Humanistic Approach Flashcards
Humanistic approach.
An approach to understanding behaviour that emphasises the importance of subjective experience and each person’s capacity for self-determination.
The approach.
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.
Roger and Maslow reject more scientific models that attempt to establish general principles of human behaviour.
Free will.
The notion that humans can make choices and are not determined by internal biological or external forces.
Self-actualisation.
The desire to grow psychologically and fulfil one’s full potential - becoming what you are capable of.
Represents uppermost level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
All 4 lower levels of hierarchy must be met before individual can work towards self-actualisation and fulfil their potential; applies to early development when baby first focused on physiological needs and throughout life.
Congruence.
Aim of Rogerian therapy, when self-concept and ideal self are seen to broadly accord or match.
Conditions of worth.
When a parent places limits or boundaries on their love if their children.
Carl Rogers argued that for personal growth to be achieved an individual’s concept of self must be broadly equivalent to, or have confruence with, their identity self.
If too big a gap exists between the two ‘selves’ the person will experience a state of incongruent and self-actualization will not be possible due to the begative feelings of self-worth that arise from incongruence.
To reduce gap between self-concept and ideal self, Rogers developed…
Client-centred therapy to help people cope with the problems of everyday living.
Rogers claimed that many of issues we experience as adults have their roots in childhood and can often be explained by a lack of unconditional positive regard from our parents.
A parent who sets boundaries or limits on their love for their child by claiming ‘I will only love you if…’ 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.
Limitation.
P: The approach may be culturally-biased.
E: Many ideas central to humanistic psychology, such as individual freedom, autonomy and personal growth, would be much more readily linked with countries that have more individualist tendencies. Countries with collectivist tendencies emphasise more the needs of the group and interdependence.
E: In such countries, the ideals of humanistic psychology may not be as important as in others.
L: Therefore, it is possible that this approach does not apply universally and is a product of the cultural context within which it was developed.
Strength.
P: The approach is optimistic.
E: 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’.
E: 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.
L: This suggests that humanistic psychology offers a refreshing and optimistic alternative to other approaches.
Strength (includes counterpoint).
P: It rejects attempts to break up behaviour and experience into smaller components (reductionism).
E: Behaviourist explain human and animal learning in terms of stimulus-response connections. Supporters of cognitive approach see human beings as little more than information-processing ‘machines’. Biological psychologists reduce behaviour to its basic physiological processes. Freud described the whole personality as a conflict between the Id, Ego and Superego.
E: In contrast, humanistic psychologists advocate holism, the idea that subjective experience can only be understood by considering the whole person.
L: This approach may have more validity than its alternatives by considering meaningful human behaviour within its real-world context.
P: Reductionist approaches may be more scientific.
E: This is because the ideal of science is the experiment and experiments reduce behaviour to independent and dependent variables.
E: An issue with humanistic psychology is that, unlike behaviourism, there are relatively few concepts that can be broken down to single variables and measured.
L: This means that humanistic psychology in general is short on empirical evidence to support its claims.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (1943).
Self-actualisation, self-esteem, love and belonging, safety and security, physiological needs.
Focus on Self.
Rogers was interested in 2 basic needs:
The need for self-worth and need for unconditional positive regard from others.
Both emerge from good relationships with supportive parents in childhood, and later with friends and partners.
An individual’s self-worth has a direct impact on psychological well-being.
IDA.
Free will and idiographic approach.
The concept of free will is central to humanistic thinking. Advocates of this approach believe that behaviour is a choice, rather than determined by outside forces, and an individual can directly control and influence their own destiny.
Likewise, the concept of holism is of crucial importance to the humanistic approach which attempts to answer the question of what it truly means to be fully human. Since this approach focuses in subjective human experience whilst making no attempts to generate universal laws, it favours the idiographic approach.
