An examination of four decades of research and practice in humanistic psychology, this work highlights the lasting contributions of humanistic psychology to the science of psychology and to the pursuit of personal and spiritual development. It explores the passions and goals of the founders and their vital legacy for the 21st century.
DeCarvalho narrates the institutionalization of the humanistic current in American psychology and places the thinking of five of its founders in the context of 20th century psychology. This intellectual history includes chronological bibliographies of the five founders: Gordon Allport, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Rollo May, and James Bugental. The book examines their revolt against behaviorism and psychoanalysis, and explains the impact that the neo-Freudians, existentialism, Kurt Goldstein, personality, and Gestalt psychologies had on the conceptualization of their humanistic psychologies.
Increasing numbers of professional teams and athletes look for assistance with the psychological factors of their performance, and there exists a growing body of professional sport psychologists ready to provide support. Despite this, it seems at times there remains a significant gap between the real needs of sport performers and what is delivered by traditional sport psychology. The existential approach described by Mark Nesti offers a radical alternative to the cognitive and cognitive-behavioural approaches that have dominated sport psychology, and represents the first systematic attempt to apply existential psychological theory and phenomenological method to sport psychology. This much-needed alternative framework for the discipline of applied sport psychology connects to many of the real and most significant challenges faced by sports performers during their careers and beyond. Existential Psychology and Sport outlines an approach that can be used to add something of depth, substance and academic rigour to sport psychology in applied settings beyond the confines of MST and good listening skills.