Starting this semester, students at Boston College have the opportunity to minor in a groundbreaking discipline known as the psychological humanities. This emerging, interdisciplinary field expands contemporary approaches to psychology by drawing on the arts and humanities in order to address questions surrounding truth, beauty, suffering, and the human experience with greater fidelity than has been demonstrated by traditional psychology. The Psychological Humanities Minor, launching under the umbrella of the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics, enables students to deeply explore topics at the root of the human condition by leveraging perspectives from philosophy, theology, literature, history, political science, and the arts, in order to consider areas which psychology alone has historically failed to do justice to. The psychological humanities bring a refreshing challenge to the reductionism of contemporary psychology, necessarily reorienting it in order to better speak to experiences that cannot be sufficiently approached within the walls of a single discipline.
The minor is part of a new endeavor within the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics to expand its offerings to both the undergraduate and graduate student populations at BC. Since its inception approximately two years ago, the Center has predominantly served professionals in disciplines relating to the broad field of psychology. This minor creates an avenue for undergraduate students to engage with the Center while simultaneously enriching their academic, personal, relational, and existential development.
The psychological humanities minor is transformative in its interdisciplinary approach toward addressing questions of meaning and life—which have traditionally been reserved for the humanities. This historical cordoning off of the humanities from psychology has been detrimental to psychology’s ability to meaningfully study the human psyche, despite this being central to the discipline’s ostensible purpose. When interviewed, David Goodman, the director of the minor, spoke to the radical nature of BC’s orientation towards the liberal arts in a world that increasingly devalues the humanities. Goodman spoke to the minor’s role in the fight to preserve care for the Other, stating, “It’s meant to sensitize us more deeply to the needs of others, and sensitize us more deeply to the way we construct our world, and who was left out of that, and who was invited into it.” This highlights the potential for the psychological humanities as a field to bolster empathy by tackling deeper questions of meaning and existence from an interdisciplinary perspective, hopefully leading students to feel impelled to challenge systemic inequities and work towards overhauling institutions that were designed with a privileged subset of the population in mind.
The minor will consist of six courses: one foundational course, three electives, a formative seminar, and a capstone. The electives span three categories: the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. When discussing the choice to categorize the electives in this way, Goodman spoke to these areas as the traditional “deep categories” within philosophy and theology. True to its interdisciplinary foundation, electives offered toward the minor span a wide variety of stimulating topics: existentialism, madness in literature, aesthetics, technology, liberatory and critical psychologies, and politics. To enroll in the minor, students submit a brief application, largely consisting of a short essay describing their interest in the minor and how it aligns with their academic or future plans.
Who should consider this minor? Goodman’s response to that question was clear: “anyone who’s hungry to play with the questions, and hungry to avail themselves of bringing more dimension to the way they think and relate to human sciences.” Thus, this minor could serve as a valuable way for students majoring in psychology or education to explore meaningful questions that are undeniably relevant to their respective fields but could also augment the coursework or broader development of any student with a desire to delve into some of these more formative, deep considerations relating to life and the human condition, regardless of their career aspirations. Goodman explicitly spoke to the psychological humanities’ capacity to serve students in their preparation for whichever career they aim to pursue, stating that the field hopes to “enrich people’s way of encountering the things that they’re vocationally passionate about.” He then expounded on this suggestion, discussing the minor’s ability to prompt students to ask vital questions such as, “Why should I be doing this in the first place? What is it serving in the world? How does it align with what I believe I’m supposed to be bringing to the environment?” Without sufficient encouragement to ask questions relating to those just outlined, a person is liable to become “a technician in [their] environment,” reducing the complexity, depth, and idiosyncrasy inherent to the human experience.
The field of the psychological humanities is distinct in its desire to integrate the arts, humanities, and sciences to explore the often inarticulable, phenomenological aspects of psychological experience. Mark Freeman, professor emeritus of psychology at Holy Cross, is one of the prominent figures spearheading this revolutionary call to reimagine psychology as a discipline. In his seminal book, Toward the Psychological Humanities: A Modest Manifesto for the Future of Psychology, he argues that the psychological humanities allow for “a much more unwieldy psychology, requiring different methods, methodologies, and, perhaps most fundamentally, mindsets, ones that are closer to the arts and humanities than to the sciences, at least as temporarily conceived and defined” (Freeman, 2023, p. 1-2). Freeman continues, eloquently articulating the gravity of this psychological movement towards the humanities: “we might craft a psychology that is substantially better—more adequate, more humane, more ethically sound, and more true—than the one we have now” (Freeman, 2023, p. 2).
By contemplating the types of questions that the psychological humanities seek to address, students will gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for themselves, the beauty and complexity of life, and others. This development is crucial, considering that discussions surrounding mental health continue to permeate much of contemporary discourse, which can make it tempting to pathologize or otherwise attempt to categorize another’s experience in lieu of a genuine exploration of their perspective. Goodman specifically identified that the “way we relate to diagnostic stuff is a problem in our culture … we are not well equipped to deal with that well.” His comments reflect the importance of preserving the complexity and irreducibility of each person’s experience rather than trying to simplify things by applying psychological terms that are often misunderstood by mainstream society, in addition to foreclosing on the possibility of having authentic relationships with others.
Based on the points discussed thus far, the psychological humanities could be powerful in catalyzing activism and renewed motivation to address social justice issues. Illustrating this conclusion, Goodman remarked, “That is the starting point, hoping that the Constitution of the United States telling me that we’re all made equal, that that’s also going to somehow drive me to be ethical. It is the felt understanding of another person’s vulnerability, and my vulnerability, and being able to live in that, and struggle with that, and feel the call that is present in that to be a responsive person. That’s the core of social justice to me.” Hence, the psychological humanities’ effort to deepen our appreciation for such consequential areas of the human experience could be incredibly nourishing to activist movements, a shift which is especially necessary in light of the pervasive individualism plaguing society. Therefore, while the Psychological Humanities Minor serves as an enticing expansion to BC’s programs of study, it most importantly helps BC embody its Jesuit mission to educate its students as people for and with others.
