The humanistic approach Flashcards
History and context of humanistic psychology
It emerged in the late 1960s, a group of American psychologists including Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and George Kelly where dissatisfied with approaches such as behaviourism and the psychodynamic approach. As they presented as peopple being either controlled by the unconsciousness or their enviroment.
They created a new approach which focused on the self, health, personal growth and creativity.
Free will
Many other approaches tend to be determinstic to some degree and suggests our behaviour is partly or entirely controlled by factors we cannot control.
even the cognitive approach only says we can only choose our thoughts to a certain extent.
Humanisitic psychology believes that we are self determining and have free will which means we have a choice in what actions and behaviours we carry out but we can still be affected bt internal or external influences.
This leads to humanistic psychologists tending to reject sceintific models that attempt establish general principles for human behaviour. This is becasue as active agents we are all unique and this measn psychology should focus on individual experinces rather then genral laws.
This is reffered to a the person centered approach in psychology.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Maslow argued that human needs exist in a hierarchy with basic needs at the bottom and higher needs at the top.
There are 5 teirs of needs and the ones on the bottom must be met before the ones on the top so tiers cannot be skipped.
The first tier is physiological needs that are needed for survival such as food, water and sleep.
The second tier is saftey needs, this includess phsyical saftey from threats but also psychological saftey such as feeling safe.
The third tier is the need for love and belongingness in the form of accpetance from family, firends or partners.
The foruth tier is esteem needs as you have a need to feel good about yourself and have a sense of achievement at work, school or even as a person.
The first four needs are defincey needs so if we did not have one we would feel like we are missing something important in our lives.
The final tier is a being need, Malsow beleived that each individual has a desire for personal fufillment called slef actulisatioon. It is defined personally and can be poersued in many different ways such as through sports or school.
How did Maslow develop the heirarchy of needs?
He developed them from reading the biogrpahies of famous peopel such as Albert Eisenstein and Thomas Jefferson as he beleieved they showed self actulisation. He listed certin character triats such as creativity, , spontaneity and an ability to think outside the box. Maslow concluded that the most important characterstic of self actulsiers is being involved in a casue outside themselves , they are working at somethint hey love so the work joy dichotomy dissaperas.
Very few peole acheieve self actulisation since not many people can think outside the box.
The self , congruence and conditons of worth
The self- this is your concept of you and how you perceive yourself, it is also the basis of your self esteem
Congruence- This is the comparability between your actual/perceieved self and your ideal self.
Conditons of worth- when others impose conditions on people in terms of what to do or how to behave in order for them to be loved and accepted.
Client centered therapy
Roger argued that in order for self growth to be acheived your actual self must be roughly equivalent to your ideal self and if there is too big of a gap between the selves then you would experience incongruence and then self actulisation would be impossibel due to negative feelings of self worth created by the incongruence.
To reduce the gap between the two selves Roger vreated client centered therapy which helped epople cope with the everyday problems of living.
Rogers calimed many probelsm in pour adulthood such as low self esteem are caused in childhood due to a lack of unconditional positive regard. This means a lack of unconditonal love from parents and instead them setting requirments for theri love for theri children such as saying i will only love you if you are tall will create problems for the child in the future. Roger said that because of this one of the roles of a therapist was to provide their clients with the unconditional psotiive regard they did not receive as children.
Counselling psychology
Persomn cenetred counselling os strongly non directive andd is based on Rogers view that each person is the best expert about themselves. They should be helped to find their own solution.
This type of counsellign encourages people to talk as opnely as they can with the counsellot listening and refelcting back on what they think is being said to check their understanding.
The aim is for the counsellor to to see theri clients world as if it was their own and accept the cleints feelings and offer them uncoditional positive regard and not impsing conditons of worth.
This allows the client to clarify theri own feelings so the inner conflict can be stopped.
Roger said there are free core conditons for this type of therapy.
Empathetic understanding , uncoditional self regardand a congruent therapist who is intouch withtier own feelings.
Strengths of the humanistic approach
- ) One strength is that it is not a reductionist approach and suggest that subjective experiences can only be understood by looking at the whole person , this incraeses it validity compared to other approaches souch as the behavioursit apporach as they consider meaningful human behaviour in its real life context. But this is hard in reality as you cannot feasibly undertsan the entire context of a person and their life and it would be hard to gether this information as much of it would be private and it would be hard to get informed consent for it.
- ) It allpws for personal development and change throughout our life while acknowledging that we can change as a result of our enviroment this is the ooposite of the psyhcodynamic appraich in which childhood expereinces control our personality and actions.
-) There is research support for the humanistic approach, research with adolescants has shown that those who receiev conditonal as oppossed to uncodntional love are more liely to heahave to meet others expectations but not their own.
Harter (1996) discovered that teenagers wwho feel like they have to meet certain condtions to get approval from their parents frequently do not like themselves and have feelings of low self worth and self esteem. They also foudn that adolsecents who create a false self to pretend to be the a person their parents would love are more likely to become dpressed or loose touch with their true self.
Weaknesses of the humanisric approach
- ) Many of the concepts are untestable as they are vauge ideas such as self actulisation and congruence , this measn that experimental conditons cannot use them as variables to study but they are useful for therpay. This approach describesitself as anti scientific so it lack emprical research support for most of its claims. This means that any study into it would be biased in contrast to the Biologicla approach which has emprical concepts it can measure such as conditioning.
- ) It has limited application as it may affect motivation with Maslows hierarhy of needs or Rogeraffecting counselling but besides that it odes not have much impact especially on psychology as a whole. This may be due to it lacking evidence but also it not being a comprehensice theory but a loose set of ideas.
- ) There also may be cultural bias as many concepst that are included in humanistic psychology such as free will, personal growth and autonomy are more associated with inidivudaslitic ucltures in the west while collectivist cultures would not easily identify with concepts such as self actulisation so it would not be accpeted across different cultures. This is unlike oyher concepts such as fight or flight and survial of the fittest which are universally acceepted fromthe biological approach.
