In some ways, I’ve been working toward the psychological humanities my entire career. One reason was my naiveté. Way back when, I thought psychology was closer to the humanities than the sciences! Another reason is that once I stumbled onto a course in Phenomenological Psychology as an undergrad at Binghamton University and went on to study at the University of Chicago with luminaries like Gene Gendlin and Paul Ricoeur, I became firmly (and, I like to think, non-naively) convinced that the arts and humanities were the proper home for at least a portion of psychology. This led to extensive work in both (what would eventually be called) narrative psychology (e.g., in Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, Narrative [1993]) and the psychology of art and creativity (e.g., in Finding the Muse: A Sociopsychological Inquiry into the Conditions of Artistic Creativity [1994]). It was the narrative work, especially, that I ran with, mainly because I saw that work as a vital and important inroad into a more humanities-oriented psychology. Indeed, it was the Epilogue to Rewriting the Self—titled “Toward a Poetics of Life History”—that really launched me in this direction. That’s because once I ushered this call, I knew I’d have to come up with the goods at some point. Or at least try to.
That was a long (long) time ago. Between then and around a decade ago, I generated a good deal more work, some of which flew under the banner of what I called “poetic science” (Freeman, 2011). During that time, I wrote lots of stuff that touched upon the poetic dimension, both of self-narration and psychological writing, and even came up with an oxymoronic phrase that sought to encompass what the work was about: the more art, the more science. What, pray tell, did this mean? Well, it meant that it was through more art-ful forms of psychology that we could truly be faithful to human reality, in all of its ambiguity, messiness, and possible beauty. I still find the poetic science idea attractive, and I also think it has some political value. “I’m still doing science,” I essentially said to my departmental colleagues. “It’s just a different form of it than you all do.” (So, we’re all about the same thing, aren’t we?)
Eventually, I came to feel that some of what I was doing was…disingenuous, in a way. For one, I had rendered the idea of science so elastic and capacious that it included almost anything. For another, I couldn’t help asking: Was the work I was doing really science? And why did I have to claim that it was anyway? I had played the science game (sort of) and done what I could to keep it alive, even in the face of the fact that virtually all the work I had done for nearly four decades had moved in a very different direction. Why? Why not just be straight about what it was and wasn’t? I have no interest in being too self-punitive about all this. The work was still there, and it stands to reason that I stuck with the game—particularly when it came time for things like tenure and promotion. (There were mouths to feed.)
Anyway, to make a long story short, I eventually came to pursue work that both substantively and in name was firmly located in the humanities—or, as it would eventually be called, the psychological humanities (see especially Teo, 2017; also Freeman, 2019, 2020; Sugarman & Martin, 2020), culminating in my recently published book Toward the Psychological Humanities: A Modest Manifesto for the Future of Psychology (2023). What is the rationale for moving in this direction? Before answering this question, I want to avow that my rationale may be somewhat different than others’. What, then, is my rationale for moving toward the psychological humanities? One is quite simple, actually. If I want to encounter something that really gets to the depth and complexity of the human condition, I’m much more likely to read a great work of literature or go to the theater or listen to a powerful piece of music than I am to check out a psychology journal. Why? Because they are, as James Woods (2015) might put it, “the nearest thing to life” and can allow me a deeper and richer form of access to reality. Good phenomenology can of course do this sort of thing too, but not in the same way.
A second rationale for moving toward the psychological humanities has more to do with what is, arguably, the nature of the human condition. For all that psychology has tried to “contain” us humans through this or that theory or system or model, it has largely failed in its efforts. One reason is that human reality is inevitably and irrevocably part of culture, and cultures vary, greatly, across time and place. For present purposes, though, the more significant reason is that human beings are “open works,” fields of meaning and expression that demand interpretation, of a sort not unlike we encounter in works of literature and the like. There are of course aspects of the human condition that don’t demand interpretation, and psychology has done tolerably well at exploring them. But in the process of doing so—whether in the form of behaviorism, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, whatever—they have all but jettisoned some of the most fundamental features of the human condition. And all this, ironically enough, in the name of science. But what sort of science is it that jettisons what is fundamental for the sake of sticking with the containable?
Now again, one could argue that the problem is with the overly constricted, parochial idea of what science is and that, consequently, it behooves us to fashion a more capacious view. Maybe for political reasons this is still an important move for some to make. But let’s imagine for a moment that we don’t need to be concerned about such decisions, that we can wipe the slate clean and begin anew, reimagining the entire enterprise and aiming now for a psychology that’s truly adequate to the complexity, messiness, and possible beauty of the beings we are.
I even succumbed to a bit of revolutionary cant when discussing this issue in the book. About the demand for science, I wrote, “I don’t know that we need to serve that master anymore. Less severely: I don’t know that we all need to serve that master. Let us therefore free ourselves from the tyranny of the monopoly and the claustrophobia of the monolith” (Freeman, 2023, p. 45). A bit excessive, to be sure, but I can’t say that I disagree with the sentiment! As I went on to say,
I have no set of discrete guidelines for what we might do instead. Nor do I seek to establish any; it would run counter to the spirit of the project. It is time instead, for some of us at any rate, to think differently about what the discipline is and might be. If there is any limit at all, it is reality itself, holding back, resisting our advances. Beyond that, there is our own imagination, free, within this singular limit, to create entirely new forms of inquiry and expression. These, I suggest, will, of necessity, be poetic in nature and will seek to disclose those features of reality that surpass our entrapping schemes and insist that we be more attentive, respectful, and humble in our efforts to explore the human condition. (pp. 45-46)
Some of what’s being said here is bound to sound familiar to some readers. Certain quarters of humanistic and existential psychology have offered related perspectives across the course of many years, so I am hardly interested in claiming that the ideas I’ve been pursuing are wholly unprecedented. What, then, is new or distinctive about the current project? Reading the book is a good way to find out! For now, I will simply offer the following, from its final pages:
For all that I have called for a more open, inclusive, and pluralistic psychology, one that makes a suitable space for those regions of human experience that elude the grasp of science, as customarily conceived, I am really not sure whether moving in this direction suffices. Truthfully, I believe some aspects of contemporary psychology are positively destructive and give us a vision of inquiry, personhood, and reality that is inadequate and that undermines the kind of discipline psychology might—and ought to—be.
Having said this, I continued,
I don’t want to conclude this book on a critical note and rehash all the reasons why I believe this to be so. Instead, I want to end on a note of hope—the hope that some of the words found in this book, and the spirit that animates them, which is not mine alone, will carry forth some of the energy, momentum, and care that are part of the project of promoting the psychological humanities.
It is time to move beyond critique, and it is time to move beyond acceding to the discipline’s demands by trying to rework things or to create a more palatable version of what currently exists. It is time instead to do something new, something more adequate and faithful to human reality. I have no illusions about the speed with which this psychology might emerge. It is bound to take a good, long while. Patience is required. So too is humility—audacious humility, the kind that seeks to tear down the walls, gently, in the name of love.
Psychology has done some wonderful, significant, valuable things. I hope nothing I’ve said here, or elsewhere, suggests otherwise. But the fact is, it didn’t have to be what it became. It could have been—and could be—something quite different, something that, not unlike works of art and literature, seeks to disclose the deeper realities of the human experience and to do so as powerfully and perhaps beautifully as these works sometimes do. Given the declining status of the humanities, especially at colleges and universities, it may seem like an odd time to be trumpeting this project. Actually, though, I see it as an opportune time for doing so. Indeed, I see it as a matter of some urgency. There are numerous forces in play, both within and beyond the discipline of psychology, that reduce, distort, and degrade human experience. It’s time to correct course, and moving toward the psychological humanities seems to me a potentially important path forward.
References
Freeman, M. (1993). Rewriting the self: History, memory, narrative. Routledge.
Freeman, M. (1994). Finding the Muse: A Sociopsychological Inquiry into the Conditions of Artistic Creativity. Cambridge University Press.
Freeman, M. (2011). Toward poetic science. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 45, 389-396.
Freeman, M. (2019). Toward a poetics of the Other: New directions in post-scientific psychology. In T. Teo (Ed.), Re-envisioning theoretical psychology: Diverging ideas and practices (pp. 1-24). Palgrave Macmillan.
Freeman, M. (2020). Psychology as literature. Narrative knowing and the project of the psychological humanities. In J. Sugarman & J. Martin (Eds.), A humanities approach to the psychology of personhood (pp. 30-48). Routledge.
Freeman, M. (2023). Toward the psychological humanities: A modest manifesto for the future of psychology. Routledge.
Sugarman, J. & Martin, J. (Eds.) (2020). A humanities approach to the psychology of personhood. Routledge.
Teo, T. (2017). From psychological science to the psychological humanities: Building a general theory of subjectivity. Review of General Psychology, 21, 281-291.
Woods, J. (2015). The nearest thing to life. Brandeis University Press.