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and Abraham Maslow were positively dewy-eyed. Where the neo-Freudians had attacked external
restraints and prescriptions, the humanists attacked all forms of influence or determination outside the
160 self. Each man and woman is not a «piece of the continent», as Donne wrote, but «an island unto himself,
in a very real sense» said Rogers, «and he can only build bridges to other islands if he is first of all willing
165 to be himself and permitted to be himself». Autonomy was the absolute; the crucial goal of therapy, as of
life, was «to be that self which one truly is», as Kierkegaard had said — or, as Maslow and Rogers
themselves put it, to «self actualize».
2.
Rogers cited with approval the decline of institutions — «government, the military, the church, the
170 corporation, the school — because these were sources of external determination that prevented us from
being ourselves. He regarded with favor the decline of conventional marriage as well. Those who choose to
live together without it «simply believe that a partnership has significance only if it is a mutually
175 enhancing,growing relationship». Of the healthy individual, Rogers said, «He is unlikely to make any
commitment for all of his life because he knows he cannot predict himself that well».
3.
Actualizing the individual «may sound as though it were a selfish or unsocial criterion», Rogers
180wrote, «but it does not prove to be so, since a deep and helpful relationship as experienced is actualizing».
Rogers, like the neo-Freudians, simply took for granted that the «self-actualized» individual would do
naturally what was benevolent and good.
185 4.
It is time to ask whether these teachings of the psychology profession are rooted in science — in
empirical evidence — or whether they are based instead on ideology and predilection. Further, we need to
ask whether these teachings serve to heal, both individually and collectively; or whether seeking personal
190 happiness directly, as they tend to counsel, only makes that goal more elusive.
III. EVIDENCE OF THE INADEQUACY OF CURRENT THEORIES
1.
Freud served an important role, stripping way the pretense and hypocrisy of the Victorian era and
195 demonstrating that people need to come to grips with the best in themselves. But he led psychology astray
in portraying all motivation as derived from bodily needs, with the implication that in the core of our being
we are self-serving beyond redemption, and only gamesmanship and external restraints can hold us in
check.
200
2. Where Freud saw all motivation arising from the organism, pressing outward like steam from a
boiler, subsequent research showed that the process often works the other way around — that what we do
is often a response to something outside us, without reference to bodily needs ... Ethologist Irenaus Eibl-
205 Eibesfeldt presents a fair amount of evidence that even the way adults show affection for one another
derived in evolution from the way they have cared for their young, rather than vice versa as Freud had
maintained. There is a social basis to behavior; and if to sex, why not to other areas of life?
210
3. Then, too, there was research into what are called «cognitive» and «motor» processes. In humans and
other species, the development of skills like perceiving, grasping, exploring, speaking, seem to some
degree to have a life of their own, apart from bodily needs. More important, sociability generally — getting
215 along with others — seems to stand as a motive on its own... There is also evidence of altruistic
inclinations in very young children. Those barely over a year old will bring their mother to help a friend in
distress and offer that friend their teddy bear and security blanket...
220
4. Freud was influenced by Darwin, but even in the great march of evolution, it is genes that survive, not
individuals. Behavior like that just described, generous in the root sense of the word, is thus totally
consistent with Darwin's theories. Is it not possible, even likely, that evolution has equipped us to act
225 cooperatively — generously — as well as in a self-centred fashion?
IV. THE SOCIAL THEORY OF BEHAVIOR:
How the Evidence
Has Been Explained Away
1.
Unfortunately, though observations of this sort have not gone unnoticed «in the world of
psychological theory,... modem psychologists have responded by replacing biological needs with
230 psychological ones in order to save their egocentric theory».
2.
Cognitive and motor skills were explained by needs for «novelty» or «mastery». Social involvement
was accounted for by needs for «security», «approval», and the like. Whenever the physical or social