Transcending with Scott Barry Kaufman

I had the honor to talk with Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D. about his latest book Transcend: The New Science of Self Actualization, his research, and his mission to define a common humanity of wholeness. Scott or “SBK” as he is affectionately referred to by peers, colleagues and friends, is an innovative scientist and writer. He is also well-known for his top-rated psychology podcast, which is aptly named, The Psychology Podcast. Over the past 20 years, SBK’s research has spanned a broad range of intriguing topics, including imagination and creativity, intelligence and gifted children. He has thoughtfully questioned how traditional labels may inhibit human potential. Scott himself is familiar with challenging the “norm,” having experienced such limitations as a child, when he was placed in an assisted learning class because he had an undetected hearing issue, which was mistaken for a learning disability.

SBK’s work is rooted in his curiosity about human potential: how it can be developed, supported, and also stifled. Most recently, Scott has reintroduced the science of self-actualization, shining a light on humanist psychology, which was developed by most notably, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and Alfred Adler. It was this field of psychology that was first dubbed “positive psychology.” The progression of humanist psychology slowed with the untimely death of Maslow, who is widely regarded as the founder of the field. With his book Transcend, Scott brings the science behind the well-known but often misunderstood self-actualization pyramid chart into the 21st century. SBK claims that Maslow himself never used a pyramid to conceptualize the science of self-actualization, and in fact, this idea of “leveling up” may be more harmful than helpful. SBK proposes the self-actualization should instead be viewed as a journey in a sailboat, where transcendence arises from embracing the “wholeness” of our human experience and exploring our potential from there.

Simple enough, right? Well, how exactly do we become a “whole” person? SBK classifies the practice of being whole as an iterative process, whereby we accept and integrate the totality of human experience. He speculates that the process of beginning to see ourselves as whole begins by disrupting our inherent tendency to self-judge, characterized by shutting off or ignoring parts of ourselves that we don’t like, or we associate as “bad.” He suggests these facets of ourselves are never as simple as the “good” or “bad” labels we use to identify them. He used the example of self-sacrifice and selfishness. Self-sacrifice is generally considered to be a positive quality, while being selfish is traditionally labeled as negative. However, Scott contends that context matters: having a healthy amount of selfishness can make us better people. More broadly, he doesn’t identify emotions as good or bad, positive or negative. Rather, he suggests that emotions are more contextual to the individual’s experiences of them. He will ask himself, “is this a comfortable or uncomfortable emotion, and to what end is it serving me?” Thus, Scott proposes that integrating certain constructs traditionally thought of as dark emotions can be helpful in informing our human experience. Being aware of the overall motivation and goal is more important than identifying the traits themselves in isolation.

Transcend is dedicated to different practices to help readers explore the process of self-actualization. Scott Barry Kaufman’s aim is to help people understand their own potential, and he offers an eight-week course to guide and support people in this process (for more information on the next course, offered in February, visit ScottBarryKaufman.com). One thing is for certain, SBK’s pioneering work on human potential is instrumental as we seek to expand the way we see ourselves and each other.