This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly Guastello, S J (2014) Vigilance phenomena, cognitive workload, and fatigue American Psychologist, 69, 85– 86 doi:10.1037/a0034941 Hancock, P A (2013) In search of vigilance: The problem of iatrogenically created psychological phenomena American Psychologist, 68, 97–109 doi:10.1037/a0030214 Hancock, P A., & Caird, J K (1993) Experimental evaluation of a model of mental workload Human Factors, 35(3), 413– 429 Hancock, P A., Desmond, P A., & Matthews, G (2012) Defining and conceptualizing fatigue In G Matthews, P A Desmond, C Neubauer, & P A Hancock (Eds.), The handbook of operator fatigue (pp 63–73) Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate Hancock, P A., & Newell, K M (1985) The movement speed–accuracy relationship in space-time In H Heuer, U Kleinbeck, & K H Schmidt (Eds.), Motor behavior: Programming, control and acquisition (pp 153– 188) Berlin, Germany: Springer doi:10.1007/ 978-3-642-69749-4_5 Hancock, P A., & Warm, J S (1989) A dynamic model of stress and sustained attention Human Factors, 31, 519 –537 Parasuraman, R., & Davies, D R (1976) Decision theory analysis of response latencies in vigilance Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2, 578 –590 doi:10.1037/0096-1523.2.4.578 Warm, J S., Dember, W N., & Hancock, P A (1996) Vigilance and workload in automated systems In R Parasuraman & M Mouloua (Eds.), Automation and human performance: Theory and applications (pp 183–200) Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Correspondence concerning this comment should be addressed to P A Hancock, Department of Psychology, Building 99, Room 301D, University of Central Florida, 4000 Central Florida Boulevard, Orlando, FL 32826 E-mail: peter.hancock@ucf.edu DOI: 10.1037/a0034866 A Phenomenologist’s Response to Alan Waterman James Morley Ramapo College of New Jersey Distancing positive psychology from humanistic psychology, Alan Waterman (April 2013) wishes to close the conversation between the two cognate psychological paradigms It’s true that strong fences can make good neighbors, and a desire for amicable separation on the basis of irreconcilable differences is understandable The fecundity of psychology lies in our perpetual diversity of methodologies and theoretical perspectives Personally, I have sympathy with positive psychology and celebrate its success I also believe that Alan Waterman’s gracious style is an exemplary model for respectful dis- 88 agreement However, in distancing positive psychology from humanistic psychology generally, Alan Waterman represented phenomenology as the philosophical foundation to humanistic psychology in a way that is seriously mistaken at worst and problematic at best Putting aside the issue of the relationship between phenomenology and humanistic psychology (as well as positive psychology), the following brief commentary will limit itself to those points where Waterman invoked the term phenomenological with broad strokes that invite friendly clarification First, Waterman (2013) did not distinguish philosophical from psychological phenomenology As with positivist philosophy and experimental psychology, these are interrelated yet distinct disciplines In his essay, Waterman made the understandable category error of collapsing philosophical and psychological phenomenology In brief, the former asks general (ontological) questions, whereas the latter asks empirical questions—albeit both from within a shared epistemological framework For example, philosophical phenomenology asks, “What is the meaning of imagination?” whereas phenomenological psychology asks, “What is the direct experience of imagination for particular persons?” While the two disciplines are very collaborative, they represent distinct divisions of labor (Morley, 2011) It causes confusion to cite only philosophical sources Since 1970, an entire journal (the Journal of Phenomenological Psychology) and innumerable publications have established a rich research tradition that should be directly cited and permitted to speak for itself Phenomenology is not idiographic Waterman (2013) incorrectly linked phenomenology with “idiographic objectives” (p 128) In actual fact, Husserl (1970), the founder of modern phenomenology, devoted his entire life’s work to establishing phenomenology as a rigorous science directed toward generalizable knowledge Husserl’s overall epistemological approach was systemized by Giorgi (1970, 2009) into a particularly “psychological” empirical procedure called “descriptive phenomenological method.” In this method the researcher collects naïve descriptions from several subjects and then follows a standardized procedure for documenting how the researcher elucidates the psychological patterns common to all naïve reports These common intersubjective patterns are represented as “general structures” that are far from idiographic These general structures make claims to generalizable knowledge that is open to expert scientific critique While distancing itself from the sort of “positivism” that is unnecessarily based on the assumptions of the physical sci- ences, phenomenological psychology embraces a positive scientific program of generalizable nomothetic claims Phenomenology does not treat communication as unreliable Waterman (2013) incorrectly stated that for phenomenologists, “Communication is, by necessity, unreliable” (p 127) This is a remarkable misunderstanding, as exactly the opposite is true More than any other approach to psychology, phenomenological methodology is based on a faith in the human being to be able to offer reliable descriptions of his or her direct experiences of psychological phenomena Communicated expressions are exactly the datum of descriptive phenomenological research Phenomenology has always maintained that experience is radically intersubjective and that the shared social world is the paramount human reality To phenomenologists there is no “problem of other minds” as there is for psychological methods based on the physical sciences In phenomenological epistemology, directly intuited experience is the “crossing of avenues” between self, other, and world (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p 160) Phenomenological psychologists are especially devoted to the issue of how to best describe, elucidate, and interrogate this common crossing of lived human expressions in a rigorously scientific manner Phenomenology does not close dialogue with quantitative methods Waterman (2013) devoted a considerable section of his essay to an appeal for more crossmethodological dialogue between qualitative and quantitative methods (p 130) While it is true that phenomenological psychology has established an empirical tradition distinct from experimentalism, I would cite the current example of neurophenomenology (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2012) and historical schools such as gestalt psychology as examples of fruitful interchanges of ideas between divergent systems of qualitative and quantitative thought For over 12 years, an entire journal, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, has been devoted to exactly this dialogue between qualitative and quantitative research This is another significant oversight These misunderstandings are forgivable Like urban myths, such mistakes are rife throughout the secondary literature However, it behooves us as scientists and scholars to be cognizant of the primary sources behind the literature we are citing The tragedy here is that much potentially constructive cross-paradigm research is thwarted by such misapprehensions Regardless of whether we agree or disagree January 2014 ● American Psychologist with one another, scientific discourse is only furthered if we have clarity about one another’s theoretical paradigms and research endeavors With such clarity, perhaps we could actually “all just get along”—at least a little better James Morley is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Phenomenological Psychology Correspondence concerning this comment should be addressed to James Morley, School of Social Science and Human Services, Ramapo College of New Jersey, 505 Ramapo Valley Road, Mahwah, NJ 07430 E-mail: jmorley@ ramapo.edu repeatedly characterized humanistic psychology as focusing on the “tragic.” My response to this article comes not only from my experience as past president of the Society for Humanistic Psychology but from my 40 years of clinical experience I wonder if the situation described in this article looks different to clinical practitioners In my practice, I am client-centered; I take my cues from the client I work collaboratively as we discover points of access and openness to experience and change I neither approach him or her seeking tragedy nor approach him or her with an intention to change Having trained and taught at the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy with Laura Perls, I learned about being in the moment and working spontaneously to help people develop awareness of themselves and others With my focus on the flow of the therapeutic process, I may introduce other techniques if needed I may use eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, mindfulness and imagery, and prescribe homework—just as sometimes I am schoolteacher, mother, or counselor to my clients And just as I hope that future researchers will use combinations of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, I would hope that future clinicians will cling not to theory but to the lived experience of the person sitting opposite them Humanistic psychologists explore clients’ joys and celebrate their triumphs as well as examine their experiences of tragedy and existential crises This, to me, is the heart of humanistic psychotherapy DOI: 10.1037/a0034987 REFERENCE This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly REFERENCES Gallagher, S., & Zahavi, D (2012) The phenomenological mind New York, NY: Routledge Giorgi, A (1970) Psychology as a human science: A phenomenologically based approach New York, NY: Harper & Row Giorgi, A (2009) The descriptive phenomenological method in psychology: A modified Husserlian approach Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press Husserl, E (1970) The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology: An introduction to phenomenological philosophy (W Biemel, Ed., & D Carr, Trans.) Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press Merleau-Ponty, M (1968) The visible and the invisible (A Lingis, Trans.) Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press Morley, J (2011) Phenomenological psychology In S Luft & S Overgaard (Eds.), The Routledge companion to phenomenology (pp 586 –596) New York, NY: Routledge Waterman, A (2013) The humanistic psychology–positive psychology divide: Contrasts in philosophical foundations American Psychologist, 68, 124 –133 doi:10.1037/a0032168 A Therapist’s Response to Alan Waterman Ilene A Serlin Union Street Health Associates, San Francisco, California Alan Waterman’s (April 2013) article brought a useful discerning eye to the differences between humanistic and positive psychology and their different theoretical and methodological assumptions It is important that these differences not be glossed over too quickly by those who seek complementarity or integration of the two However, Waterman also polarized them unnecessarily, which is unfortunate He asserted strongly several times throughout the article that rapprochement is unlikely, and January 2014 ● American Psychologist Waterman, A S (2013) The humanistic psychology–positive psychology divide: Contrasts in philosophical foundations American Psychologist, 68, 124 –133 doi:10.1037/ a0032168 Correspondence concerning this comment should be addressed to Ilene A Serlin, Union Street Health Associates, 2084 Union Street, San Francisco, CA 94123 E-mail: iserlin@ ileneserlin.com DOI: 10.1037/a0034865 Are Humanistic and Positive Psychology Really Incommensurate? Harris Friedman University of Florida Positive psychology forged its initial identity by distancing itself from humanistic psychology with an opening salvo of criticisms (e.g., claiming that humanistic psychology is unscientific, fosters narcissism, etc.; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), and Waterman (April 2013) admitted that these initial attacks were misplaced Ironically, as a movement based on the value of positivity, positive psychology was launched through a barrage of negativity Waterman has continued this distancing maneuver by proclaiming that the two subdisciplines are incommensurate He made this proclamation after acknowledging that they basically study the same content (namely, understanding and promoting human flourishing), that their preferred research methods (qualitative research favored by most humanistic psychologists and quantitative research favored by most positive psychologists) are complementary, and that their overall approaches are neither inherently superior nor inherently inferior He even mentioned that certain topics, such as the so-called “true self,” can be studied well using the assumptions of either approach Nevertheless, Waterman argued that humanistic and positive psychology are incommensurate Waterman (2013) put some of his cards on the table by revealing that he identifies with positive psychology and finds it more useful than humanistic psychology He also mentioned that he strives to be fair in his article, and that is evident Sometimes, however, subtle biases seem to leak out (e.g., humanistic psychology is condescendingly described in the negative as not being a spent force, while positive psychology is described as vibrant and growing in its reach) So if, as Waterman acknowledged, past positive psychology attacks on humanistic psychology were misplaced and reflected a desire to distance positive psychology from humanistic psychology, what is the function of proclaiming that the two are incommensurate other than to create distance? Unfortunately, Waterman’s article appears to be an apologia for the negativity that emanated from positive psychology at its inception, but it is in fact a subtle continuation of that negativity The gist of Waterman’s (2013) argument is that the two are incommensurate because of philosophical (e.g., ontological, epistemological, and practical) divides He built a case for this by first stating that the philosophers cited by each side barely overlap (i.e., Aristotle being the sole exception mentioned) and then concluding that this lack of overlap shows a radical difference in how they view human nature Waterman then more specifically argued that the two use different ontologies about human nature, based on his informal observation that phenomenological problems often trouble humanistic 89 ... Contrasts in philosophical foundations American Psychologist, 68, 124 –133 doi:10.1037 /a0 032168 A Therapist’s Response to Alan Waterman Ilene A Serlin Union Street Health Associates, San Francisco,... humanistic psychology, what is the function of proclaiming that the two are incommensurate other than to create distance? Unfortunately, Waterman? ??s article appears to be an apologia for the negativity... psychology was launched through a barrage of negativity Waterman has continued this distancing maneuver by proclaiming that the two subdisciplines are incommensurate He made this proclamation after acknowledging