Humanistic psychology

• Humanistic psychology = an approach to understanding behaviour that emphasises the importance of subjective experience and each person‘s capacity for self-determination
• Humanistic psychology claims human beings are essential self-determining and have free will.
• People are still affected by external and internal influences, but are also active agents who can determine their own development.
• As active agents we are all unique, and psychology should concern itself with the study of subjective experience rather than general laws. This is often referred to as a person-centred approach in psychology.
• Maslow described a hierarchy of needs that motivate our behaviour.
• In order to achieve our primary goal of self-actualisation, a number of other deficiency needs must first be met. At the bottom are physiological needs such as food and water. The next deficiency is safety and security followed by love and belongingness and then self-esteem.
• A person is only able to progress through the hierarchy once the current need in the sequence has been met. At the top is self-actualisation.
• Most people have an innate desire to achieve their full potential. (self-actualisation).
• Humanistic psychologists regard personal growth as an essential part of what it is to be human. Personal growth is concerned with developing and changing as a person to become fulfilled, satisfied and goal-orientated.
• Rogers argued that for personal growth to be achieved an individual’s concept of self (the way they see themselves) must be broadly equivalent to or have congruence with their ideal self. If too big a gap exists between the two ‘selves’ the person will experience a state of incongruence and self-actualisation will not be possible due to the negative feelings of self-worth that arise from incongruence.
• In order to reduce the gap between the self-concept and the ideal self, Roger’s developed client-centred therapy to help people cope with the problems of everyday living.
• Rogers claimed that many of the issues we experience as adults, such as worthlessness and low self-esteem, have their roots in childhood and can often be explained by a lack of unconditional positive regard from our parents.
• A parent who sets boundaries or limits on their love for their child us storing up psychological problems for that child in the future.
• Rogers saw one of his roles as an effective therapist as being able to provide his clients with the unconditional positive regard that they had failed to receive as a child.
• A strength of the humanistic approach is that it rejects attempts to break up behaviour and experience into smaller components. Humanistic psychologists advocate holism the idea that subjective experience can only be understood by considering

  the whole person. This approach may have more validity than its alternatives by considering meaningful human behaviour within its real-world context.
• Having said that, reductionist approaches may be more scientific. This is because the ideal of science is the experiment, and experiments reduce behaviour to independent and dependent variables. Unlike behaviourism, humanistic psychology has relatively few concepts that can be broken down to single variables and measured. This means that humanistic psychology in general is short on empirical evidence to support its claims.
• Another strength of the humanistic approach is that it is optimistic. Humanistic psychologists have been praised for bringing the person back into psychology and promoting a positive image of the human condition. Freud saw human beings as prisoners to their past. In contrast, humanistic psychologists see all people as basically good, free to work towards the achievement of their potential and in control of their lives. This suggests humanistic psychology offers a refreshing and optimistic alternative to other approaches.
• One limitation of the approach is that it may be culturally-biased. Many of the ideas that are central to humanistic psychology would be much more readily associated with countries that have more individualist tendencies. Countries with collectivist tendencies emphasise more the needs of the group and interdependence. In such countries, the ideals of humanistic psychology may not be as important as in others. Therefore, it is possible that this approach does not apply universally and is a product of the cultural context within which it was developed.