ABSTRACT

This chapter addresses humanistic perspectives on multiculturalism in personal reflections on developmental encounters with humanistic psychology through discussion of the need for humanistic psychology to engage shadow phenomena, its own, and the shadow of Western cultural history and psychology, in the treatment of people of color. The discussion is grounded in evidentiary case examples within the chronicle of United States Constitutional jurisprudence and the confirmation of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Further, it recommends a depth of humanistic–existential psychology that grapples with the robust question of what it means to be optimally human in multiple cultures in the 21st century global culture of cultures. It argues for a dialectic engagement with a detrimental inhumanity, in its varied forms, as it seeks to answer this essential question: How might collective active imaginations be utilized to the task of supporting the development of optimally human and humane individuals and the creation of humane environments and societies in which to thrive and evolve? These would be individuals and societies rooted in the value of the collective good and communalism in contrast to rugged individualism and competition? Vaughan argues for the integration of the transdisciplinary, transcultural, and intersectional perspectives in a depth humanistic–existential psychology; and for the integration and practices of dialecticism and dialectical analysis in the framework of a depth humanistic–existential psychology theory, disciplined inquiry, and professional practice.