Introduction to the special section on the future of health psychology.

Following 25 years of landmark progress, health psychology faces even greater change in the foreseeable future. Evolving patterns of health and illness and developments in medicine and related fields will shape the future of health psychology. The articles in this special section discuss these future issues in several areas: the biopsychosocial model, changes in demographics, prevention, clinical health psychology interventions, health care financing, and new technologies. In every case, the future holds a variety of important challenges and opportunities in research, practice, training, and policy.     

The Philosophical Foundations of Humanistic Psychology: A Reply to McMullen

McMullen (1982) attempted in his critique of humanistic psychology to attack its philosophical foundations, taking these to be phenomenology and a doctrine of self determination. In this paper we argue that McMullen has misrepresented the philosophical position of the humanists, then we examine McMullen's own philosophical assumptions. We show that he has assumed the philosophy of empirical realism which we argue is inadequate as a foundation for science. It is shown that it is the inadequacy of McMullen's assumptions which underlies his failure to comprehend the position of the humanists. We then present a version of theoretical realism and show how, in terms of this, a conception of being can be justified which allows for the emergence of hierarchical order. On the basis of this conception of being we reassess the nature of self-determination and motivation, showing how, in opposition to both the empirical realism of McMullen and the philosophical dualism of conventional humanistic psychology, a naturalistic form of humanistic psychology is justified.