The Humanistic Approach

• Define 'humanistic psychology'

  An approach to understanding behaviour that emphasises the importance of subjective experience and each person's capacity for self-determination.
• Define 'free will'

  The notion that humans can make choices and are not determined by internal biological or external forces.
• Define 'self-actualisation'

  The desire to grow psychologically and fulfil one's full potential - becoming what you are capable of.
• Define 'hierarchy of needs'

  A five-levelled hierarchical sequence in which basic needs must be satisfied before higher psychological needs can be achieved.
• Define 'self'

  The ideas and values that characterise 'I' and 'me' and includes perception and valuing of 'what I am' and 'what I can do'.
• Define 'congruence'

  The aim of Rogerian therapy; when the self-concept and ideal self are seen to broadly accord or match.
• Define 'conditions of self-worth'

  When a parent places limits or boundaries on their love of children.
• Free will

  - The humanistic approach suggests that human beings are essentially 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. Therefore, humanistic psychologists such as Maslow and Rogers reject the scientific technique that attempts to establish general principles of human behaviour.

  - As active agents we are all unique, and psychology should concern itself with the study of subjective experience rather than general laws. This is referred to as a person-centred approach in psychology.
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs


  - One of Maslow's main interests was in what motivates people. He described a hierarchy of needs that motivate our behaviour.

  - He said that a human's primary goal is to achieve self-actualisation, but a number of deficiency needs must first be met. These include physiological needs such as food and water, 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.
• Self-actualisation


  - Most people have an innate desire to achieve their full potential - to become the best they could possibly be.

  - Self-actualisation represents the top level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. All four lower levels must be met before self-actualisation can be achieved. This applies to early development when a baby is first focused on physiological needs and applies throughout life.

  - 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. Not everyone will manage this, however, and there are important psychological barriers that may prevent a person from reaching their potential.
• The self, congruence and conditions of worth


  - Rogers argued that for personal growth to be achieved, an individual's concept of self must be broadly equivalent to, or have congruence with, their ideal self.

  - If too big of a gap exists between the two selves, the person will experience a state of incongruence and self-worth that arise from incongruence.

  - In order to reduce the gap between the self-concept and the ideal self, Rogers developed client-centred therapy (also called counselling) 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 (or lack of unconditional love) from our parents. A parent who sets boundaries or limits on their love for their child (conditions of worth) is storing up psychological problems for that child in the future. Thus, 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 children.
• Counselling psychology

  - Rogers' client-centred therapy is an important form of modern-day psychotherapy. It led to the general approach of counselling which is applied to in many settings (e.g. Samaritans and other helplines).

  - Rogers referred those in therapy as 'clients' rather than 'patients' as he saw the individual as the expert on their own condition. Therefore, therapy is not directed by the therapist (non-directive) and the client is just encouraged towards the discovery of their own solutions within a therapeutic atmosphere that is warm, supportive and non-judgemental.

  - For Rogers, an effective therapist should provide a client with three things: geniuneness empathy and unconditional positive regard. The aim of Rogerian therapy is to increase the person's feelings of self-worth, reduce the level of incongruence between the self-concept and the ideal self, and help the person become a more fully functioning person.

  - Rogers' work transformed psychotherapy and introduced a variety of counselling techniques. Client-centred therapy has been praised for it's forward-looking and effective approach that focuses on present problems rather than dwelling on the past. However, much like psychanalysis, it is best applied to the treatment of 'mild' psychological conditions such as anxiety and low self-worth.
• Evaluating the humanistic approach: Not reductionist (with counterpoint)

  - A strength is that the approach rejects attempts to break up behaviour and experience into smaller components.

  - Behaviourists explain human and animal learning n terms of simple stimulus-response connections. Cognitive psychologists see human beings as little more than information-processing machines. Biological psychologists reduce behaviour down to simple physiological processes and Freud described the personality as conflict between the Id, Ego and Superego. Contrastingly, the humanistic approach advocates 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.

  
  

  - Counterpoint: Despite this, reductionist approaches are often more scientific than holistic approaches. This is because the idea of science is the experiment, and experiments reduce behaviour to independent and dependent variables.

  - One issue with humanistic psychology is that, unlike behaviourism, there are 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 it's claims.
• Evaluating the humanistic approach: Positive approach


  - 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 of their past and claimed all of us existed somewhere between 'common unhappiness and absolute despair'. 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 that humanistic psychology offers a refreshing and optimistic alternative to other approaches.
• Evaluating the humanistic approach: Cultural bias

  - A limitation is that the approach may be culturally biased.

  - Many of the central ideas of the approach such as individual freedom, autonomy and personal growth, would be much more readily associated with countries that have more individualist tendencies, e.g. the US and UK.

  - Countries with collectivist tendencies emphasise more the needs of the group and interdependence. In such countries, the ideals of humanistic psychology, such as self-actualisation, 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.
• Evaluating the humanistic approach: Limited application


  - Critics have argued that the humanistic approach has had relatively little impact on psychology - or little practical application in the real world (in comparison with other approaches).

  - The approach has been described, not as a comprehensive theory, but as a loose set of abstract ideas.

  - Conversely, Rogerian therapy revolutionised counselling techniques and Maslow's hierarchy of needs has been used to explain motivation, particularly in the workplace.