Humanistic Approach

Humanistic Approach

1. Basic Assumptions

   • reaction to the dominance of behaviourism and psychodynamic approaches
     • though behaviourists ignored subjective experience and psychodynamics marginalised our conscious awareness
   • Individuals are free to choose their behaviour
     • supports free will  in all situations we have autonomy - we can choose our behaviour in small ways and major ways
     • free will leads to personal growth
   • focus on individual's subjective experience and conscious awareness
     • reflexive awareness
     • subjective experience is meaningful to us  understanding the meanings is to understand the individual (completely different view to behaviourists where we are products of stimulus response)
   • Personal growth is a key concept
     • we are able to become the best we can due to free will 
     • individuals are potentially good and can become better people
   • reject scientific psychology as it is dehumanising
     • lacks ecological validity and regards the individual as passive to external and internal forcess

2. Researchers

   • Rogers
     • the fundamental predominance of the subjective
       • each individual lives in their own subjective world ; they are the centre of their world of experiences
     • the importance of personal growth
       • individuals are motivated towards personal growth (developing their potential) and problems arise when this process is inhibited by society or by the demands of others
     • the self is composed of subjective experience and the evaluation f others
       • problems can occur if the evaluation of others is conditional 
       • a child comes to believe that they are loved/evaluated positively when doing certain things e.g. getting good grades 
       • the love is seen as conditional on good grades and working for good grades may come into conflict with subjective experience producing incongruence 
   • Maslow
     • conscious awareness - peak experiences
       • occasional experiences characterised by a sense of delight wholeness meaningfulness and abundant energy
       • they occur in many situations (from looking at the sunset to being in a sporting competition) 
       • these experiences are unique to each individual and so are difficult to study especially as the experiences cannot be described in words
     • hierarchy of needs
       • interested in motivation 
       • highest need is self-actualisation (rarely achieved) which is the need to become everything that one is capable of becoming (reach our full potential)
       • studied famous self-actualisers (e.g. Einstein)  characteristics in common = doing something that they loved, being creative, being spontaneous, accepting of others and themselves, intimate relationships but happy being alone, slightly unconventional, and peak experiences
       • may also be a negative side to a self-actualiser (stubborn, vain and anxious)
       • self actualisation

3. Methods

   • Qualitative
   • case studies
   • informal interviews
   • open ended questionnaires
   • Q-sort

4. Application to topics

   • mood disorders
     • depression results from lack of unconditional postive regard and inability to accept self
     • used as supportive therapy for Schizophrenia
   • applied to relatively few areas of psychology compared to the other approaches. Therefore, its contributions are limited to areas such as therapy, abnormality, motivation and personality
     • deliberately adopts a non-scientific approach to studying humans. For example their belief in free-will is in direct opposition to the deterministic laws of science. Also, the areas investigated by humanism, such as consciousness and emotion are very difficult to scientifically study. The outcome of such scientific limitations mean that their is a lack of empirical evidence to support the key theories of the approach.
     • humanism can gain a better insight into an individuals behavior through the use of qualitative methods, such as unstructured interviews. The approach also helped proved a more holistic view of human behavior, in contract to the reductionist position of science.

5. Impact

   • CCT
     • therapy to overcome incongruence; therapist just listens and gives the client unconditional positive regard

6. Debates

   • free will
     • people direct their lives towards self-chosen goals
   • interactionist
     • motivation of self actualisation is innate; humans are influenced by environmental variables
   • Holistic
     • Thoughts, behaviour and experience should not be reduced to smaller component elements
   • idiographic
     • emphasises the uniqueness of the individual