Humanistic

• Assumptions

  • places emphasis on the uniqueness of individuals and rejects attempts to establish scientific principles of human behaviour
  • this approach believes that psychology should focus on subjective experience rather than look for general laws
  • it is concerned with personal growth and has a positive view on the potential of people
• Free will

  Humanistic approach emphasises that human beings have full conscious control over their own actions and thoughts

  Humanistic psychologists believe that we can make personal choices even within the constraints of biological and societal forces
• Self actualisation

  • everyone has an innate tendency to grow psychologically and reach their full potential
  • Maslows hierarchy emphasised the importance of personal growth and fulfillment of needs
  • Basic needs such as hunger must be satisfied before moving up the hierarchy and meeting other needs
  • Self acutalisers tend to be creative, accepting of others and accurate perception of the world
  • Not everone will manage personal growth due to barriers that prevent potential from being achieved
• Focus on self

  • self concept is how we perceive ourselves as a person and develops in childhood
  • ideal self refers to the person that an individual would like to be
  • the difference between the two determines self worth
  • in order for personal growth, our self concept must be congruent to our ideal self
  • incongruence - when a person's self concept is far from idea self which leads to low feelings of self worth
  • congruence - when a person's self concept matches their ideal self which leads to high feelings of self worth
• Conditions of worth

  • conditions imposed on a person by someone which are considered necessary to earn a positive regard
  • this can happen when parent places limits or boundaries on the love of their children
  • conditional positive regard can be damaging for the self as failure to meet the conditions could lead to incongruence and a lower self worth , according to Rogers
  • for healthy development, people need unconditional positive regard
• Counselling psychology

  • Rogers developed CCT (client centred therapy) which is essentially counselling
  • This helps people overcome the conditions of worth that are imposed by others and to become the person they are supposed to be
  • The aim is to increase feelings of self worth, and help towards becoming a truly functional person
  • A non directive approach is taken where the therapy is led more by a client and works on the basis that the client knows their self best. Therapists provide unconditional positive regard by accepting the clients for who they are. They have a genuine belief that clients can achieve self actualisation and shows empathy to mirror how they are feeling
• A03

  • Not reductionist. This is a strength as it rejects attempts to break up behaviour and advocates a holistic approach by considering the person as a whole
• A03

  • The approach has been praised for having a positive view of the human
  • It sees people as good, free to work towards achieving their full poential and in control of their lives, which comes in contrast to the psychodynamic view of being slaves to our past
• A03

  • Value as it has revolutionalised counselling techniques. CCT has been praised as a forward looking approach and focuses on present problems rather than dwelling on the past.
  • However, it is best used to treat mild psychological problems, such as low self esteem
• A03

  • Unscientific- this is because it contains vague ideas that are hard to test.
  • Concepts such as self actualisation are useful therapuetic tools but are unable to be assessed under experimental conditions.
  • However this is not something humanists aim to do as they focus on subjective experience rather than general laws