Art Bohart, Psychology

Art Bohart

Psychology

Here's the paradox that defines Art Bohart's life's work:

When ordinary people think of "psychology," they think of personal exploration, analysis, and a search for meaningful answers.

But when some contemporary psychologists think of "psychology," they think about neurons firing, synapses carrying chemical messages through the brain, or stimulus-response behavior that has nothing to do with "choice." They see the mind as a collection of computer-like schemas and cognitions that control how people feel and behave.

Are these psychologists correct, and the public – the patients – incorrect?

Not according to Art. Just because neurons fire, synapses carry chemical messages, stimulus-response behavior happens, and there are cognitive schemas does NOT mean that's all we are.

People also have rich subjective lives, in which they think, plan, and feel - and they coordinate all that into the ways they as holistic beings encounter the world. Any psychology that misses that is missing the big picture.

"Do you think of yourself as a machine that is just clicking along, or do you think of yourself as a personal agent with goals and plans?" Art asks. "It's not that the other point of view, thinking of yourself as a machine, is completely wrong: there's some truth in that. But is that all there is to you? I know that there are circuits inside my brain, and as much as anyone I understand how they work, but I still think of myself as a person … and that matters."

It matters to more than just the health and wellbeing of individual patients – although their health is definitely at stake. The whole way we think of people – and treat them – is on the line.

"What's at stake is what has often been called 'the soul', " Art says. "When we're depressed is it just a biochemical imbalance, or could it be because some core goals have been blocked? There was an unprecedented rate of depression among women under the Taliban. Do we think of that as just some information processing problem in the brain, a biochemical imbalance, or do we think of it as deep human needs being blocked and human dignity being thwarted? That's what's at stake – how we think of things like that. How we help each other."

It's a question Art's been asking since he was a child. When he was in the 10th grade his friends got into the beatniks, and reading Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac exposed him to existentialism. He never got his beatnik poetry published, but the philosophy made a lasting impression.

"The core idea is that there is no given meaning in life, and that people have to create their own meaning," Art said. "Existentialism values people making their own meaning instead of following established forms. That just made a lot of sense to me when I was a kid, and it still makes a lot sense to me now."

Choosing to help others, then, is a choice and a commitment that each therapist must make on their own – and they should have the skills to help their patients find their own meaning and make their own meaningful choices.

As the Director of Saybrook's new PsyD program, Art gives his students access to the full spectrum of psychological thought about what makes us human – with an emphasis on supporting each client's individual growth and actualization.

He is uniquely suited to do that: Art's professional work has long focused on integrating different streams of psychological thought into something that is good for patients. His 1999 book How Clients Make Therapy Work was a breakthrough in research on the self-healing capacities that patients bring to therapy, demonstrating that the work they do to support their own growth and development can occur in nearly any psychological setting. Since that time, significant research has been done showing Art's conclusion is right: psychologists don't "heal" people, they help people "heal" themselves.

That means the way people think of themselves – as people, rather than machines, as meaningful rather than random – is crucial to supporting their growth. That's the humanistic approach, and that's what he's teaching the next generation of practitioners.

A regular presenter at major international conferences, Art was a full professor at California State University Dominguez for nearly 30 years, and says the students he sees at Saybrook are among the best he's worked with. "On the whole they're among the most independent thinkers I've encountered," he says. "They come in with very innovative ideas, whereas at a lot of universities they're more likely trained to follow some professor's research."

That means, 30 years from now, they're more likely to be remembered for making the kind of breakthroughs he did.