This study identified factors associated with descriptions of peak performance, which was denned as behavior that exceeds the probable or predictable. A questionnaire was developed to elicit narrative and quantitative reports of experiences of peak performance and similar examples of modal functioning. Research participants were college students in introductory psychology and creative arts classes and students in adult education classes who reported such experiences. Respondents' narratives were evaluated by trained judges, and accompanying quantitative data also collected from these 90 participants were factor analyzed. Differences were assessed by t tests and discriminant function analysis. The data corroborated peak performance,as an identifiable psychological entity. A multidimensional factor structure of peak performance emphasized clear focus, intense involvement, intention, and spontaneous expression of power. Respondents considered psychological involvement with other persons unimportant to their peak performance.
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States of dehumanization are the meta‐neuroses of our times. Violence, hedonic sexuality and injustice‐watching are included among these. The other end of the adjustment continuum has been opened to reveal a new concept of high level functioning: the “Beautiful and Noble Person.” The therapist, in addition to (not instead of) his role in person to person helping, must contribute to the humanizing of a society that has repressed from its consciousness its own worst effects.
The behavioral scientist can readily agree that existentialism is a powerful and meaningful movement for the counseling profession. However, to achieve its fullest usefulness it must grow to meet the scrutiny characteristic of the behavioral scientists' methods. Its weakness from this point of view include the reluctance to formulate public definitions of its most prized concepts and its rejection of rigor in methodology. The possibilities of a scientific existentialism which by no means destroys the magnificence of its concepts are demonstrated in a number of available experiments. Counseling as a helping profession cannot responsibly accept existentialism wholly as it comes from contemporary philosophy but must extrapolate and develop it into an adequate science of man.
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