The Humanistic Approach Flashcards
What is humanistic psychology?
Humanists see humans affected by external and internal influences but still self-determining (have free will).
People consciously decide their behaviour.
What is Maslow Hierarchy of needs?
In order to achieve our primary goal of self-actualisation, a number of other deficiency needs must first be met. At the bottom are physiological needs such as food and water.
A person is only able to progress through the hierarchy once the current need in the sequence has been met.
At the top is self-actualisation.
What is the order of the hierarchy?
Top:
Self-actualisation
Self esteem
Love and belongingness
Safety and security
Physiological needs
Bottom:
What is self-actualisation?
The desire to grow psychologically and fulfil one’s full potential-becoming what you are capable of.
All four lower levels of the hierarchy must be met before the individual can work towards self-actualisation and fulfil their potential.
Personal growth is concerned with developing and changing as a person to become fulfilled, satisfied and goal-orientated.
What did Roger’s say about personal growth?
Carl Rogers argued that for personal growth to be achieved an individual’s concept of self must be broadly equivalent to, or have congruence with, their Ideal self.
If too big a gap exists between the two ‘selves’ the person will experience a state of incongruence and self-actualisation will not be possible due to the negative feellings of self-worth that arise from Incongruence.
How can you reduce the gap between the two selves?
client-centred therapy
Helps people cope with everyday living, issues we experience as adults, such as worthlessness and low self-esteem, have their roots in childhood and can often be explained by:
a lack of unconditional positive regard (or lack of unconditional love) from our parents.
What does Client centred therapy provide?
- As parents set conditions of worth on children, Roger’s combats this by providing every client with unconditional positive regard that they failed to receive as a child.
What is becoming congruent?
This is adapting a more realistic ideal self
One strength of the humanistic approach is that it rejects attempts to break up behaviour and experlence into smaller components.
HOLISTIC
Behaviourists explain human and animal learning in terms of simple stimulus response connections.
Supporters of the cognitive approach see human beings as little more than information - processing machines. Blological psychologists reduce behaviour to its basic physiological processes.
Freud described the whole of personality as a conflict between three things: Id, Ego and Superego. In contrast, humanistic psychologists advocate holism, the idea that subjective experience can only be understood by considering the whole person.
This approach may have more validity than its alternatives by considering meaningful human behaviour within its real-world context.
Counterpoint
Having sald that, reductionist approaches may be more scientific.
This is because the ideal of science is the experiment, and experiments reduce behaviour to independent and dependent variables.
One issue with humanistic psychology Is that, unlike behaviourism, there are relatively few concepts that can be broken down to single variables and measured.
This means that humanistic psychology in general is short on empirical evidence to support its claims.
Positive approach
Another strength of the humanistic approach is that it is optimistic
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. 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.
This suggests that humanistic psychology offers a refreshing and optimistic alternative to other approaches.
Cultural bias
One limitation of the approach is that it may be culturally-biased
Many of the ideas that are central to humanistic psychology, such as Individual freedom, autonomy and personal growth, would be much more associated with countries that have more individualist tendencies (eg. the US).
Countries with collectivist tendencies emphasise more the needs of the group and interdependence. In such countries, the Ideals of humanistic psychology may not be as important as in others (e g. self-actualisation).
Therefore, it is possible that this approach does not apply universally and is a product of the cultural context within which it was developed
