The Humanistic Approach

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Introduction

  • created in 1950s America
  • Rogers and Maslow
  • aims to replace Behaviourism and Psychoanalysis (and other elements of the Psychodynamic approach)
  • based on the idea of free will
    • subjective life experience
    • significant personal choices
    • within biological and social constraints
  • Maslow's hierarchy of needs
  • Roger's congruence of self and ideal self
  • client-centered therapy
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Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

  • innate tendency to want to achieve our full potentials
  • self-growth
  • deficiency needs followed by self-actualisation
  • example of a self-actualiser: Ghandi
  • found that self-actualisers reported moments in life as 'peak experiences' - periods of self-actualisation
  • satisfaction at each deficiency level motivates us to move on to the next level (a deficiency)

Stages

physiological needs (water, food, oxygen...)

safety (shelter, hygeine...)

belongingness and love (relationships, sex, parents...)

self-esteem (believing in ourselves, competitiveness...)

self-actualisation (reaching our full potential, satisfaction, achievement...)

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Rogers' Congurence

  • idea that in order for self-growth, humans must have strong congruence between their perceived (actual) self and their ideal self
  • if there is too big a gap between these two, there will be incogruence and self-actualisation and self-growth can not occur
    • negativity
    • lack of self-worth
    • affects self-esteem (just below self-actualisation on Maslow's diagram)
  • can arise during childhood development (you need unconditional, positive love)
  • if upbringing is conditional (with conditions of worth), you may build up a perception that acceptance by others is based on achievement and meeting expectations
  • may develop defense mechanisms for your own perceived incogruence (e.g regression, projection, etc)
  • need to combat these feelings with unconditional positive regard via Rogers' Client-Centered Therapy
    • warm, non-judgemental, support
    • unconditional regard, empathy and genuineness
    • analysis
    • non-directive
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Evaluation

For

  • not deterministic or reductionist - is a holistic approach
  • application to effective Client-Centred Therapy
  • promotes positivity, self-actualisation and the ability to change
  • comprehensive stages 

Against

  • there is culture bias to individualist cultures, as personal growth is limited in collectivist cultures
  • untestable concepts (anti-scientific)
  • limited application to real life (only very few people self-actualise)
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