New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow
and the Post-Freudian Revolution (eBook edition, 2001)
By Colin Wilson
Acknowledgements
Contents
Detailed Contents p. 6
Introductory: Personal Notes on Maslow p. 10
Part One
I The Age Of Machinery: from Descartes to Mill p. 48
II Towards A Psychology of the Will: Brentano to James p. 66
III Freud and After p. 102
Part Two
I Maslow, A Biographical Sketch p. 153
II Higher Ceilings for Human Nature p. 179
Part Three
Where Now? p. 248
Endnotes p. 334
Select Bibliography p. 342
Appendix A: Colin Wilson and The Path to Personal Happiness by Michael Pastore
p. 344
Detailed Contents
Introductory: Personal Notes on Maslow p. 10
The nature of the peak experience. The concept of the robot. Why doesn't it
tickle when you tickle yourself? 'Preparedness'. The girl in the chewing gum
factory. 'Human nature has been sold short.' The Outsider. The near and the
far. Axel. Popper's third world. Crisis produces a sense of meaning: the St
Neot Margin concept. Camus's 'night of freedom'. Greene's revolver. The problem
of paste jewellery. Masturbation: 'a higher function'? Hoffer's cure of alcoholics.
Gary's Roots of Heaven. Machado's Looking Glass and the psychology of the self-image.
Viktor Frankl's story of the prisoner who dreamed of release. Mental illness
as 'amnesia'. Plan of this book.
Part One
I The Age of Machinery: from Descartes to Mill p. 48
Descartes's automata. The 'mechanism' of Hobbes. Herbert of Cherbury. Locke.
Hume: free will is an illusion. William James. 'Panic attack'. Maupassant's
Unknown. Psychology of the will. Sense datum theory of perception. Thomas Reid's
refutation of Hume. Whitehead's meaning theory. Hume unaware of the subconscious
mind. Condillac. Theory of the statue. Cabanis. The Mills and 'associationism'.
Lotze. Bain, Lipps, Ward, Stout.
II Towards a Psychology of the Will: Brentano to James p. 66
Brentano and intentionality. Edmund Husserl, and the creation of phenomenological
psychology. His 'realism'. The transcendental ego. William James and pragmatism.
Jouffroy's breakdown. The lobotomised pigeon. Principles of Psychology. Defence
of pragmatism. 'A certain blindness.' T. E. Lawrence and primal perception.
The Energies of Man. The 'dam' in the mind. Calling the bluff of consciousness.
Janet's psychasthenic patient. The moral equivalent of war. The 'chain reaction'.
What is consciousness for? James on mysticism: the expanding sense of reality.
Man who fell out of love. Shaw's Candida: 'secret in the poet's heart'. The
power to 'focus'.
III Freud and After p. 102
Freud's reticence. Mother fixation. Studies under Charcot. Hysteria. Vienna
years. Development of psychoanalysis. Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious.
The sexual theory. 'Whose subconscious?' Psychoanalysing Freud. Freud versus
religion. Cultural pessimism. Alfred Adler. The social nature of man. Inferiority
as the root of neurosis. Adler on Dostoevsky. Adler's limitations. Carl Jung.
Jung's quarrel with Freud. Alchemy. Jung as phenomenologist. The four functions.
Neurosis as imbalance of four functions. Archetypes. Introvert and extravert.
Otto Rank. The Trauma of Birth. The importance of the will in curing neurosis.
Man's will to health. Man's supra-personal drives. The hero and the artist.
Jung's case of the business man. Creative stagnation as the cause of neurosis.
The 'robot' : the destroyer of 'newness'. Gestalt psychology. Wundt. The 'meaning
faculty'.
Part Two
I Maslow, A Biographical Sketch p. 153
'I consider myself as Freudian.' The reluctant rebel. Brooklyn childhood. Anti-semitism.
'Angels.' Will Maslow. New York City College. The New York scene-music, theatre,
ideas. Decision not to become lawyer. Cornell. Bertha. University of Wisconsin-development
of interest in psychology. Utopianism-'yearning for the good life.' Professors.
Pavlovian training. Timidity and shyness. Graduation. Work under Thorndike.
Thorndike's functionalism. Psychology in the thirties: Lewin, Goldstein, S-R
theory, Karen Horney and Erich Fromm. Wertheimer, Ruth Benedict. The 'synergic
society'. Revolt against S-R theory. Fourteen years at Brooklyn College, working
with underprivileged kids. Brandeis.
II Higher Ceilings for Human Nature p. 179
Harry Harlow's intellectual monkeys. Chickens who are good choosers. Intelligence-testing
apes. Cannibalism in dogs. More monkey studies. First original research: synthesis
of Freud and Adler. Monkey dominance. Researches into dominance in women. High-,
medium-and low-dominance women. A Theory of Human Motivation-the hierarchy of
values. Hunger, love, belongingness, self-esteem, self-actualisation. Synthesis
of Marx, Freud, Adler, Goldstein. Psychology of science. Studies of healthy
people: discovery of the peak experience. Self-actualisers. 'They do not dwell
on the negative.' Sickness as an inverted form of human creativity. The Maslow-Frankl
theory of mental health. Does the human mind have an attic as well as a cellar?
Man's 'higher circuits'. Whately and Safford. Provisional existence. B-values.
Peak experiences without recognising them. Maslow's socialism. Theory Y and
Theory z. Eupsychian management. The Un-noticed Revolution. The Saga food corporation.
Implications of Maslow's theory of management. Clare Graves on Industrial Management.
Forms of addiction. Kamiya's experiments with alpha rhythms. Summary and criticism
of Maslow's achievement. Man is driven by evolutionary needs. Human beings are
naturally self-transcending. The Feminine Mystique. The black room problem.
Part Three
Where Now? p. 248
The European school of existential psychology. Frankl. The law of reverse effort.
Binswanger's phenomenological psychology, based on Heidegger. Gurdjieff and
Assagioli. Rollo May and R. D. Laing. The case of Larry Cassidy. Frankl's reverse
effort therapy-woman who was terrified of bacteria. Man's capacity for anxiety
was intended to be a capacity for peak experiences. Man is not naturally static.
The 'radar' sense of values. Baboons threatened by leopard. Carpenter's monkeys.
In man, territoriality has taken second place. Wuthering Heights. Tom Sawyer
and the fence. Mann's Disillusionment. Connection between neurosis and psychosis.
Glasser's reality therapy. Case of Jeri. 'No crap therapy' of Synanon. Importance
of 'attitude'. Deprivation of beauty can cause illness. Cantril's distorted
room. The Honi phenomenon. MacDougald's Attitude Psychology. Mental illness
as a result of faulty 'blocking'. Practical success of attitude therapy in prisons.
The dominant 5%. Calhoun's rat experiment. Van Vogt's violent male. May's concept
of 'centeredness'. Jung's business man. The general phenomenology of mental
health. Yeats and 'the partial mind'. Neurosis as a result of the partial mind.
The 'full moon'. My own 'Control Psychology'. Difference between neurosis and
psychosis is not qualitative. Margaret Lane's breakdown. The blue flower. The
robot's role in mental illness. Life failure. The importance of 'the beam of
intentionality' in mental health. 'Preparedness'. The relationality of consciousness.
Consciousness operates at too low a pressure for efficiency. Pessimism. Sartre's
view of human motivation: necessary conflict. The self-image. Neurosis as a
'partial self-image'. Refutation of Sartre. Rubinstein and Best's planaria experiment.
'Anybody can become a peaker.' Use of the self-image to create peaks. Simone
de Beauvoir and the mirror. The use of intentionality: Bell's Before the Dawn.
Intentionality as the decoding of meaning.
Endnotes p. 334
Select Bibliography p. 342
Appendix A: Colin Wilson and The Path to Personal Happiness by Michael Pastore
p. 344