1996
James D. Smrtic sits in his car at the parking lot of Mohawk Valley Community College (MVCC). He has known this campus since 1974. Rain bounces off the hood as streams of water on the windshield make the sign “Faculty Parking” barely visible. It is mid-November in Utica, New York, and the temperature today will hit a high of 45 F and a low of 34. In this month, the sun has made a few appearances but has mostly been hiding behind the blanket of gray. Jim’s thick black mustache frowns as he surveys the distance outside the driver window between his car and his office across the quad in Payne Hall. With determination, his hand grabs the leather briefcase in the passenger seat, and he opens the car door, stepping with white running shoes onto the wet gravel.
Jim stands 6'3" with an athletic build. He has neatly groomed short brown hair combed to the side, now getting slowly soaked and messed by the rain. Jim’s face wears something of a serious grin, framed by a thick mustache and held by a lantern jaw. He walks with purpose. An observer might think he is a cowboy that wandered too far from the Old West.
The MVCC is a traditional-style campus with buildings framing a quad. From a distance, you can see the rolling hills of the Mohawk Valley. The view on the other side of campus is the city of Utica. Historically, Utica has been a place for immigrants to settle down and express, explore, and build a life and community. Jim walks with long strides as he passes students running to class. Some run alongside each other in pairs, but most commute by themselves, textbooks in hand or wearing a backpack—all slowly accumulating moisture. These community college students are youngsters with dreams and aspirations to find their niche in the world. Many were often disregarded in high school, directionless, or looking for a path and still looking. A majority of the students that attend this community college have the motivation but have not yet developed a vision. Professors, like Jim, offer themselves as guides that can give the tools, skills, knowledge, and maps to climb personal and professional mountains.
Jim steadily marches through the puddles. His gait reveals discipline. Perhaps the number of years as an annual Boilermaker marathon runner or years in the U.S. Army Reserve allow him to accept the reality of the weather; he endures forth. Once inside Payne Hall, the smell of aging texts greets him. The MVCC library is located on the first floor of this building, beneath faculty offices. He shakes his nylon raincoat and heads up to the second floor. Jim’s office door is oversized, metal, and covered in pictures of news articles and photographs. One yellow flier is meant to catch your attention: Kidz n’ Coaches Events for the 1996–1997 School Year. To the left of the door is a nameplate, which reads, “James D. Smrtic, Associate Professor of Psychology.” Beyond the door is a windowless office that is the width of a person’s arm span and a depth of about ten feet. A desk is tucked in the rear left corner, filing cabinets on the back wall and right side. A chair for guests resides by his desk. The walls are decorated with newspaper clippings, photographs of old memories, and pictures of heroes or outlaws of the West (depending on which side of the law you are on).
Jim is in the process of writing an undergraduate abnormal psychology textbook, however, unlike other erudite texts, he will present the mind from different psychological perspectives and diagnostic models. He sits down in his office chair and feels his breath, the blood flowing to warm his hands, and his thoughts begin to focus on the work before him.
Today, Jim begins with the perspective of humanistic psychology. Works of Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Charlotte Buhler, and James Bugental are scattered about his desk. Jim’s research and sources lead him to the beginning, where the first meeting took place: Old Saybrook, Connecticut, 1964. This was a decisive meeting in the history of American psychology, as it would challenge the dominant perspectives: Freudian psychoanalysis and behaviorism. These rogue psychologists did not fit into either school, and the group decided to create a home if one did not exist. Old Saybrook is where this Third Force in psychology began.
Jim picks up the receiver and dials information. A young girl answers,
“Hello? Ol’ Saybrook Chamber of Commerce. How may I Help you?”
After short introductions, Jim plants the question, “Do you know where the first meeting of the humanistic psychologists took place in 1964?”
“No,” she replies.
“Okay. I know it was held at an old country inn around your area. Do you know where that might be?”
“There is an old country inn at Saybrook itself, but it burned down. So, there is no sense in coming to see that.”
“Is there any place else?”
“Yeah, there is an inn right on the Long Island Sound called the Castle Inn at Cornfield Point.”
“Is it open?” asks Jim.
“I think so.”
After Jim acquires the number for the Castel Inn at Cornfield Point, his fingers dance along with the keypad, replacing the dial tone with telephone jazz. After a cordial greeting from the concierge at the Castle Inn, Jim shoots from the hip,
“Do you know where the first meeting of the humanistic psychologists was held in 1964?”
The young girl at the other end of the line responds,
“I don’t know, I am 19.”
“Do you have a room available for tomorrow night?”
“One second, please. I will check…Yes, we do.”
“I’ll take it!” Jim answers.
Life has always presented Jim with opportunities for adventure, whether he wanted it or not. Regardless of the outlook, he figured it was easier to remorse than it was to regret. Adventure is part of his DNA. The next morning, Jim packs a small bag and takes the three hour and 51 minute scenic drive to Cornfield Point, Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
Arriving well before check-in, Jim has some time to explore Old Saybrook. A quaint, quintessential coastal New England town, where trees line the streets and Victorian houses decorate the shores. Jim walks down the main street and asks locals, “Do you happen to know where the first meeting of the humanistic psychologists happened in 1964?” He finds “No,” “Sorry buddy,” and “What?” All dead ends.
Out of curiosity, Jim looks into the dusty window of an old antique shop and decides to see if there are any leads inside. After all, he is in an old town, at an old shop, with old things that no one wanted anymore. Maybe the old information Jim sought would be among the relics and he could make something old, new again. He asks the same question about the humanistic psychologists but is only offered an old black and white photograph of the Castle Inn at Cornfield Point, which he kindly purchases.
Returning to his car with a picture in hand, Jim’s watch tells him it is time to check into the Inn. Gray clouds blanket the sky and form the backdrop for the trees in hibernation. Long branches spread out into little spindles that seek to find a place in existence, like axons reaching into the depths of a brain. At the Inn, he strolls with his long, slow stride, up to a pretty young girl at the front desk.
“Hey, Mr. Smrtic, how are you doing?”
“You know me?” Jim inquires with his deep voice.
“Yeah, I talked to you yesterday.”
“Mmm-Hmmm.”
“You are the only one that is staying here.”
“Oh.”
“The place is haunted,” she informs Jim.
“Do you happen to know where the first meeting of the humanistic psychologists happened in 1964?”
“No, I am still 19. You could go up to Essex.”
After all the check-in formalities, Jim climbs the stairs up to his room and settles down for about ten minutes before heading back out to Essex. The town has the same kind of streets, trees, and people along the road. Jim asks the same question and receives the same answers. Just as he passes yet another antique shop, a little stone gargoyle in the window shares a glace with him. Come on in Jim. He complies.
“I’ll take that gargoyle in the window,” Jim tells the shopkeeper.
“Yes, sir! It keeps the evil spirits away, ya know,” the man informs.
Seems fitting, considering the night ahead at the Inn. After paying, Jim heads for the door. Just before committing to leaving, he figures: what the hell.
“Do you happen to know where the first meeting of the humanistic psychologists was held back in 1964?”
“Yes.”
Jim’s mustache grows serious.
“Where?” he asks intently.
“The Castle Inn at Cornfield Point,” replies the shop keeper.
“How do you know that?”
“My partner used to own it.”
“What do you mean?”
“My partner used to own it.”
Jim processes the information and says, “Well, if your partner owned it, you owned it.”
“No,” the shop keeper informs with a smile, “a different kind of partner.”
“Do you keep in touch?”
“He calls me all the time,” replies the man.
As Jim begins to organize the next question, an old rotary telephone on the desk starts to sing. The person ringing this phone is the clerk’s partner that owned the Castle Inn at Cornfield Point. They exchange greetings, and Jim catches on. He stares at the shop keeper and communicates with his eyes to ask the other gentleman about the humanistic psychologists. The shop keeper complies, listens, and turns to Jim and says,
“Yea, those ‘weirdoes’ stayed there when he owned it, the human psychologists or whatever you called them. He says that he doesn’t remember much, except that they were strange.”
The man on the receiver tells the shop keeper to open a desk drawer in the antique shop. The drawer opens to reveal an old, yellowed, local newspaper clipping from 1964 about the meeting of the American humanistic psychologists at the Castle Inn at Cornfield Point.
* * *
I met Jim Smrtic in 2002 as one of his students in Introduction to Psychology at Mohawk Valley Community College. That was my first class of my first semester as an undergraduate. I was unsure where I wanted to go in the world and what I wanted to do in life, but I had an ocean of motivation and needed to find a shore. Elementary and secondary schooling were not engaging or enjoyable for me. Like most children, I experienced my share of bullying, bad grades, embarrassment, and all the social pressures that come with public schooling. Any time I could stay home from school due to seasonal colds meant video games, television dramas, X-Men comics, Goldeneye against Mom on the N64, and action figure battles. These experiences interested me much more than dittos and poster boards. However, there were a few remarkable individuals who worked as teachers that helped me to enjoy the process of education. What saddened me most is that their tenure at school was limited.
When I graduated high school, I found community college to be intimidating at first. All the talk about registration, degree plans, and credit hours seemed like rules to a game I never played. When I saw Professor Smrtic enter the class, with his muscular build, intense intellectual look, and carefully chosen words, I felt nervous. Conversely, although his voice was deep and commanding, his words were gentle. Within 30 minutes of the first class, I became calmer and more relaxed. Over the semester, each of Jim’s classes became a seminal lecture, as he broadened my perspective of what higher education could mean for students. The course material interested me, but it was his pedagogy that made it fascinating. Jim took psychological concepts, key figures, and diagnostic manuals/tests and told personal stories to help students relate to the material through him. Jim made the curriculum relevant, especially for those just out of high school, seeking to understand deeper levels of the self in a complex world. However, classes did not just provide erudite examples. Jim offered beatific adventures, which reminded me of the jazz of words played by Kerouac (which was a voice that made sense to my 19-year-old self).
Jim’s adventures in school, work, the army, personal life, and along Route 66 created in me a lifelong fascination with psychology, the human condition, and adventure, that became part of my scholarship. His stories, like the opening of this introduction, inspired me to travel farther into parts unknown, to become a Dharma bum and find enlightenment in the interdependence of the self, others, and the world. It was, and continues to be, fantastic to be engaged in all the adventures and music that the world has to offer. Jim taught me that most of the greatest journeys are found in causes outside of the self, helping others. Where are our ships to set sail but the shores of others?
Years after I left MVCC, I reflected on what profession to choose after completing a bachelor’s degree. I thought of Jim’s class, and I knew that I wanted to become a college professor. I wanted to impact young people’s lives and show them that higher education can offer empowerment to affect change in the world, while expressing and exploring potentials of the self. When I had completed my doctoral coursework, and it came time for me to choose a topic for my dissertation research, Jim was the first person that came to mind. I first wanted to study his intellectualism, which was humanistic, free, open-minded, kind, and geared toward adventure. He loved life. By loving life, you love others, and that was what it came down to. After many years since his class, I sent him an email explaining who I was, how I knew him, and what I wanted to do. Jim cordially greeted my interests. I don’t blame him for not remembering me in class, as I was quiet and he had many students. However, Jim told me that he was not that interesting, and a dissertation on James D. Smrtic would not do the world much good. Instead, he suggested I research his after-school program called Kidz n’ Coaches. If I were to trust anyone’s advice on which topic to choose to study, I thought his was the best to follow because he never tried to convince me of his credibility, instead, he lived it. Much of the information in this book is from countless hours of conversations with Jim and my experiences with Kidz n’ Coaches over the years.
Kidz n’ Coaches, I learned, is all about growth-promoting relationships. Humanist psychologist Carl Rogers (1989) defined growth-promoting relationships as “one in which one of the participants intends that there should come about, in one or both parties, more appreciation of, more expression of, more functional use of the latent inner resources of the individual” (p. 40). The second half of this book presents the results of a qualitative phenomenological study of growth-promoting relationships in Kidz n’ Coaches-El Paso, the sister program of Jim’s Kidz n’ Coaches. The phenomenological inquiry will focus on phenomenon of growth-promoting relationships between college student volunteers and emerging children in a multicultural humanistic psychological after-school program. The main purpose of this book is to understand growth-promoting relationships in Kidz n’ Coaches as a means to help us create a multicultural humanistic psychology paradigm. The integration of multiculturalism and humanistic psychology is imperative for both fields to remain relevant and to help diverse groups of people actualize the potentials of an increasingly complex and interdependent world. By exploring growth-promoting relationships in this after-school creation, readers will come to know Jim as a multicultural humanistic psychologist that put theory into praxis.
Each chapter will begin with the case study of Jim, through a biographical story. Afterward, I explain the concepts therein and my analysis of why these stories are important to understanding the power growth-promoting relationships in multicultural humanistic psychology. This book is more than just a memoir of my interactions with Jim Smrtic, Kidz n’ Coaches, or a phenomenological case study results of growth-promoting relationships in Kidz n’ Coaches-El Paso. Empowering Children: A Multicultural Humanistic Approach defines the current cultural needs of both multicultural communities and humanistic psychology. It proposes that addressing current challenges in these areas as a single problem will result in greater success than if approached separately. Humanistic psychology requires practical engagement with the subjects it hopes to help. In the current global community, a multicultural component is essential to its effectivity. Moreover, community out-reach can only fill the needs of a diverse population through the validation of humanism. By using Kidz n’ Coaches, this book demonstrates how multicultural communities and humanistic psychology will thrive by combining to form a new ideology and praxis: multicultural humanistic psychology. To offer an operational definition: Multicultural humanistic psychology is a paradigm that focuses on the culturally relative self-actualization processes of the person and utilizes the multicultural archetypes within the diversifying global community as foundational resources to promote holistic well-being and growth-promoting relationships, in order to actualize the potentialities of humanity.
