The Humanistic Approach

Question 1

What is free will?

Answer 1

The ability to make significant personal choices within biological and societal constraints.

Question 2

What is self actualisation?

Answer 2

Being the best you can be - achieving full potential. This represents the uppermost hierarchy of needs.

Question 3

What is a hierarchy of needs?

Answer 3

People must fulfill each level before moving onto the next. This was described by Abraham Maslow. The stages are physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem and self actualisation

Question 4

What is personal growth?

Answer 4

This is a key part of what it is to be human. All four lower levels must be met before an individual can work towards self actualisation.

Question 5

What is focus on the self?

Answer 5

Rogers claimed that our two basic needs, unconditional positive regard from other people and feelings of self worth, develop from childhood interactions with parents.

Question 6

What is congruence?

Answer 6

The more similar our self concept and our ideal self, the greater our psychological health and state of congruence. Most people experience some incongruence and use defence mechanisms to feel less threatened.

Question 7

What are conditions of worth?

Answer 7

A perception that acceptance from others depends on meeting their expectations. Although other people may help the process of self actualisation, Rogers (1959) believed that more often then not, they hinder it.

Question 8

The influence of this approach on counselling psychology.

Answer 8

Rogers believed that people can creatively solve their own problems and become more authentic (true to self). Humanistic therapists become provide empathy and unconditional positive regard, facilitating the client in finding self actualisation. People who attain self actualisation are creative and accepting, and have peak experiences of extreme inspiration and ecstasy.

Question 9

What is humanistic psychology?

Answer 9

We are self determining and we have free will - it is a person centred approach.

Question 10

Evaluation

Answer 10

1. Antireductionist-rejects any idea of breaking down human behaviour into small components. They promote holism where human experience can only be understood by looking at the whole person (relationships, past, present and future). This increases its validity because they consider meaningful human behaviour by looking at the context.
2. Western culture bias has been found. Central concepts (individual freedom, autonomy and personal growth) are readily associated with individualist cultures such as the US. Those in collectivist cultures will value interdependence and the needs of the group and not identify as readily to the values of humanist psychology. This shows that humanistic psychology is a product of the cultural context in which it was developed.
3. The approach is positive, seeing people as being in control of their lives and the freedom to change. Humanism provides a refreshing alternative to Freud’s claim that we all existed somewhere between ‘common unhappiness and absolute despair’.
4. Humanist psychology includes vague ideas which are abstract and hard to test such as ‘self actualisation and congruence’. As an anti-scientific approach, it has a lack of empirical evidence.