Humanistic psychology Flashcards
Basic assumptions of Humanistic psychology
*Everyone is unique therefore Psychology should be concerned with the subjective experience of the individual. This is known as a person-centred approach.
*An individual’s behaviour can only be properly understood by taking into consideration all aspects of their lives and experiences. In other words, we should study the whole person.
*People have free will. This means that individuals make conscious decisions to behave in certain ways. The implication of this is that we are in charge of our own behaviour and responsible for the consequences of our actions and the course of our life. The humanistic approach does acknowledge that there are social conventions, legal requirements and other constraints that might reduce our ability to behave in any way that we choose. However, it assumes that we can behave in certain ways should we wish to.
*People are striving to achieve their potential or self-actualisation. This means to achieve maximum personal growth within individual limitations. The aim of Psychology should be to help people reach their full potential.
*People cannot be studied scientifically. Science focuses on objectively aiming to find a single cause for behaviour. Humanistic psychology argues it is not possible to identify a single cause for behaviour as human behaviour is the product of a complex interaction of all aspects of an individual. Furthermore, it views human behaviour as being tied up in the subjective experience of each individual.
Self-actualisation and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Humanistic psychology assumes that each individual is motivated to reach their full potential and achieve a state of self-actualisation. This means that the individual experiences feelings of extreme satisfaction and well-being. It might be described as a peak moment or a sense of total completeness. Each individual attains a state of self-actualisation in a manner that is unique to them and theorists of the approach (eg Maslow) describe different aspects or routes to self-actualisation.
Abraham Maslow proposed that self-actualisation could be achieved in a series of stages based on having certain types of need fulfilled. Personal growth is central to this idea. We should be changing and developing in order to have our potential fully realised. All the lower needs of the hierarchy have to be met in order to progress to the next level.
The drive to reach our full potential implies that we are continually striving to have our needs met at each level on the route to becoming self-actualised. Self-actualisation is not a permanent state and people might move in and out of it if needs at the lower levels become unfulfilled.
Focus on the self
This is about how we regard ourselves as an individual. The image of the self develops through life in response to how others behave towards us, our parents initially and then friends and partners.
Carl Rogers suggested that we have different selves:
*Our self-concept is how we see ourselves. It is affected by self-esteem so if we have low self-esteem then we will have a poor self-concept. We would feel bad about ourselves and believe that we are not capable of achieving much or worth much. The self-concept is not necessarily an accurate version of the self and may be faulty or distorted.
*Our ideal self is what we wish we were like. It is the self we are working towards being or trying to be and represents the very best version of ourselves in our own eyes. It is not who you think you are but who you wish you were. The closer our self-concept is to our ideal self the higher our feelings of self-worth
Congruence
Congruence is when the self-concept and the ideal self are the same or very similar. The closer these two versions are to each other the greater the individual’s feelings of self-worth. This is important for an individual to be able to experience personal growth and move towards fulfilling their potential.
If there is a big difference between the self-concept and the ideal self then this results in negative feelings about self-worth and prevents personal growth towards and towards achieving self-actualisation.
The role of conditions of worth
These are the conditions an individual thinks they have to meet in order to be loved and valued. For example, a child might believe that their parents will only love them if they do well at school or an adult might think that their partner will love them on the condition that they are slim.
Carl Rogers believed that many problems of low self-worth arise from others giving conditional instead of unconditional love, where an individual feels loved for exactly how they are with no conditions attached.
Evaluation of Humanist psychology, supporting evidence
*There is supporting evidence for the notion of conditions of worth having a negative impact on personal growth. One study found that teenagers who feel they have to meet certain conditions to gain approval from their parents often end up not liking themselves. They have a poor self-concept and try to be someone other than their true self in order to be loved. Such individuals are more likely to develop depression therefore cannot attain their full potential
Evaluation of Humanist psychology, weakness
*A weakness of humanistic psychology is that it can be considered to be culturally biased. The focus on the self and the notion of congruence imply that aspects such as individual freedom, autonomy and personal growth are desirable qualities in humans. These represent the standpoint of individualistic societies such as Europe and the USA but these characteristics are not so important in other more collectivist cultures where membership of a community is more highly valued. For example, in China, self-actualisation is achieved through contributions to the wider community rather than by personal growth and development. This assumes that all humans can be understood in the same way whereas cultural values have an important influence on human behaviour. It is an example of beta bias.
Evaluation of Humanist psychology, practical application
*There are practical applications that can be derived from an understanding of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. One study examined the link between economic growth and measures of Maslow’s levels of need in 88 countries over a 34-year period. Countries where the inhabitants’ needs were based around lower level needs such as access to sufficient food and physical safety had poorer levels of economic development. Higher needs such as esteem needs (as seen in the feminist movement) and self-actualisation needs (as seen in educational enrolment levels) were apparent in countries with more advanced economic growth. This might suggest that economic and business development could be encouraged by focus on addressing the higher needs of citizens and employees.
The influence on counselling psychology
Humanistic psychology has had a significant influence on counselling psychology.
Client-centred therapy has been developed from the ideas of humanistic psychology. The relationship between the client and the therapist is central to the nature of the therapy. The therapist responds to the client with total acceptance, genuineness and empathy.
Carl Rogers proposed that psychological problems can be addressed through therapy that aims to improve congruence between the self-concept and the ideal self and improve feelings of self-worth.
The therapist offers unconditional positive regard to the individual – the client. In this way they help to reduce conditions of worth by having an interaction with someone who values and accepts them regardless of what they say or how they feel. Unconditional positive regard helps an individual to be more accepting of themselves and to have more positive feelings of self-worth. In this way they are better placed to begin to address issues within their own lives.
Evaluation, the influence on counselling psychology, strength
*Client-centred therapy has been praised as a forward-looking and effective therapy. By focusing on the client, the need to consider subjective experiences of the individual is emphasised which differs from therapies such as those based on the Behaviourist approach. Client-centred therapy also focuses on present problems in a client’s life rather than dwelling on the past as is the case in therapies such as psychoanalysis. Consequently, humanist counselling techniques have become widely adopted in clinical as well as industrial, educational and social work settings. This suggests that the underlying assumptions of humanist psychology upon which these counselling techniques are based, may be accurate.
Evaluation, the influence on counselling psychology, weakness
*A weakness however, is that it is difficult to scientifically test the effectiveness of humanistic counselling therapies. It is not possible to establish a cause and effect relationship between treatment and outcome since a client may have recovered without any therapy. Furthermore, many of the ideas within humanistic psychology are abstract and difficult to clearly operationalise making it problematic to investigate them in any objective, scientific manner to gain empirical evidence. Although practitioners in this approach are unconcerned about the need for empirical evidence many others feel that it is a weakness as it makes it very difficult to find out whether its claims are correct or not. This detracts from its contribution to the development of psychology as a science.
