From NO-Feeling to OVER-Feeling: Humanistic Psychology 1.0 (1955–1975)

Bruce Dickson
Sep 4, 2018 · 5 min read

Chunk 06 from teh forthcoming Attract More Cultural Creatives to Your Team Human Org
Subtitles:
Group Process at the Center of Organizational Development;
Creating Social Glue As an Art-form;
How to Re-Invent Face-to-Face Culture Series

Holistic-Humanistic Psychology 1.0 (1955–1975) was the first wave of innovations in counseling, therapy, psychotherapy and body-based psychotherapy. After 1958 the Assoc. for Humanistic Psychology (AHP) was increasingly a the focus for re-introducing Feeling back into mainstream Psychology.

Ever since Psychology married Sherlock Holmes around 1890, Psychology had been Thinking-only, working with one hand (Feeling) tied behind its back. Full discussion in the Creating Sustainable Children…Real Work for Teachers volume.

In her history, Encountering America, Jessica Grogan puts HP 1.0 between 1955–1975. More Feeling was coming; Feeling was coming back into Life; change was coming — for better and worse. The first wave of innovative groups for counseling, therapy, psychotherapy and body-based psychotherapy was exciting and chaotic.

Human Potential Movement

While Human Potential Movement is often capitalized, it was always a movement unlike the AHP, above, which was a paid-membership org.
quote The Human Potential Movement (HPM) arose out of the counterculture milieu of the 1960s[1] and formed around cultivating extraordinary hidden potential; which its advocates believed, lay largely untapped in all people. The movement believed through developing “human potential”, humans can experience a greater quality of life filled with happiness, creativity, and fulfillment.

quote As a corollary, those who began unleashing their hidden individual potential often found themselves taking actions within society towards assisting others to release more of their potential. Participants believe the net effect of individuals cultivating their potential, brings about positive social change at large.
The emergence of HPM is linked to the AHP and strongly influenced by Abraham Maslow’s theory of self-actualization as the supreme goal of human ~ Wikipedia, adapted

quote In the middle of the 1960s, George Leonard did research across the United States on the subject of human potential for LOOK magazine. In his research, he interviewed 37 psychiatrists, brain researchers, and philosophers on the subject of human potential. He found “Not one of them said we were using more than 10% of our capacity”[2] — not to be misconstrued as an endorsement of the ten percent of the brain myth. This refers to general human potential rather than to neurological activity — https://www.revolvy.com/page/Human-Potential-Movement

AHP was the birthplace for touchy-feely methods where Feeling dominated Thinking, as Thinking had dominated Feeling earlier.
OVER-reacting from “Death of a Salesman” to “Do your own thing”

1970s: OVER-Feeling reactions to NO-Feelings

1965–1975 was the first time since the Romantics of the 1800s pushed back on the No-Feeling Zone of the hard scientists. A hundred years hence, 1965–1975, it wasn’t just a handful of painters and poets pushing back. It was the entire Boomer generation; and, anyone and everyone older aligned with more truly human values. In whole-brain terms we would say: those aligned with a better balance of T~F.

Holistic-Humanistic Psychology 1.0, 1955–1975 was the biggest push-back yet against Dominator Thinking, which had ruled Western Civ. since the Renaissance at least.

Old way of Thinking: Only Thinking is rational; Feeling is irrational.
New way of Thinking: Either Thinking or Feeling can be rational or irrational. Either rational Thinking or rational Feeling are a good basis for making conscious decisions.

Either rational Thinking or rational Feeling can be used as evidence to make a healthy choice, in the human experience.
The pendulum swings back too far
The pendulum theory of cultural change is a more pleasing visual metaphor than the dry thesis~antithesis > synthesis rhetoric.
In the pendulum model, in a reaction, sometimes the pendulum swings back too far the opposite direction. In reacting to and reversing OVER-Thinking, some groups went beyond balance; and, embraced OVER-Feeling, as their rallying point.

The post WW II 1958–1972 era was a perfect stage-setting for a young, untested generation to experiment with OVER-feeling. Could Feeling dominate Thinking; and, could this be more workable than vice versa?
Death of Salesman (1949)

If you wish to know what a life lived without self-connection and in denial of authentic Feeling, explore Death of Salesman. In the 1960s this play remained a cultural touchstone. When Lee J. Cobb played the role on TV in the 1960s, most everyone I knew was watching. The tragedy of a life lived entirely outside heartfelt feelings, all personal attention given to the Outer Game of Life, was on many people’s minds. The (emotionally) Hollow Man.

To fill the emptiness many Americans felt in the 1960s, Holistic-Humanistic Psychology 1.0, 1955–1975, experimented with its share of unsustainable touchy-feeling practices:
- aimless encounter groups,
- unsupervised massage parties,
- aimless dream discussion groups.

Too often for too many of these live events, the goal was chasing some kind, any kind, of emotional high, to compensate for the emotional deserts many men especially, felt in their Inner Game of Life.

What was learned? We learned over-Feeling was equally as unworkable-unsustainable as its mirror image, over-Thinking.

Recognizing the need for a better balance between Thinking and Feeling was percolating in the 1960s in the chaotic interplay of Feeling-Thinking in the lyrics of The Beatles and Bob Dylan. More coherently, a scramble for balance appeared in the thinking of a very few holistic public intellectuals like Alan Watts.
Recognition of the need for balance between Thinking~Feeling laid the ground for whole-brain thinking. This led directly to the big fad of left and right brain hemispheres, between 1975–1985. Now we think of this as two different, complementary intelligences, working together, as partners, as teammates.

The Human Potential Movement starts growing up

One of several big factors causing the Human Potential Movement to mature and grow up, was how holistic health and healing was quickly taking hold and promising to be a new way forward for healthcare in 50–100 years. “Do your own thing” changes quickly if you are a holistic practitioner and clients are depending on you. The maturity few group therapy leaders brought to the HPM was compensated for by a significant fraction of competent, integrous holistic practitioners, who served as sole models of healthy leadership in eh realm of health and wholeness.

Add to this the infusion of Original Psychosomatic Medicine 1.0 (1955–1965). In the mid 1960s, the big drug companies orphaned and abandoned this promising development in favor of investing in TV advertising and drug patents. Investing in research along Psychosomatic lines was cut off. For a time, 1965–1975, all the mind-body wisdom uncovered in that period was in danger of being lost.

The blossoming of holistic health-healing, 1972–1985 had immediate practical use for mind-body-spirit wisdom to untangle clients concerns. One practitioner at a time incorporated Psychosomatic Medicine and new nutritional wisdom into their holistic health-healing practice. This increased the maturity, scientific and psychological grounding in holistic health practitioners. In a word, they became more credible to the public. This was healthy.

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