The Phenomenology of Emotion as a Pathway for Actualizing the Humanistic Revolution in Psychology

This article discusses the humanistic revolution first proposed by Abraham Maslow as an ongoing effort carried out by devoted humanistic psychologists. This discussion is framed within a broader consideration of the debate over the concept of revolutions in psychology and is related to a more specific examination of Brent Dean Robbins’s phenomenology of emotion. Robbins’s works on emotion were found to exhibit three guiding themes of the humanistic revolution: fulfillment, sociality, and lifeworld experience. Special attention is given to two critical avenues of exploration in his work. The first addresses ways in which contemporary psychology, as represented by cognitive neuroscience and positive psychology, is moving closer to the vision of the humanistic revolution. The second consists of a phenomenologically styled reduction of the historically unfolding eidos of humanistic psychology, the heart of the humanistic revolution.