Maslow in his own words

Since I have quoted Maslow extensively, I thought it might be useful to readers to know how he views his own place in the field of psychology:


“Psychology today is torn and riven, and may in fact be said to be three (or more) separate, noncommunicating sciences or groups of scientists. First is the behavioristic, objectivistic, mechanistic, positivistic group. Second is the whole cluster of psychologies that originated in Freud and in psychoanalysis. And third there are the humanistic psychologies, or the “Third Force” as this group has been called, a coalescence in to a single philosophy of various splinter groups in psychology. It is for this third psychology that I want to speak. I interpret this third psychology to include the first and second psychologies, and have invented the words “epi-behavioristic” and “epi-Freudian” (epi = upon) to describe it. This also helps to avoid the sophomoric two-valued, dichotomized orientation, for example, of being either pro-Freudian or anti-Freudian. I am Freudian and I am behavioristic and I am humanistic, and as a matter of fact I am developing what might be called a fourth psychology of transcendence as well.” (1971, pp. 3-4)

~ Excerpted from "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature" by Abraham Maslow.