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A NEW BREAK-THROUGH *
J. F. T. BUGENTAL
Psychological Service Associates, Los Angeles
WANT to present the thesis that a major sonality from our existing orientations, the press
break-through is occurring at the present time of public interest in, and need for, psychological
in psychology. Like man's other major changes science and service. One may speculate also that
the introduction of the steam engine, the decline just as when a single organism encounters a threat
of feudalism, the beginnings of the laboratory to its life maintenance, it evokes counter forces
method in psychologyits presence and potentiali- (e.g., antibodies), so this development may be part
ties are difficult to recognize for those of us who of an evolutionary response to the biology-threatenare so deep in daily concerns. Yet, I am convinced ing forces of nuclear destruction.
that the parallels I cite are not vainglorious. I
think we are on the verge of a new era in man's PSYCHOLOGICAL PARAMETERS UNDERGOING CHANGE
concern about man which mayif allowed to run
Let us examine eight parameters which have been
its courseproduce as profound changes in the hu- traditionally accepted as given in psychology but
man condition as those we have seen the physical which, I think, are being questioned increasingly
sciences bring about in the last century. The es- as a result of the wave of change which is now ocsence of this change is, I believe, the eroding away curring.
of some of the familiar parameters of psychological
These eight parameters are:
science and the concurrent emergence of a new ap1. The model of man as a composite of part
preciation for the fundamental inviolability of the functions
human experience.
2. The model of a science taken over from physPsychology, as any social institution, is a con- ics
stantly evolving set of assumptions, information,
3. The model of a practitioner taken over from
and speculations. As with any institution, it has medicine
its periods of stability and of rapid change. Some4. The pattern of a compartmentalized, subtimes the change may be clearly dated from a par- divided graduate school faculty and curriculum as
ticular event, as with the rise of behaviorism after the appropriate agency for preparing students for
Watson's epochal book appeared. Sometimes the psychological careers
forces producing the change are more scattered, as
5. The criterion of statistical frequency as a
in the rise of the mental testing wave. In either demonstration of truth or reality
instance, hindsight reveals numerous stirrings be6. The illusion that research precedes practice
fore the change process became clearly apparent.
7. The myth of the "clinical team"
This is certainly so at the present. Writings by
8. The fallacy that diagnosis is basic to treatmany social scientists have prepared the way for ment
what is now emerging (viz., James, Allport, Cantril,
What I want to do now is to examine each of
May, Maslow, Fromm, Rogers, and many others). these models with a view to recognizing what
What has brought this development to the fore now changes may be occurring in them.
may be argued, but certainly some of the influences
will include: the large number of psychologists now 1. The Model of Man as a Composite of Part
involved in the practice of psychotherapy, the fail- Functions
ure of many promising approaches to produce a
What has been said above already indicates my
truly embracing and adequate theory of human per- view that this fundamental conception of the na1
Adapted from address presented at Orange County ture of man is in the process of basic alteration.
So long as we sought mental elements, in whatever
(California) Psychological Association, December 7, 1962.
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has been a fragmented approach to our field which
has created much confusion and threat for graduate
students. I wish I could report that I see as many
signs of healthful change in this area as in some of
the others upon which I report; nevertheless, there
are stirrings which indicate a recognition that our
pattern of many specialtiesclinical, counseling,
industrial, childis proving more self-defeating
than implementing. My own feeling is that we
must move toward recognizing three basic subdivisions of psychology: that concerned with part
functions, that concerned with group functions, and
that concerned with the total person as the unit.
Quite probably for each of these there will need to
be a research and teaching phase and a practitioner
phase. All three are increasingly being employed
in the solution of practical problems, and the number of practitioners in all three is sure to grow tremendously in the coming years. Much of the resentment of our experimental brothers toward the
practitioners is apt gradually to fade away as more
and more of the experimentalists themselves are
drawn into consulting functions. Tryon (1963) has
written his prediction that the academic ivory
tower is a thing of the past and that the experimentalists soon will be deeply involved in practitioner roles. This will certainly have a profound
effect on our graduate school educational philosophies.
5. The Criterion of Statistical Frequency as a
Demonstration of Truth
In the abstract, the criterion of statistical frequency seems to be an excellent one. Certainly
those things that happen regularly and uniformly
seem to be self-evident samples of the nature of
reality. However, in actual practice this is not
borne out. Despite increasing elaboration of statistical methodologies, despite greater and greater
refinement of laboratory procedure, the product of
years of conscientious effort has not been such as
to warrant confidence that we will eventually arrive
at a genuine understanding of human behavior by
this route. And this is not surprising when we
look back to the model on which these efforts are
founded. The effort to find the basic subperson
unit of behavior has been vain. The total person
is the basic unit. Only as we find ways to understand the behaving person can we understand his
behavior. It is manifestly impossible with present
techniques to control all factors involved in any
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tionship centered. Diagnostic information is knowledge about the patient, the most effective psychotherapy requires knowledge oj the patient. This
difference is more than a play on words. Knowledge about a patient treats that patient as an object, or a thing to be studied and manipulated.
Knowledge of the patient recognizes the patient's
essential humanity and individuality. It involves
a knowing and relating, a being with, as opposed
to a manipulating. Diagnostic information is useful when the need is to treat people as objects, as
representatives of classes, rather than as individuals. For administrative functions, it often is essential. For research purposes it may be crucial, but
for the psychotherapeutic purpose itself, diagnosis
is not important once the grosser disturbances have
been ruled out.
CONCLUSION
I have tried to give one view of a tremendously
exciting development in our field of psychology.
If I see it correctly, we are leaving the stage of
preoccupation with part functions and getting back
to what psychology seemed to most of us to mean
when we first entered the field. We are returning
to what psychology still seems to mean to the average, intelligent layman, that is, the functioning
and experience of a whole human being.
Psychology has been going through an adolescence. This is an analogy we have often made.
As an adolescent, psychology has little valued what
its parents could give, while it has modeled itself
on the glamorous outsider, physics. Now I hope