Journal of Humanistic Psychology

Peace psychology has a history that is both long and prominent. However, that fact is little known and little appreciated, even among contemporary peace-activist psychologists. This article presents 17 brief biographies of psychologists who are part of this important heritage: Pythagoras, Jeremy Bentham, Franz Brentano, William James, August Forel, Ivan Pavlov, Sigmund Freud, James McKeen Cattell, Mary Whiton Calkins, Alexander Chamberlain, Alfred Adler, William McDougall, Edward Tolman, Gordon Allport, Gustav Ichheiser, Margaret Mead, and Charles Osgood.

In this article we present a comparison of the lives and work of Abraham Maslow, a founding father of humanistic psychology, and Heinz Kohut, the founding father of self psychology. While this comparison reveals certain predictable differences between these distinct leaders and their theoretical orientations, it also reveals surprising similarities in terms of their visions, their theories, and their lives. In addition, this comparison indicates that self psychology can provide an empirical bridge between humanistic psychology and modern psychoanalysis. This finding is particularly important at a time when the humanistic psychology community has identified the need to move away from ideology and to focus on humanistic psychology's empirical and clinical foundations, as one of its primary strategic challenges.

The person in the peak-experiences feels more integrated (unifiled, whole, all-of-a-piece), than at other times,... more integrated,... more harmoniously organized, more synergic,... In Roger's nice phrase, he feels "fully-functioning,"... responsible, active,... more creative.... (Maslow, 1968, pp. 104-108)

The successful end of the analysis... has been reached when the analysand's formally enfeebled or fragmented nuclear self... has become sufficiently strengthened and consolidated to be able to function as a more or less self-propelling, self-directed, and self-sustaining unit which provides a central purpose to his personality and gives a sense of meaning to his life. (Kohut, 1977, pp. 138-139)

This article examines people-police, soldiers, and others-whose institutional role it is in many societies to follow orders that, they know, will cause pain to others. As horrible as it is, evidence shows that most of these people-from Nazi war criminals and Greek military police serving the Greek junta of the 1970s to Uruguayan psychologist-torturers-were, in fact, "ordinary" individuals inflicting pain to achieve mundane goals of everyday lives. Why did they behave as they did? Milgram's theoretical model of obedience to authority, Bandura's psychological mechanisms to reduce strain, and Altemeyer's theory of right-wing authoritarianism, together, suggest that when individuals who are predisposed to obedience are placed in situations in which they are ordered to commit atrocious acts and in which the strain of committing these acts is systematically reduced through training, the likelihood increases that they will become inflictors of pain. Evidence available throughout the world shows that these psychological principles are part-and-parcel of training of military torturers and that mentally normal people can be successfully trained for this horrendous profession. Altemeyer suggested that certain personality characteristics-fearfulness and self-righteousness-make it easier for one to be trained to inflict pain, by arousing hostile aggression and by developing a belief in moral superiority. Unfortunately, the soldier in the regular army is not immune. Neither is the student.

This article is Maturana's response to Morris Berman's review of The Thee of Knowledge by Maturana and Varela. Maturana claims that Berman partially misunderstood the book and explains that, far from advocating passivity in the face of evil, the book asks that we act out of responsible, personally chosen love, instead of from the belief that we hold a better "truth." In the case of Chile, this would mean opposing Pinochet for personal and cultural reasons rather than alleged biological principles of viability. Nothing is gained by attempting to defeat tyrants with the tyranny of our own imposed, alternative truth.

Carl Rogers's construct of self-actualization changed significantly in its theoretical meaning and usage. In an early period, self-actualization identified Rogers's central motivational construct, which centered on optimal functioning. In later theoretical periods, the tendency toward self-actualization became part of a larger and more dynamic motivational model in which there exists the very good chance that self-actualization will conflict with the realization of optimal functioning-quite a change from its former optimal-functioning meaning. There is evidence that a number of psychologists, even scholars and critics of Rogerian theory, are unclear regarding the accurate meaning and implication of self-actualization in contemporary person-centered theory. This appears to represent a naivet6 about Rogers's two core theoretical works. The goal of this article is to provide a brief review of these with emphasis on the constructs of self-actualization and actualization.

The practice of psychiatry rests on two pillars: mental illness and involuntary mental hospitalization. Each of these elements justifies and reinforces the other. Traditionally, psychiatric coercion was unidirectional, consisting of the forcible incarceration of the individual in an insane asylum. Today, it is bidirectional, the forcible eviction of the individual from the mental hospital (which has become his home) supplementing his prior forcible incarceration in it. So intimate are the connections between psychiatry and coercion that noncoercive psychiatry, like noncoercive slavery, is an oxymoron.

The current study explored the interrelations between involvement in community service activities, level of expressed transpersonal commitment, and intensity of remembered positive experiences among adolescents. The Life Aspiration Questionnaire, Positive Experiences Questionnaire, and Extracurricular Activity Questionnaire were administered to 134 llth-and 12th-grade students involved in community service activities and to 126 of the adolescents' peers who were not participating in such activities. Involved adolescents were found to express higher levels of transpersonal commitment and a higher intensity of positive experiences. The two variables were found to be positively related for both involved and noninvolved adolescent groups. The results substantiated the contention that the ability to experience happiness and meaning in life was greater among those who were willing to give of themselves to others. The findings also constituted validation of the Life Aspiration Questionnaire, demonstrating the connection between word and deed in the transpersonal commitment of adolescents.