Humanistic Approach

• What is the humanistic approach?


  - looks at individuals as a whole, tries to explain 'normal' healthy behaviour
• Free will


  - other approaches state that behaviour is pre-determined factors such as biology, learning and un-bringing

  - humanist states that humans have free will and behaviour is unpredictable and everyone makes their own decisions in life
• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: Self Actualisation


  - hierarchy of what people needs to reach self-actualisation

  
  

  Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

  Physiological Needs - food, water

  Safety Needs - having a home and a family

  Loving/belonging - friends/positive relationships with family

  Self-esteem - respect, self esteem, recognition

  
  

  Self actualisation - a person achieving their potential, people have an innate drive to achieve their potential.

  People need to meet the basic needs to be able to self actualise, without these they may become depressed.
• The Self and Congruence: Rodgers


  - suggested that congruence is how close a persons self-concept is to their ideal self

  - the closer a person perceives these to be, the higher congruence they have, the higher self esteem they have
• Conditions of Worth


  - issues such as worthlessness and low self-esteem later in, life are due to a lack of unconditional positive regard

  - conditions of worth are parents who set boundaries for their love, eg 'I will only love you if...
• Client-centred Therapy: Rodgers


  - aims to achieve congruence, client takes active role in therapy

  - clients likely had lack of unconditional positive regard

  - so therapist provides unconditional postive regard, empathy and genuineness to try and increase congruence
• Evaluation - Strength - Anti-reductionist


  - humanist psychologists advocate holism, behaviour can only be understood if you look at them as a whole(relationships, past, present etc)

  - this makes it more valid than alternatives as it considers human behaviour withing a real-world context
• Evaluation - Counterpoint of Anti-reductionist


  - unlike behaviourism, has relatively few concepts that can be reduced to single variables and measured

  - means that humanistic psychology is short on evidence to support claims
• Evaluation - Strength - Positive Approach


  - praised for being a positive approach as it sees people as in control of their lives and can change

  - Freud saw people as prisoners of their past

  - therefore humanism offers a refreshing optimistic alternative
• Evaluation - Limitation - Approach may be guilty of cultural bias


  - many humanistic ideas are associated with individualist cultures such as the US

  - Collectivist cultures such as India may not identify as easily with these ideals and values of humanism

  - therefore its possible the approach doesnt apply univrsally and only applies to the culture it was developed in