Humanistic and existential approaches Flashcards
What is the focus of humanistic/existential approaches?
subjective experience and the self
What is Existentialism?
- Human beings are completely free and responsible for their own behaviour
- We are not victims of forces
- We are builders of our own lives
- Choosing agent,
- Free agent
- Responsible agent
What is Existential Anxiety?
- The courage to be, to break out of blind conformity and instead strive for authenticity
- To achieve this, need to be aware of non-being, alienation, nothingness, inevitability of death.
- Human desire for significance, despite transitory nature of life
What does Meaning in Life (MIL) mean?
the extent to which one’s life is experienced as making sense (George & Parks 2017)
What is the Meaning in Life (MIL)Tripartite Model (George & Park, 2017, pp 614)?
- Comprehension: ‘extent to which individuals perceive a sense of coherence and understanding regarding their lives’.. Feel that there is a clear and coherent organisation to one’s life
- Purpose: Extent to which life is ‘directed and motivated by valued life goals’, Without this, can feel aimless and disengaged
- Mattering: My existence is significant, important, and of value to others. Central function of religion and spirituality may be to transcend materiality
What are the humanistic concepts?
Shares the earlier existential concepts of responsibility, freedom, people have the capacity for self-awareness and choice (growth orientated approach)
What are the humanistic beliefs?
- people are basically good, inherent potential to have meaningful relationships and to make choices that are in the interests of self and others.
- People can free themselves from crippling assumptions and attitudes
- Growth and self-actualisation, rather than pathogenic processes
- Present and conscious processes rather than past causes
- Not being authentic to self is the source of psychological problems
What is meant by The Healthy Personality?
○ Exhibits intimacy, compassion, tolerance
○ Self-acceptance
○ Realistic self-perception
○ sense of humour and self-insight
○ unifying philosophy on life (philosophical approach)
What occurs during therapy with Unhealthy Lives?
• Focus on the person, not the outward expression of an experience (i.e., a symptom)
• Problems arise from an inhibited ability to make authentic and self-directed choices about living
○ Holding onto the past
○ Being bullied by thoughts
• ‘Condition of worth’ – person learns that being loved and worthwhile is conditional on something (e.g., how one acts).
What are Viktor E. Frankl’s existential/humanistic beliefs?
• We are all motivated by a will to meaning
• Life can have meaning even in the most miserable of situations
• Meaning comes from three sources
○ Purposeful work
○ Love
○ Courage in the face of difficulty
What was the meathod of the Multidimensional Existential Meaning Scale(MEMS) (George & Park, 2017)?
• Method:
○ Initial set of items
○ Survey three samples of undergrads median age • • 19 from Northeastern US (relevance to different cultures/age groups?)
• Assess one sample twice (2 weeks apart) to assess test-retest reliability
What analysis was used for the Multidimensional Existential Meaning Scale(MEMS) (George & Park, 2017)?
- First an explanatory factor analysis
- Do the subscales correlate with other MIL measures
- Do the measures corelate with well-being variables, as we would expect this would
What does Cronbach’s alpha measure?
- A test of internal consistency (expressed as number between 0 and 1)
- How closely related a set of items are as a group – inter-relatedness
What is an acceptable range of Cronbach’s alpha?
> .7
An alpha of 0.95 is not necessarily good – it might just be the questions are redundant…
What is the Self-Concept?
The actual self and the ideal self
What do discrepencies in the actual self and the ideal self cause?
- often lead to disappointment and dissatisfaction, dejection, shame and embarrassment
- impact on how we feel and what we do to cope
What are the ideas of the ACT approaches?
• ‘Feeling good’ versus living a rich and meaningful life
• Happiness (pleasure, gratification, elation) is
○ Not normal but we crave and strive for it
○ Great but doesn’t last
○ Pursuing it is unsatisfying
○ THIS IS THE TRAP
What is a rich and meaningful life?
- Take action based on what we consider valuable and meaningful
- Values – verbally constructed global desired life consequences
- Values – not out there to be found – they are to be defined elaborated and constructed in an ongoing way (Wilson et al., 2010)
- Not fleeting, sometimes uncomfortable
What is Psychological flexibility?
○ Being present here and now
○ Being fully aware
○ Choosing actions that are guided by your values
○ Moving towards what is important
What is cognitive fusion?
- Story and event become blended
- Thoughts seem to represent reality
- Thoughts are truth
- Thoughts need to be obeyed
- Thoughts are threatening
What occurs when the struggle switch is on?
- ‘Should of.. Could of…. This must…. This has to be… this can’t…’
- Troublesome feelings snowball – anxiety causes anger..
- Acting inconsistent with values - alcohol/drugs to distract…
What occurs when the struggle switch is off?
- Anxiety comes, rises, goes..
- Observe, don’t waste time and energy struggling against them
What is Expansion in ACT?
- Make room for feelings
- Openness, interest, awareness, receptiveness
- Breathe into them, allow them to come and go
How does Wilson et al., 2010 (The valued living questionnaire) understand values?
are verbally constructed global desired life consequences
What are the two parts of the Valued Living Questionnaire?
Part 1 – rate the importance of 10 domains (e.g., family, parenting, work, recreation, spirituality) – no judgements here about what is important!
Part 2 – rate how consistently he/she has lived in accord with Part 1 rating over the past week.
