Humanistic approach

• What is the emphasis on free will in humanistic psychology?

  • Humanists claim human beings are self-determining and have free will - we are still affected by external and internal influences but are active agents who determine our own development
  • Rogers and Maslow reject more scientific models that try to establish general principles of human behaviours, as active agents are all unique
  • Take a person-centred approach - psychology should concern itself with the study of subjective experience rather than general laws
• What is Maslow's hierarchy of needs?

  • A hierarchy of needs that motivate our behaviour - in order to achieve our goals of self-actualisation we must first meet a number of other deficiency needs
  • At the bottom are physiological needs such as food and water, next would be safety and security, followed by love and belongingness and then self-esteem
  • A person will only be able to progress through the hierarchy once the current need in the sequence has been met
• What is self-actualisation?

  • Represents the uppermost level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, as the innate desire to grow psychologically and fulfil our full potential
  • Personal growth is an essential part of what it is to be human, concerned with developing and changing as a person to become fulfilled, satisfied, and goal-oriented
• What is the concept of self and congruence?

  • An individual's concept of self (how they see themselves) must be congruent with their ideal self (who they want to be) - if there is too big a gap then the person will be in a state of incongruence, preventing self-actualisation due to negative feelings of self-worth
• What is client-centred therapy?

  • Rogers developed client-centred therapy or counselling to try and reduce the gap between self-concept and the ideal self
  • Many issues such as worthlessness and low self-esteem can be explained by conditional positive regard or lack of unconditional love
  • Characterised by parents who set boundaries or limits on their love for their children, which stores up psychological problems for them in the future
  • Effective therapists will provide clients with the unconditional positive regard they failed to receive as children
• What is one strength of the humanistic approach?

  • Not reductionist: rejects attempts to break up behaviour into smaller components like behaviourists with stimulus-response connections and biological psychologists who reduce behaviour to basic physiological processes
  • Advocates for holism - the idea that subjective experience can only be understood by considering the whole person
  • May have more validity than its alternatives by considering meaningful behaviour within its real-world context
• What is another strength of the humanistic approach?

  • Positive approach: humanistic psychologists have been praised for bringing the person back into psychology and promoting a positive image of the human condition, as opposed to Freud who saw human beings as prisoners of their past
  • See all people as good and free to work towards the achievement of their potential and in control of their lives
  • Offers a refreshing and optimistic alternative to other approaches
• What is one limitation of the humanistic approach?

  • Cultural bias: many ideas that are central to humanistic psychology such as individual freedom, autonomy, and personal growth are much more readily associated with countries like the US that have more individualistic tendencies
  • Collectivist cultures emphasise the needs of the group and interdependence, meaning the ideals of humanistic psychology may not be as important there
  • Possible that this approach isn't universal and is rather a product of the cultural context within which it was developed
• What is another limitation of the humanistic approach?

  • Limited application: critics have argued that humanistic psychology has has relatively little practical application in the real world outside of therapy due to its lack of scientific rigour
  • Has been described as not a comprehensive theory but a loose set of abstract ideas, as would be expected from an approach that disputes the validity of empirical research
  • Consequently, psychologists are unable to provide any research support for the existence of the hierarchy of needs and other aspects of the approach making its' theories/concepts questionable