The Humanistic Perspective Flashcards
The humanistic perspective – History 1
Key theorists:
❖ Abraham Maslow: 1943 “A Theory of Human Motivation” published
in Psychological Review.
❖ Carl Rogers: 1951 published “Client-Centered Therapy,” which described his
humanistic, client-directed approach to therapy.
❖1961 - American Association for Humanistic Psychology was formed
❖By 1971, humanistic psychology become an APA division
The humanistic perspective – History 2
❖Maslow published “Toward a Psychology of Being,” in
which he described humanistic psychology as the
“third force” in psychology.
❖1st force was behaviourism (Skinner)
considered a robotic conception of humans
❖2nd force was psychoanalysis (Freud)
considered a pessimistic view of human nature
The humanistic perspective – History 3
The Human Potential Movement manifested itself in the 1960s,1970s & 1980s in ‘encounter groups’ aimed at helping people encounter reality of their own experiences more directly via group self-disclosure in an atmosphere of mutual trust. Exercises to promote being more in touch with one’s sensory experiences & emotions were common.
The humanistic perspective - An Introduction
The humanistic perspective takes a whole person approach Basic
assumptions are that:
❖ People have free will (personal agency)
❖ People are basically good and want to make themselves and the world better
❖ People are motivated to self-actualize (growth and fulfilment)
❖ The subjective, conscious experiences of the individual is most important (phenomena)
❖ Humanism uses qualitative research methodologies
The phenomenological approach to personality asks
❖ Do we perceive exactly what our senses record of reality?
❖ How important is the subjective experience of each
individual?
❖ Is each individual person unique ?
❖ Are we merely products of our genes & past experiences or
do we have free will to grow, develop & make choices?
❖ How important is the concept of ‘self’?
Implication of hierarchy of needs: Part 1
❖ Low-level needs are more primitive and demanding than higher-level needs ❖ Power of motive forces decrease as you go up the pyramid ❖ Needs at lower level must be met before attending to higher-level needs
Implication of hierarchy of needs: Part 2
❖ Higher-level motives represent more distinctly human characteristics ❖ Low-level needs are deficit motivated and high-level needs are growth motivated
Characteristics of self-actualizers: Part 1
- Efficient and accurate in perceiving reality
- Accepting of themselves, others, and of nature
- Spontaneous in thought and emotion, natural rather than artificial
- Problem-centered, concerned with eternal philosophical questions
- Independent and autonomous when it comes to satisfactions
- Freshness of appreciation of ordinary events
Characteristics of self-actualizers: Part 2
- Deep ties, but only with a few persons
- Appreciate, for its own sake the process of doing things
- Philosophical, thoughtful, nonhostile sense of humor
- Maintain inner detachment from culture in which they live
- Appear temperamental and even ruthless
Critics of Maslow’s theory
❖Hierarchy of needs has been accused of having a cultural bias mainly reflecting Western values and ideologies.
❖University of Illinois researchers Ed Diener and Louis Tay,tested
Maslow’s ideas collecting data from 60,865 participants from 123 countries. Concluded there were universal human needs regardless of cultural differences.
❖Evidence that needs development not as hierarchical as initially described.
❖Maslow was criticized for noting too many exceptions to his theory. He acknowledged them but did not do much to account for them.
Carl Rogers - Person-centred theory
❖ Carl Rogers (1902-1987) originally developed theory of psychotherapy. ❖ Theory of personality evolved from this ❖ Significant figure in human potential movement - an approach to psychotherapy emphasising human potentialities for healthy & creative growth
Humanistic psychology & free will
❖ Emphasises people are free to determine:
• How they act
• What to become
• If they are to be self-actualized or
• accept conditions of worth
❖ Reactance:
• Assertion of freedom when a threat to freedom is perceived
❖ Perceptions of free will can be experimentally manipulated
Central concepts of Roger’s theory 1
Two constructs fundamental importance to Rogers’ theory of personality
a) Phenomenal field: Our subjective reality, all we are aware of, including objects & people, and our behaviours, thoughts, images, and ideas like justice, equality, etc…
Mind & body are viewed as united by a phenomenal field which combines all of a person’s experience in a unique & subjective fashion.
b) The self: Those parts of the field seen by individual as ‘self’, ‘me’ or ‘I’ make up
the self.
Central concepts of Roger’s theory 2
❖ Self-concept
• refers to conscious self-definition we give ourselves - “who we are” - our identity:
- a changing but integrated & organised pattern of perceptions
❖ Ideal self
• The self concept the person would most like to possess
❖ Psychopathology
• viewed as defined partly by discrepancies between
- ideal self & actual self (i.e. the self one is presently )
Self-actualization 1
❖ Rogers viewed people as forward-moving, maintaining that the
tendency toward positive healthy growth will naturally express itself in every organism’s behaviour
❖ Self-Actualization —promotes maintenance or enhancement of
self:
- moves person toward greater autonomy & self sufficiency
– promotes congruence, organisation, wholeness & integration in the person
❖ Fully functioning person - open to experiences of his/her life & who is self-actualising
Self assessment of actualization
Organismic value process—mechanism that evaluates
whether experiences are actualizing:
• If not, nagging sense that something isn’t right
• If yes, person is operating as “fully functional
person”
Need for positive regard
Strong motive for love, friendship & affection from important others:
❖ Unconditional Positive Regard
– given without any conditions or contingencies
❖ Conditional Positive Regard
– given only in situations that meet particular conditions
• Conditions of Worth—conditions under which a person is
considered worthy of regard
• Conditional Self-Regard—application of conditions of worth to self
Implications of conditions of worth
❖ Conflicts between self-actualization & fulfilling conditions of worth
– Example: Desire to be a musician in conflict with recognition
of parent’s aspirations for their child to be a doctor
❖ Sometimes difficult to tell true desire from conditions of worth
– Condition of worth is a precondition for acceptance and is always coercive
Congruence & self-consistency
❖ The concept of self-consistency developed by
Lecky (1945)
❖ Individuals behave in ways that are consistent
with their self-concept even if behaviour is
unrewarding
❖ Rogers emphasised a human tendency to
congruence between the self & experience
Incongruity, disorganisation & subception
Incongruence:
❖ Disorganization in self detected by organismic value
process
• Leads to anxiety
• Can cause low self-esteem
❖ Through a process called subception we can become aware of experience that contradicts self-concept before it reaches consciousness & prevents it from entering our consciousness.
Defense: Part 1
Ways to defend against anxiety of incongruence:
❖ Distortions of the experience
• Rationalisation, minimization, reconstruction
- e.g. seeing an event differently - if you hit someone else’s car in
car park & drive off telling yourself you needn’t feel bad they’ve got insurance & wont mind you not leaving details as
no-one does
Defense: Part 2
❖ Denial (blocking from awareness) / Subception
• Avoid situations that trigger perceptions of incongruence
- e.g. ignoring all evidence indicating one’s business is losing so much money it’s going to fold; fact one’s drinking is out of control, one’s hearing is going.
Self-esteem maintenance & enhancement
❖Defenses protect & maintain self-esteem
❖Conditions necessary for an event to have effect on self-esteem:
– event attributable to you
– event interpreted as good or bad
• Defense against failures
– minimize negativity of event (wasn’t so bad)
– resist attributions to stable qualities of self
• blame others, lack of effort, excuses
• Enhancement through success
– attribute to stable characteristics of self
– claim control of those characteristics
Self-handicapping
❖ Acting in way that creates condition for failure
❖ Difficult goals & substantial risk of failure represent
threats to self-esteem
❖ Create external situation on which potential failure can be attributed & self-esteem can be maintained
• Athlete performance anxiety – purposely does
something that has the potential of injuring
themselves
❖ No threat to stable qualities of the self
Human happiness
❖ Rogers measures the extent of human psychological adjustment by the amount of freedom from inner tension ❖ Ryff & Singer (2000) hypothesise a multifaceted view of positive mental health: 1. self acceptance 2. positive relations with others 3. autonomy 4. environmental mastery 5. purpose in life 6. personal growth
Growth & development
❖ What are reasons for development of rift between experience and self-concept or actual self and ideal self?
❖ If parents give a child unconditional positive regard there will be no need for him/her to deny experiences.
❖ Children whose parents are accepting feel more comfortable in their bodies & with t/selves generally, faults & all.
❖ Children’s perception of parents’ appraisals of them are crucial.
❖ Self acceptance is related to self-esteem - a personal judgement of worthiness
Rogers views on psychopathology
❖ Emphasised individual’s efforts to maintain
consistency among self-perceptions
❖ People want to behave & view behaviour in ways
consistent with self-image
❖ Lead Rogers to stress consistency or congruence
between self & experience
❖ Openness to experience & ability to assimilate
experiences without defensiveness lead to:
• psychological wellbeing
❖ Incongruence:
• is a breakdown in the unitary sense of self
• can lead to anxiety
Problems in behavior
Problems arise from:
❖ Incongruity & negative affect
❖ Inability to meet conditions of worth
❖ Inability to manage realisation of mortality
Client-centered therapy (Client)
Roger views the aim of therapy is to:
❖ Facilitate client’s natural tendency toward self-actualization
• Client centred therapy removes distractions so self-actualization processes can move client toward
greater integration
• Responsibility for improvement lies with client
• Process of ‘becoming’ where client reintegrates
incongruent aspects of self &/or incongruency
between self & experience
Client-centered therapy (Therapist)
Process whereby therapist demonstrates unconditional positive regard & empathy
❖ a process whereby the therapist behaves non-directively & non-evaluatively
❖therapist reflects with:
• clarification of feelings
• restatement of content
Assessment techniques: Part 1
1. Interview—content analysis organizes responses into meaningful groups 2. Q-Sort—Sort items into piles that correspond to particular criteria (e.g., most like you to least like you) 3. Inventories for self-actualization, autonomy, control
Assessment techniques: Part 2
- Interviews:
❖ To the phenomenologist assessment is a process of
finding out what a person is like
❖ The clinical interview offers maximum flexibility
• major disadvantage is:
- lack of structure
- limited means of standardisation
Assessment techniques: Part 3
- Q-Sort & measurement of the self-concept
❖ The phenomenological approach considers way people view
themselves, as being of central importance
❖ A technique Rogers used for measuring self-concept is the
Q-Sort procedure:
• a person is given large set of cards
• on each is written a statement about a personality
characteristic which need to be sorted into a row of piles
• from “most like you” to “least like you” and points inbetween
Assessment techniques: Part 4
- Inventories for self-actualization, autonomy, control
>. Personal Orientation Inventory:
>. Developed by Shostrom (1964), paired statements
>. People select 1 from each pair they most agree with
Assessment techniques: Part 5
Two major scales:
❖Time-competent scale
• degree to which person lives in present & not distracted by past & future.
• People aren’t living mainly with regrets/resentments from past or idealised goals/fears for future.
❖Inner-other directedness scale
• sorts out self-actualizers who are theorised to be more inner-directed in the search for values and meaning.
• validity of scale for measuring self-actualisation unclear but it has been positively correlated with positive group therapy outcomes
STRENGTHS
❖ Is viewed by many as most intuitively
accessible of theories emphasising
uniqueness & validity of each person’s experience
❖ Aims at systematic inquiry into the necessary
& sufficient conditions for therapeutic change
❖ Emphasises a strategy for living, self-actualisation, & importance of appreciating one’s own reality
❖ Practical & helpful
❖ Recognises the holistic integrated aspects of
personality
❖ Tries to integrate phenomenology &
empiricism
LIMITATIONS
❖ Excludes unconscious processes, defences etc. from
research as hard to create easily tested hypotheses
❖ Criticised as arbitrarily assuming
there’s a self-actualising tendency & people are good
❖ Beyond self-report lacks
objective measures of behaviour
❖ Ignores impossibility of bias-free
observations
