The anthropological foundations of a humane psychology
pp. 185-233
in: Joseph R. Royce, Leendert Mos (eds), Humanistic psychology, Berlin, Springer, 1981Abstract
The term "behavior" strikes me as singularly inappropriate to serve as the defining parameter of a humane psychology. To begin with, the prefix "be-" denotes a reactive rather than an enactive function in the English language. If psychologists were to use the term "endeavor" along with "behavior," then they would at least be utilizing a technical term with a prefix that carries a sense of active implication (i.e., the prefix "en-"). In epistemological terms, we would then be dealing with a psychology of action as well as reaction, for with "behavioral psychology" we are locked into (no pun intended) John Locke's "tabula rasa," or passive way of experiencing sense data. And though Skinner's brand of operant conditioning at least introduces the element of bio-feedback into the classical-conditioning approaches of Pavlov and Watson, we are still essentially dealing with a ratological view of psychology—one which fails to recognize that although human beings are a species of animal they have in the course of their evolution become differentiated in certain specific ways from the rest of the animal kingdom and might, therefore, just merit a psychology with a difference.
