Approaches in psychology (humanistic approach)

Question 1

What are the assumptions of the humanistic approach?

Answer 1

• Idiographic
• Free Will
  -Holism
• Subjective
  -Self actualisation

Question 2

What is ideographic?

Answer 2

• assumed to understand what it means to be human, must focus on conscious experience and personal responsibility
• not on behaviour
• person centred approach
• how we see and understand the world unique to each of us, only by recognising this can we understand
  the person

-we can not generalise as we are all different

• means to see the individual person and they experiences as unique in understanding their psychology

Question 3

What is free will?

Answer 3

• approach assumes we have free will
• conscious control over our lives and futures IF we choose to exercise it
• NOT say we can do everything we choose - biology plays a part (constrained by it) eg “I must sleep” and societal forces eg “I have to go to school”
• We are free and active agents able to make significant personal choices within these constraints

-VERY DIFFERENT position to biological and behaviourist approaches

Question 4

What is Holism?

Answer 4

• OPPOSITE of reductionist
• Whole individual
• no point looking at one part of an individual , if we only consider one part of them - might miss the actual cause of their behaviour
• result- humanists do not agree with focusing on childhood in therapy- whole life looked at - more accurate picture of the individual

Question 5

What is subjective in the humanistic approach?

Answer 5

• humanistic psychologists reject the objective scientific methods - eg lab study- (view human as objects)
• they seek to understand the subjective (personal) experiences - make us unique
• methods that allow us to explain how we feel and perceive our experiences in the world from our own (NOT RESEARCHERS POV)

Question 6

What is Self Actualisation?

Answer 6

• Achievement of an individuals full potential
• ultimate feeling of wellbeing + satisfaction
• innate drive we all have, not everyone achieves it
• not permanent- 5 needs- any not met leave state of self actualisation

Question 7

What are Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Answer 7

Self Actualisation~ morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts

Esteem~ self esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by others

Love/belonging~ friendship, family, sexual intimacy

Safety~ security of body, of employment, of resources, of morality, of the family, of health, of property

Physiological~ breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, excretion

Question 8

Explain Maslow’s Theory into - Hierarchy of Needs

Answer 8

• Maslow, a key figure in the humanistic approach emphasises how human beings development can be healthy and fulfilled (CONTRAST to the psychodynamic approach with much emphasis on how things can go wrong)
• In the hierarchy of needs Maslow shows how humans can become fulfilled by achieving certain needs which might prevent us reaching fulfilment if they were not met.
• State of self actualisation is not permanent and if all the 5 needs do not remain in place then an individual can move out of the state until all needs have been met.

Question 9

Rodgers Theory of Personality Development~ What are the three ‘selves’ Rodgers suggested

Answer 9

Rodger focuses on the ‘selves’ and how these need to integrate to achieve self actualisation.

Self Concept
Ideal Self
Real Self

Question 10

What is the self concept?

Answer 10

• how we perceive ourselves as individuals - the self you feel you are
• if someone has low self esteem their self concept may be poor , and they will have a distorted view of how capable they are
• people often have a distorted view of themselves

Question 11

What is the ideal self?

Answer 11

• The ideal self represents how we would like to be, or who you are aiming towards becoming
• this is not who you think you are, it is who you wish you were

Question 12

What is the real self ?

Answer 12

• the person you actually are
• not who you think you are or wish that you were
• very subjective- everyone will perceive or judge people differently

Question 13

What is congruence?

Answer 13

• Congruence is when the self concept and ideal self are similar to each other, this must be achieved in order to reach self actualisation
• if two selves are incongruent, then personal growth is not possible

Question 14

Why might we not develop self actualisation?

Answer 14

-CONDITIONS OF WORTH

• Rogers suggests, significant other people in our lives can help/hinder our personal growth
• love and acceptance can be given by others either conditionally or unconditionally

Question 15

What is an unconditional positive regard?

Answer 15

• when others love and accept us for who we are without judgement and without placing conditions on us to be what they want us to be

Question 16

What is a conditional positive regard?

Answer 16

• when love and acceptance comes at a price where we cannot be ourselves or the acceptance is withdrawn. In this case individuals develop conditions of worth and only feel a sense of self acceptance if they meet the expectations of other(s)

Question 17

Influence on Counselling Psychology

Answer 17

• Rogers took the ideas of humanistic theory and applied it to therapeutic settings, developed Client Centred Therapy
• many emotional problems adults face such as low self esteem stem from the gap between their actual and ideal self- often resulted from childhood as a result of the conditional positive regard from the parents and the conditions of worth that follow
• Rogers therapy involves providing the unconditional positive regard the client did not get as a child or as they were growing up. The job of the therapist is to provide three key things
  1)genuineness- being honest with the client

2) empathy- seeing the world from the clients viewpoint

3) unconditional positive regard- interacting without judgement and placing no demands on the client

• the therapy, non directive, encourages client to find their own solutions
• The ultimate aim is for the client to close the gap on their actual and ideal selves and gain congruence so that they are able to steer their life towards growth and self actualisation.
• HOWEVER- best applied to treatment of mild psychological conditions such as anxiety and self worth

Question 18

EVALUATION OF HUMANISTIC APPROACH- DETERMINISTIC

Answer 18

P- the approach takes a positive view of the human condition and ‘brings the human back to psychology’

E- Humanistic psychology’s view that humans are essentially free and will seek to do good in order to achieve our potential is one that gives us reason to think that the world can be a better place

E- Freud’s approach would have us believe we are doomed to despair and destruction whereas humanistic psychology believe we have individual freedom and are in control of our life.

L- This is a strength because it offers a more optimistic and refreshing alternative to other more deterministic approaches

However-
Despite the humanistic approach’s emphasis on personal freedom and choice as being. essential for human growth the approach does seem to contradict itself.
Rogers says we have an innate tendency to achieve our full potential. If this is innate we have no choice. Similarly, Maslow’s Hierarchy insists that deficiency needs must be met before growth needs, which again. suggests our behaviour is determined by forces we can not change. And within humanistic counselling there is the acceptance that we are controlled by social forces and by relationships with significant others.

Question 19

EVALUATION OF HUMANISTIC APPROACH- REDUCTIONIST

Answer 19

P- humanists reject any attempt to break up behaviour and experience into smaller components

E- Behaviourism see human behaviour in terms of simple stimulus response, Freud describes the whole of the personality as a conflict between the id, ego and superego; biological psychologists reduce behaviour to basic biological processes and the cognitive approach see humans as being little more than information processing ‘machines’. In contrasts, humanistic psychologists advocate holism.

E- For example, humanistic psychologists support the idea that subjective experience can only be understood by considering the whole person.

L- This is a strength because this approach therefore may have more validity as it considers meaningful human behaviour in real life contexts.

However - It could be argued that the humanistic approach presents a rather narrow view of human behaviour by focusing on two main innate qualities - our free will and our basic goodness. Critics argue that there are other elements to human behaviour eg our capacity for destructive behaviour. The idea that all our problems stem from blocked self actualisation and that by ‘unblocking’ this innate capacity for growth we can be free again is unrealistic. By ignoring situational factors and environmental the approach is guilty of reductionism.

Question 20

EVALUATION OF THE HUMANISTIC APPROACH- EVIDENCE

Answer 20

P- humanism contains a number of unstable concepts

E- humanism consists of mainly vague ideas that are abstract and difficult to test. Concepts such as ‘self actualisation and congruence may be useful therapeutic tools but would prove problematic to assess under experimental conditions

E- for example it is difficult to measure the extent to which therapy is successful because cause and effect can not be established.

L- this is a weakness because humanistic psychology is short on empirical evidence to support its claims therefore considered unscientific and some would even consider it less psychologically valuable than other approaches.

However- there is some evidence for the concepts and ideas used by the humanistic approach. conditional positive regard has been correlated with ‘false self behaviour’ and depression. Harper et al (96) found that teenagers who believed they had to meet certain conditions in order to gain parental approval often ended up not liking themselves . Those teens who presented a ‘false self’ for their parents reported more depression and a lost sense of their true self.