In this and future issues, the Newsletter will highlight SHP’s standing interest groups and committees. We hope to share news about their core missions and their activities so that Division 32 members can familiarize themselves and participate with those of like mind.
Standing Committee Against Hate Incidents
The committee’s current members include Roxanne Christensen (co-chair), Sarah Kamens (co-chair), Nathaniel Granger, Theopia Jackson, Elliot Benjamin, and Randi Johnson. Former members, Gina Belton, Oksana Yakushko, Louis Hoffman, Frances Mallari, and Aubrey Harrison have contributed to the SCAHI’s efforts in recent years.
In recent years, sociopolitical events in the U.S. have led to increased demonstrations of hate towards other human beings. Hate incidents (defined in the U.S. as both hate crimes and hate speech) have been on the rise, with over 1,000 bias incidents reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center in the four months following the 2016 election. The Society for Humanistic Psychology (SHP) Standing Committee Against Hate Incidents (SCAHI; formerly the Task Force on Hate Incidents, convened under past SHP President Shawn Rubin) has the broad mission of developing ways for humanistic psychologists and others to address hate incidents in the U.S. A second purpose arising out of the task force's work is the identification and creation of safe spaces, or zones of safety, respect, and understanding.
The SCAHI has presented experiential workshops at SHP conferences and hospitality suites at American Psychological Association (APA) conventions. Our most recent workshop took place at the 17th Annual SHP conference at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and was titled “A World Torn Apart by Hate: A Poetry Experiential.”
In 2019, we produced a draft Statement on Hate Incidents in the United Statesopens in new window. This statement represents the perspective of APA Division 32: Society for Humanistic Psychology and is not the position of the APA as a whole.
The Standing Committee Against Hate Incidents welcomes inquiries from SHP members who are interested in joining our work! Please reach out to Sarah Kamens, PhD.
Diagnostic Dialogues Task Force
In memory of Donna Rockwell, who spearheaded our outreach and dissemination efforts.
SHP has been at the forefront of the global diagnostic reform movement. In 2011, the British Psychological Society (BPS) and SHP (under past-president David Elkins) came together to form the DSM-5 Open Letter Committee. Our task was to respond to the American Psychiatric Association’s proposals for what would become the 5th edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Both professional bodies expressed concern that “clients and the general public are negatively affected by the continued and continuous medicalization of their natural and normal responses to their experiences; responses which undoubtedly have distressing consequences that demand helping responses, but which do not reflect illnesses so much as normal individual variation.” That concern, among others, appeared in an Open Letteropens in new window to the DSM-5 that was posted on an online petition website and ultimately endorsed by over 15,000 mental health professionals and other individuals, as well as by over 50 professional organizations, including 15 additional Divisions of APA. The history of those efforts is documented in the article “DSM-5 Reform Efforts by the Society for Humanistic Psychology” (Robbins et al., 2017).
After our efforts to address concerns during development of the DSM-5, which was published in 2013, we turned our attention to exploring and identifying diagnostic alternatives, or alternatives to the current diagnostic paradigm. The committee became a task force and was renamed the Task Force on Humanistic Approaches to Psychological Diagnosis, and later the Task Force for Diagnostic Alternatives. We focused on discussion scientific, conceptual, and ethical concerns with the development of various diagnostic systems and related research frameworks. We explored possibilities for addressing the social and structural determinants of psychological distress, rather than limiting diagnosis to the individuals whose lives are disrupted by them.
In February 2020, we created a new open letter addressed to the developers of future DSMs, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), and the National Institute of Mental Health’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project. This “Open Letter IIopens in new window” expresses ongoing concerns about the ways in which the current diagnostic paradigm—as represented in the DSM, ICD, and (future) RDoC—continue to locate problems within individuals while ignoring robust and growing evidence for the social determinants of mental health and mental distress. (See also an interview with Peter Kinderman and Sarah Kamensopens in new window on the new open letter.)
An additional focus of the Task Force has been the production of the special issues on diagnostic alternatives for the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. Four issues have been published thus far.
Diagnostic Alternatives Part 1opens in new window, Part 2opens in new window, Part 3opens in new window, Part 4opens in new window. Articles for the fifth and final issue are advance online publications.
Under the presidency of Jon Raskin (2020-21), we became the Diagnostic Dialogues Task Force. We have since focused on creating multidisciplinary dialogues around the topic of diagnostic reform and have spearheaded several APA conference symposia on the topic. We have also explored the possibility of developing a plan to advocate for a diagnostic framework that would address the implementation barrier in the U.S. (i.e., the fact health insurance reimbursement requires a diagnosis). We have considered the possibility of consulting with executives at health insurance companies and/or Centers for Medicare and Medicaid to assess their openness to an approach that focuses on prevention and the social determinants of mental health.
Our current task force members are Sarah Kamens (chair), Brent Dean Robbins, Jonathan Raskin, Theopia Jackson, and Justin Karter. Past members include David Elkins, Donna Rockwell, Peter Kinderman, John Read, Anne Cooke, Lucy Johnstone, Ashley Whitaker, and Arnold Cantu. We welcome participation and inquiries from interested members of the SHP community. For more information, please reach out to Sarah Kamens.
References
Kamens, S. R., Elkins, D. N., & Robbins, B. D. (2017). Open letter to the DSM-5. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 57(6), 675-687. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167817698261opens in new window
Robbins, B. D., Kamens, S. R., & Elkins, D. N. (2017). DSM-5 reform efforts by the Society for Humanistic Psychology. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 57 (6), 602-24. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167817698617opens in new window
The Constructivist Psychology Special Interest Group (CP-SIG)
The Constructivist Psychology Special Interest Group (CP-SIG) was created to connect SHP members and affiliates who share an interest in constructivist, constructionist, narrative, and other postmodern approaches to psychology. The group is affiliated with the Constructivist Psychology Network (CPN), membership in which is also open to professionals who are not SHP members or affiliates. CPN publishes the Journal of Constructivist Psychology, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal covering the latest developments in constructivist theory, research, and practice.
This article provides SHP members who are interested in the CP-SIG and/or CPN with an overview of constructivism and describes points of intersection between constructivist psychology and humanistic psychology.
To understand the role of the CP-SIG within SHP, it first might be helpful to describe what is meant by the terms constructivism and constructivist psychology. As Raskin (2015) pointed out, it can be difficult to define constructivism, as the term is sometimes used very broadly to refer to the study of how people “individually and socially construct understandings” (p. 3), and at other times more narrowly to describe specific theories (e.g., within the fields of psychology, sociology, philosophy) that share epistemological assumptions about the construction of knowledge. One way to look at constructivism that encompasses both the broad intellectual tradition and specific theories that draw from it, is through Neimeyer’s (1995) metaphor of a “stream of thought [that] has many tributaries” (p. 11). Neimeyer describes a plethora of philosophical and psychological traditions that emphasize the relativity of knowledge and/or the active role of the person in framing and organizing their experiential world. These postmodern ways of thinking paved the way for the development of George Kelly’s (1955) personal construct theory in the mid-20th century. Kelly offers an approach to psychology and psychotherapy that is built on understanding ways that people anticipate events and emphasizes human agency, meaning-making, and growth through self-understanding of one’s meaning system.
Kelly’s personal construct psychology is considered a landmark theory in the study of constructivist psychology, but it is one of many versions of constructivism that have come to permeate the field of psychology. There is a great deal of variation in how different approaches to constructivism understand the process by which human beings construct knowledge, as each have differing notions about the extent to which knowledge is constructed personally vs. socially, the role that language plays in shaping reality, and even the existence of an external reality that is independent of the observer. For example, the social constructionist approach posits that meaning is created in community with others through ongoing discourse, in a manner that is contextual and ever-changing (e.g., Gergen, 2023). From this perspective, Kelly’s theory would be viewed as overly individualistic, as it emphasizes the study of personal meaning-making, rather than shared meanings that are socially constructed between individuals and communities. With such notable differences in something as fundamental as how these theoretical approaches conceptualize how meaning is generated, one might wonder whether there is any value in referring to them both as forms of constructivism. While not everyone finds this umbrella term useful, Raskin (2015) presents a case for an integrative approach to constructivism as a way of clarifying assumptions that underlie theories rooted in constructivist thought and challenging misconceptions about these theories. In articulating an integrative constructivism, Raskin highlights four common premises that are largely consistent with a wide range of constructivist (or as some prefer, “constructive”) theories:
(1) People are informationally closed systems
(2) People are active meaning-makers
(3) People are social beings
(4) People construe ontologically and epistemologically
Through such an integrative model, we can compare different theories that share underlying assumptions about how human beings understand their experiences, as well as examine areas of contrast and similarity between constructivist psychology and other branches of psychology.
The relationship between constructivist psychology and humanistic psychology has a long history that was built through the work of many psychologists who have found an intellectual home in both traditions. Over the years, notable constructivist theorists (Larry Leitner, Franz Epting, Sara Bridges, Jonathan Raskin) have even served in the role of Division 32 president. This connection is in part because constructivist psychologists have long sought to address some of the same questions about what it means to be human that are important to humanistic psychologists.
As mentioned earlier, Kelly’s (1955) personal construct theory places a strong emphasis on human meaning-making and growth through self-understanding, which are aspects of psychology that are often of interest to humanistic psychologists. The constructivist view of human beings as active meaning-makers also carries assumptions of human agency and freedom that are essential ideas in theories that were at the forefront of the humanistic psychology movement (e.g., Maslow, 1954; Rogers, 1961). These assumptions also have informed the development of numerous constructivist approaches to psychotherapy (e.g., Chiari & Nuzzo, 2010; Efran et al., 1990; Epting, 1984; Neimeyer, 2009; Raskin, forthcoming). Like humanistic psychologists, constructivist psychologists have contributed research and assessment techniques that utilize idiographic methods, such as the repertory grid for assessing personal meanings, constructivist grounded theory, and other qualitative methods (e.g., Charmaz, 2014; Faidley & Leitner, 1993; Fromm, 2004; Jankowicz, 2003; Levitt, 2021; Neimeyer, 1993). In addition, many humanistic psychologists have explored and expounded on questions about ontology, epistemology, pluralism, and a postmodern understanding of truth, which are fundamental areas of inquiry in constructivist psychology (e.g., Gergen, 1994; 2009; O’Hara, 1992; Hoffman, 2016; Raskin, 2018). As mentioned earlier, constructivist theories also share the assumption of people as social beings (Raskin, 2015). This premise, perhaps as much as any other, reflects a point of commonality between constructivist and humanistic approaches to psychology. In her description of the unique contributions of humanistic psychology, Rockwell (2019) elucidated, “Humanistic psychology offered something more relational, highlighting unconditional regard, self-responsibility and interdependence, experiential learning and building of holistic communities among people and nations of the world” (p. 330). It is this “something more relational” and “interdependence” of human beings that is one of the most significant points of overlap between constructivist psychology and humanistic psychology. To illustrate this connection, we need look no further than Kelly’s concept of sociality, which carries profound implications for understanding the powerful impact that we as human beings can have on the meaning systems of others. Leitner’s (1985) experiential personal construct psychology (EPCP) elaborates on the interpersonal and experiential aspects of Kelly’s theory to describe how authentic and meaningful relationships can be nothing short of transformative. Leitner (2010) further extends the range of EPCP to explore the idea of transpersonal responsibility, or “our commitment to examine one’s meaning system in terms of its implications for humanity and the world at large” (p.237). Concepts such as these demonstrate a confluence of values, identity, and purpose at the crossroads of humanistic and constructivist approaches to psychology.
As we look to the future of humanistic psychology and the questions posed by Division 32 president Andrew Bland, PhD in his call for this year’s Old Saybrook 3 conference, what can constructivism bring to the conversation? What is the role of the CP-SIG in helping SHP both carry humanistic psychology forward and celebrate the wisdom of the intellectual traditions that have shaped humanistic psychology as we know it today? As it has hopefully been made clear in this article, the history of humanistic psychology is also the history of constructivist psychology. Many of the ideas that are important to constructivist psychologists have also been important to humanistic psychologists. At this point in time, constructivist psychology continues to draw interest from a small, but dedicated group of scholars, researchers, and clinicians, many of whom have played a role in shaping the direction of SHP over the years. As we look to the future, it will be important to revisit many of the questions that these two rich psychological traditions have been raising up for quite some time. In our ever-changing societies, we as human beings continue to seek and create meaning in our day-to-day lives. We continue to ask questions about the nature of knowledge and make predictions about the world as we experience it. We continue to motivate and inspire each other in ways that bring us closer together, and sometimes surprise us. As humanistic and/or constructivist psychologists, we will continue to challenge each other to ask better questions and explore new systems of knowing and being to meet the changing needs of our world. In doing so, we will seek answers that honor where we have come from, keep us mindful of where we are, and shape the possibilities of where we are going.
You can join the CP-SIG for free by following the Constructivist Psychology Network/Interest Groupopens in new window on Facebook. Joining the special interest group allows you to stay informed about scholarship and events in the constructivist community. If you seek greater involvement, you can purchase a membership in CPN here, which includes a subscription to the Journal of Constructivist Psychologyopens in new window.
References
Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). SAGE.
Chiari, G., & Nuzzo, M. L. (2010). Constructivist psychotherapy: A narrative hermeneutic approach. Routledge.
Efran, J. S., Lukens, M. D., & Lukens, R. J. (1990). Language, structure, and change: Frameworks of meaning in psychotherapy. Norton.
Epting, F. R. (1984). Personal construct counseling and psychotherapy. Wiley.
Faidley, A. F., & Leitner, L. M. (1993). Assessing experience in psychotherapy: Personal construct alternatives. Praeger.
Fromm, M. (2004). Introduction to the repertory grid interview. Waxmann Münster.
Gergen, K. J. (1994). Realities and relationships: Soundings in social construction. Harvard University Press.
Gergen, K. J. (2009). Relational being: Beyond self and community. Oxford University Press.
Gergen, K. J. (2023). An invitation to social construction: Co-creating the future (4th ed.). Sage.
Hoffman, L. (2016). Multiculturalism and humanistic psychology: From neglect to epistemological and ontological diversity. The Humanistic Psychologist, 44 (1), 56-71.
Jankowicz, D. (2003). The easy guide to repertory grids. Wiley.
Kelly, G. A. (1955). Psychology of personal constructs (2 volumes). Norton.
Leitner, L. M. (1985). The terrors of cognition: On the experiential validity of personal construct theory. In D. Bannister (Ed.), Issues and approaches in personal construct theory (pp. 83-103). Academic.
Leitner, L. M. (2010). The integral universe, experiential personal construct psychology, transpersonal reverence, and transpersonal responsibility. In J. D. Raskin, S. K. Bridges, & R. A. Neimeyer (Eds.), Studies in meaning 4: Constructivist perspectives on theory, practice, and social justice (pp. 227-246). Pace University Press.
Levitt, H. M. (2021). Essentials of critical-constructivist grounded theory research. American Psychological Association.
Maslow, A. H. (1954) Motivation and personality. Harper & Row. Neimeyer, G. J. (Ed.). (1993). Constructivist assessment: A casebook. Sage.
Neimeyer, R. A. (1995). Constructivist psychotherapies: Features, foundations, and future directions. In R. A. Neimeyer & M. J. Mahoney (Eds.), Constructivism in psychotherapy (pp 11-38). American Psychological Association.
Neimeyer, R. A. (2009). Constructivist psychotherapy: Distinctive features. Routledge.
O’Hara, M. (1992). Relational humanism: A Psychology for the pluralistic world. The Humanistic Psychologist, 20 (2-3), 439-446.
Rockwell, D. (2019). A presidential address: The state of humanistic psychology. The Humanistic Psychologist, 47 (4), 329-334.
Rogers, C. R. (1995). On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.
Raskin, J. D. (2015). An introductory perturbation: What is constructivism and is there a future in it? In J. D. Raskin, S. K. Bridges, & J. S. Kahn (Eds.), Studies in meaning 5: Perturbing the status quo in constructivist psychology (pp. 3-27). Pace University Press.
Raskin, J. D. (2018). Constructivism, ethics, and knowing what’s right: A reply to McNamee, Burr, McWilliams, Osbeck, & Held. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 31(4), 413–419. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720537.2017.1383956 Raskin, J. D. (forthcoming). Constructive psychotherapies. American Psychological Association.