evaluation

• Not reductionist

  • Humanist reject any attempt to break up behaviour and experiences into smaller components.
  • .Where as other psychological approaches such as, the cognitive approach sees humans as info processing 'machines' and the biological approach reduces behaviour down to to its basic physiological processes.
  • The Humanists advocate holism, the idea that subjective experience can only be understood by considering the whole person
  • This approach therefore may have more validity than other approaches than its alternatives by considering meaningful human behaviour within a real life context.
• Limited application

  • Humanistic psychology has relatively little real-world application
  • Yes, Rogerian Therapy has revolutionised counselling techniques and Maslow's hierarchy of needs can explain motivation. However the approach lacks impact of the discipline of psychology as a whole
  • This maybe in part due to the approach lacking a strong base of evidence or that the approach has been described as a loose set of abstract concepts.
• Positive approach


  • Praised for 'bringing the person back into psychology' and promoting a positive image of the human condition.

  -Freud saw people as being slaves to their past and claimed that all of us existed between 'common unhappiness and absolute despair'.-Humanistic Psychology offers refreshing optimistic alternative; it sees all people as basically good, free to work towards the achievement of their potential and in control of their lives
• Untestable concepts

  • The humanistic psychology does include a number of vague ideas that are abstract and difficult to test.
  • e.g 'self actualisation' and 'congruence' maybe useful in therapeutic tools but would prove problematic to assess under experimental conditions.
  • Rogers did attempt to introduce more rigour into the O-sort- an objective measure of progress in therapy.
  • Nevertheless, as would be expected of an approach that describes itself as anti scientific, humanistic psychology in short on empirical evidence supports its claims
• Cultural Bias


  • Many ideas associated with humanistic psychology such as individual freedom, autonomy and personal growth are more readily associated with western cultures in the western world such as the United States.

  -Collectivist cultures such as India would emphasise the needs of the group. Interdependence and community may not identify easily with ideals of the humanistic approach -Therefore the humanistic approach may not travel very well and is a product of the cultural context of which it was developed.