Freedom Through the Cultivation of Humanness: Philosophy, Psychology and the Authentic Self
Bequia Sherick
HUM Conference paper
6/22/12
Freedom through the Cultivation of Humanness: Philosophy, Psychology and the Authentic Self
“Less and less is life animated through personal discovery, intimacy with others, or self-reflection. While life has become more manageable for many people, it has become commensurately less engaged.”
~Kirk Schneider, Rediscovery of Awe, 20
Within psychology there are several schools that are divided concerning the nature of the self. Behaviorism views the self as something that has been conditioned and created by the external world. Observation of behavior is ultimately the best way to understand the individual because the individual has been shaped and formed fully through her interaction with the environment. In contrast, Humanistic and Existential schools of psychology view the human self as something that is not only shaped by environment, but also shaped by the free exercise of choice in the process of self-creation and cultivation. For Humanistic and Existential psychologists values, meaning, and authenticity are issues that are closely tied to psychological well-being, whereas for the Behaviorist would consider such notions extraneous to an understanding of the individual and her well-being.
Part of what inspires the thinking of the Existential and Humanistic psychologists is the thought of the existential philosophers. The existentialists saw humans as a unique type of being that can engage in freedom or fail to engage in freedom and they saw freedom as the defining characteristic of being human. For the existentialists “Being”, or the relationship of the self to the self is real and important. It is in the realm of the self’s relationship to the self that one’s freedom is revealed. One’s freedom can be engaged or escaped and the existentialists thought that the engagement with one’s freedom was important for a meaningful life.
The particular issue that this paper explores is the issue of personal authenticity in relation to psychology. The claim of this paper is that there is a self within the individual that is creating values, ideals, and meaning for the individual that is based in subjectivity. This highly subjective process of self-creation cannot be understood through external observation, but must rather be understood by engagement with the individual’s subjective life. A comprehensive psychology must not only recognize the physical (and observable) aspects of being human but also the ethical and freedom-based aspects of being human. The individual is in a continual process of defining humanness for herself. It is through this uniquely human process of defining one’s own humanness and values that one uses one’s freedom.
Behaviorism versus Humanistic/Existential Psychology
The Behaviorist sees the individual as the result of stimulus (from the external world) and response (from their brain and body). Concerning Behaviorism, one of the founders of the school John B. Watson stated: “psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science which needs introspection as little as do the sciences of chemistry and physics”(Bjork 79). In other words, everything that is of significance for the understanding of the individual is observable. It is not that behaviorists think that individuals do not have an internal mental life, but rather they claim that the internal life of the individual is less important or significant than observable behavior. And, they would claim that the self is fully tied to environment and the uniqueness of individual identity is tied to a uniqueness of environment. There is nothing distinctive about human consciousness or human nature, it is simply a more complex web of reactions to the environment than other animals.
In contrast to the Behaviorist approach to the individual, Humanistic/Existential psychology views the individual as not only needing to be understood through external observation, but also through an investigation of the individual’s relationship to herself and her own freedom. Carl Rogers, a prominent Humanistic psychologist had several debates with B.F. Skinner (the founder of behaviorism) in the 1950’s about Behaviorism versus Humanistic approaches to human psychology. Rogers states: “I have come to realize that the basic difference between a Behaviorist and humanistic approach to human beings is a philosophical choice”(Rogers 56). The philosophical choice that Rogers is referring to is the issue of human freedom and choice. Further characterizing the issue Rogers states:
Let me simply add that what is really at issue is the
confrontation of two paradoxes. If the extreme
behaviorist position is true, then everything an individual
does is essentially meaningless, since he is but an atom
caught in a seamless chain of cause and effect. On the
other hand, if the thoroughgoing humanistic position is
true, then choice enters in, and this individual subjective
choice has some influence on the cause-and-effect chain.
Then, scientific research, which is based on a complete
confidence in an unbroken chain of cause and effect,
must be fundamentally modified(Rogers 58).
The essential point that is being debated between the Humanistic and Behaviorist schools of psychology is the question of human determinism. On the one hand behaviorists claim that human consciousness and experience is no different from any other physical process and is fully determined by conditioning and physical laws. Human choice never enters the scene in any real sense, only the illusion of it. On the other hand, Humanistic psychologists claim that there is something unique about human consciousness and experience that involves subjectivity and awareness of self. Human choice does enter the scene because humans are capable of change and growth that may arise spontaneously or intentionally.
For Humanistic/Existential psychologists, phenomenology plays a key role in the understanding of the individual. Phenomenology is a philosophical approach to the individual and it essentially places emphasis on individual experience prior to subject/object separation. Phenomenology is defined as:
. . .the study of structures of experience, or consciousness.
Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”:
appearances of things, or things as they appear in our
experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the
meanings they have in our experience. Phenomenology
studies conscious experience as experienced from the
subjective or first person point of view
(Smith Woodrow SEP).
In other words, the phenomenologist is concerned with the study of experience of subjective consciousness from a first person point of view. The phenomenologist emphasizes personal experience and subjective being. In contrast, the behaviorist highlights that which is observed from a third person point of view. A separation of mind from the outside world is assumed and the self is conceptualized as a conglomerate of reactions with no significant content of its own (e.g. the significant content of the mind is only in relation to the external world because the self is purely a result of conditioning and the environment). In contrast the phenomenologist claims that subjective experience itself must be studied because the self (or the subjective consciousness) may hold valuable information about the individual.
Defining Authenticity:
“To truly exist, we must quit the inauthentic sphere of existence” (Daniels 2).
For Humanistic and Existential psychologists, when seeking to understand the issues and dynamics of their patient’s lives, it is imperative that they look at the subjective lives or the relationship of the individual with her freedom in order to better understand the individual. Authenticity is about the relationship of the individual to his or her freedom. Personal authenticity arises out of a deep level of freedom and responsibility that the existentialists assert the individual is capable of. The concept of personal authenticity is dependent on the idea that humans have a relationship with themselves, their conscience, and the process of their own self-creation. Authenticity relies on the idea that humans have the capacity to create themselves, at least to a degree, and that they cannot escape their freedom through appeal to deterministic forces. Authenticity then is the engagement of one’s freedom through self-creation, while inauthenticity is the lack of engagement with one’s freedom through the process of self-creation.
In Jean Paul Sartre’s work “Existentialism is a Humanism”, he articulates one of the main principles of existentialism:
Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be,
but that which he wills himself to be, and since he conceives
of himself only after he exists, just as he wills himself to
be after being thrown into existence, man is nothing
other than what he makes of himself. This is the first principle
of existentialism (Sartre 22).
For Sartre freedom defines human beings and the individual is only essentially what she does through her actions in the world. Sartre is proposing a view of humans that is controversial because it states that the individual is not defined by society, by convention, or by pre-existent ideas of human nature. The individual is in a continual course of development based in personal freedom. In other words, according to Sartre and the existentialists, the individual is deeply responsible for the cultivation of the self and the actions he takes in the world.
Martin Heidegger, an existentialist wrote about something he called Dasein. Dasein is a uniquely human quality and is characterized by self-consciousness, or awareness of one’s Being. And as an extension of being aware of the self, Dasein has the unique capacity to choose itself. From “Being and Time” Heidegger writes:
Because Dasein is in each case essentially its own possibility
it can, in its very Being, ‘choose’ itself and win itself; it can
also lose itself and never win itself; or only ‘seem’ to do so.
But only in so far as it is essentially something which can be
authentic—that is, something of its own—can it have lost
itself and not yet won itself. As modes of Being, authenticity
and inauthenticity are both grounded in the fact that any
Dasein whatsoever is characterized by mineness(Heidegger 97).
Heidegger is stating that Dasein, or the ability to reflect on the self, makes it such that one’s self can be possessed by the self, or not. One can have a self, or fail to have a self. The difference between having a self or not having a self lies in the degree to which one engages in the creation of one’s self and the level to which one takes responsibility for one’s self and one’s actions.
For Heidegger the experience of inauthenticity involves a loss of the self and a lack of engagement with the fundamental questions underlying one’s life by an immersion in the “they” or the norms and values of society. From “Being and Time” Heidegger states:
With Dasein’s lostness in the “they”, that factical potentiality
-for-Being which is closest to it (the tasks, rules, and standards,
the urgency and extent, of concernful and solicitous Being
-in-the-world) has already been decided upon. The “they” has
always kept Dasein from taking hold of these possibilities of
Being. The “they” even hides the manner in which it has tacitly
relieved Dasein of the burden of explicitly choosing these possibilities.
It remains indefinite who has ‘really’ done the choosing. So Dasein
make no choices, gets carried along by the nobody, and thus
ensnares itself in inauthenticity (Heidegger 312).
Heidegger sees the phenomenon of Being as a unique opportunity for the individual to partake in at least partial self-creation. When the individual fails to take the project of self-creation upon herself, she is by default defined by the rules and ideals of those around her. The freedom that Being allows is something that can be engaged, or not and this is an important point. Inauthenticity then is the failure to engage with one’s being and one’s self-creation.
Humanistic Psychology and Authenticity:
“By becoming lost in our presumed knowledge we have forgotten what it is to exist” (Daniels 3).
For the Existential/Humanistic psychologists, freedom, self-development, and authenticity are aspects of what a healthy and functional individual expresses. Existential/Humanistic psychology emphasizes the importance of choice and self-responsibility. Similar to existential philosophy, Existential psychology sees human freedom as the most defining characteristic of the human condition. As such, an existential psychologist will take seriously the individual’s relationship to his life choices and whether the individual is living in authentic relationship to himself. For an existential psychologist courage is a large part of what creates a healthy individual.
Rollo May the Existential psychologist points to the essential point in Existential and Humanistic psychology and that is the experiential and dynamic process of being a human individual. He states:
They hold [existential psychologists] that these [drives and
behaviors] cannot be understood in any given person except
in the context of the overarching fact that here is a person
who happens to exist, to be, and if we do not keep this in mind,
all else we know about this person will lose its meaning. Thus
the existentialists approach is always dynamic; existence refers
to coming into being, becoming. Their endeavor is to understand
this becoming not as a sentimental artifact but as the
fundamental structure of human existence(May 50).
For the Existential psychologist it is imperative in therapy to remember that the individual has freedom and that her existence is a continual question that she is answering and a process that she is assisting in unfolding. To treat the individual as a being which the therapist can treat as strictly physiological and behavioral is to treat the individual as something that she is not: an object. The essential point underlying the difference between a Behavioral and Existential approach to the individual is around the idea of the individual as a being versus the individual as an object.
For the Existential/Humanistic psychologists the experience of one’s freedom and the capacity to define the self is the defining characteristic of human life. In failing to recognize the importance of such a process, psychology essentially avoids the deeper questions of human existence. And for the Existential/Humanistic psychologists such avoidance leaves psychology with an incomplete picture of the individual and human well-being.
In line with the worries of the existentialists are the worries of the Humanistic and Existential psychologists. For Humanistic psychologists, ethical problems and the choosing of values, and the process of self-creation is an integral part of what it means to be a human being. Failing to recognize the importance of choosing values and one’s stance on the philosophical issues of life in psychology was tantamount to failing to engage in a large portion of what psychology needs to be addressing.