The history of psychology in the twentieth century is the history of a discipline struggling to balance values that seemed, more often than not, to exist in mutual tension. Some psychologists emphasized the necessity of empirical rigor in research, others promoted the development of individual emotional health and maturity, while still other mid-century thinkers would advance larger social and ethical concerns. Psychology's quest to establish itself as a science, combined with its historical emphasis on the connections between the human self and human well-being, produced a discipline of broad application and intense vitality, one uniquely suited to address the problems and opportunities of humankind in a technological age. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the rise of what has become known as humanistic psychology.

Background

Efforts to limit psychological research to observable phenomena or behavior along began with reactions against the introspective psychological...