what's being described.
April 21, 2017
I looked twice at this book before deciding to buy it, partly because I didn't want to read a book in the self-help area or even about it. I eventually decided on it because of the historical examination of particular events and issues about which I knew varying amounts, or had experienced something of it, with qualifications.
Contrary to the somewhat droll general statement, still around in some quarters, that if you could remember the 60s you weren't really there (challenged somewhat by Keith Richards' autobiography), I do remember the 60s, being at school and at work in that period, but indulged minimally in its excesses, essentially avoiding haircuts (which I still do) and listening to related music (much of which I still have). Personal growth and encounter experiences came almost 20 years later, with a different flavour to the Dionisian events referred to in this text.
They were in another country of course, but there were copyists here in a particular respect, as far as I can work out. Certainly people spoke of and had access to, the various drugs mentioned here. Her main characters are Abtaham Maslow, Carl Rogers and Rollo May, as well as people associated with Esalen, the retreat of sorts on the California coast, still spoken of with reverence by a couple of lecturers in a course on organisational behaviour I completed in the late 1980s.
In this course some of the group techniques were experienced, with the same criticisms made as here by those who considered them not sufficiently ethically monitored, thus putting participants at extreme psychological risk. I wasn't a complainer, but thought the criticisms made quite valid.
Jessica Grogan examines the construct of psychological health, personal growth, and the founding of humanistic psychology in the context of the American society of the 1950s and 1960s. Maslow is at the centre of the earlier narrative, as is Rogers. Interestingly both are presented as being concerned with psychology as a science and wishing to change its focus to a positive approach to human beings, rather than the then pathological approach, an ongoing argument, I think.
Curiously, the criticisms voiced by these men mirror the criticisms made by Martin Seligman in the late 1990s, on the way to founding his positive psychology and in the process harshly criticising humanistic psychology for being non-scientific. I'm not a fan of Seligman for various reasons, from his ad hominem approach to poor research in areas such as history and culture and interestingly you can talk to people who use positive psychology who have never heard of him, but know Maslow; some don't appear to know either. At any rate, Grogan astutely comments on Seligman near the end of her book.
An interesting aspect of the period under examination is the overwhelming use of ideas and techniques from American sources, and I include here American citizens who emigrated from Europe. Unlike my experience here 20 years later, C.G. Jung doesn't appear relevant, either as a source of ideas for the main protagonists or regarding direct method. There may be evidence to the contrary, but it's not presented here.
What's also interesting is the wide variety of perspectives and techniques gathered under the same umbrella, some appearing mutually contradictory, as is the growing use of psychedelic and other drugs, notably at Esalen and the associated hedonism. Other texts have demonstrated that the "free love" of the time was still very much patriarchal in character, or at least in the interests of men; people may dress differently at various times, but that says nothing about their presumptions and principles. This movement wasn't exactly a women's movement.
An interesting aspect the author brings out is the racial divide. The movements in question were white and middle-class, as is the self-help movement today, I would suggest. Middle-class black people didn't look at what was on offer in the same way, and in mixed groups found their experience as blacks in a white-dominated society gathered little acceptance or appreciation. A call for humans to be the context, not black or white didn't help things in that regard.
This is an important issue today in that the equality of people as human beings can be obvious (to me, anyway) but it doesn't mean that power arrangements are automatically equal, or that members of particular groups haven't experienced what is obvious discrimination, or that adaptation to the prevailing culture is as simple as flicking a switch.
In the movement examined here, as well as in current experience, there's an element of "be like me' , as though that's the aim of living in a particular place and time, and in many ways, that's the paradox of those places where some seek to find themselves and think, unconsciously or otherwise, that others should naturally follow, and not understand when people go somewhere else, or stay where they are. It's a complex area, anyway.
This book is well-written and researched, sometimes quite witty. I haven't given it the full marks because there's something missing, something small, but it may have to do with my relationship to the topic.
Contrary to the somewhat droll general statement, still around in some quarters, that if you could remember the 60s you weren't really there (challenged somewhat by Keith Richards' autobiography), I do remember the 60s, being at school and at work in that period, but indulged minimally in its excesses, essentially avoiding haircuts (which I still do) and listening to related music (much of which I still have). Personal growth and encounter experiences came almost 20 years later, with a different flavour to the Dionisian events referred to in this text.
They were in another country of course, but there were copyists here in a particular respect, as far as I can work out. Certainly people spoke of and had access to, the various drugs mentioned here. Her main characters are Abtaham Maslow, Carl Rogers and Rollo May, as well as people associated with Esalen, the retreat of sorts on the California coast, still spoken of with reverence by a couple of lecturers in a course on organisational behaviour I completed in the late 1980s.
In this course some of the group techniques were experienced, with the same criticisms made as here by those who considered them not sufficiently ethically monitored, thus putting participants at extreme psychological risk. I wasn't a complainer, but thought the criticisms made quite valid.
Jessica Grogan examines the construct of psychological health, personal growth, and the founding of humanistic psychology in the context of the American society of the 1950s and 1960s. Maslow is at the centre of the earlier narrative, as is Rogers. Interestingly both are presented as being concerned with psychology as a science and wishing to change its focus to a positive approach to human beings, rather than the then pathological approach, an ongoing argument, I think.
Curiously, the criticisms voiced by these men mirror the criticisms made by Martin Seligman in the late 1990s, on the way to founding his positive psychology and in the process harshly criticising humanistic psychology for being non-scientific. I'm not a fan of Seligman for various reasons, from his ad hominem approach to poor research in areas such as history and culture and interestingly you can talk to people who use positive psychology who have never heard of him, but know Maslow; some don't appear to know either. At any rate, Grogan astutely comments on Seligman near the end of her book.
An interesting aspect of the period under examination is the overwhelming use of ideas and techniques from American sources, and I include here American citizens who emigrated from Europe. Unlike my experience here 20 years later, C.G. Jung doesn't appear relevant, either as a source of ideas for the main protagonists or regarding direct method. There may be evidence to the contrary, but it's not presented here.
What's also interesting is the wide variety of perspectives and techniques gathered under the same umbrella, some appearing mutually contradictory, as is the growing use of psychedelic and other drugs, notably at Esalen and the associated hedonism. Other texts have demonstrated that the "free love" of the time was still very much patriarchal in character, or at least in the interests of men; people may dress differently at various times, but that says nothing about their presumptions and principles. This movement wasn't exactly a women's movement.
An interesting aspect the author brings out is the racial divide. The movements in question were white and middle-class, as is the self-help movement today, I would suggest. Middle-class black people didn't look at what was on offer in the same way, and in mixed groups found their experience as blacks in a white-dominated society gathered little acceptance or appreciation. A call for humans to be the context, not black or white didn't help things in that regard.
This is an important issue today in that the equality of people as human beings can be obvious (to me, anyway) but it doesn't mean that power arrangements are automatically equal, or that members of particular groups haven't experienced what is obvious discrimination, or that adaptation to the prevailing culture is as simple as flicking a switch.
In the movement examined here, as well as in current experience, there's an element of "be like me' , as though that's the aim of living in a particular place and time, and in many ways, that's the paradox of those places where some seek to find themselves and think, unconsciously or otherwise, that others should naturally follow, and not understand when people go somewhere else, or stay where they are. It's a complex area, anyway.
This book is well-written and researched, sometimes quite witty. I haven't given it the full marks because there's something missing, something small, but it may have to do with my relationship to the topic.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews