Psych 3501 Exam 2: Humanistic Psychotherapy

Humanistic psychology

Mid 1900s psychology dominated by psychoanalysis and behaviorism

Limitations:

Undervalued healthy functioning

- On the pathology, symptoms, disorders

- Don’t say much about how to function in a healthy way

Undervalued healthy life goals

- What is motivating for the person, striving for, trying to achieve

Did not conceptualize the whole person

- Symptoms, problems vs. the whole person in the social context

Excessive focus on sexual and aggressive instincts (psychoanalysis)

Philosophical roots: humanism

Emphasizes individual and social potential

Possibility for an individual to contribute to society in a meaningful way

Emphasizes agency

Individuals as being autonomous, having free will, making own choices

Not slaves to instincts and drives, driven by biological processes

Humans have inherent dignity

Emphasizes morality as mechanism for improving life

Morality as the primary way to live a good and fulfilling life

Principles of humanistic psychology

understanding the whole person

intentionality

motivation and goal-setting

creativity

understanding the whole person

Emphasis on individuality

Idiographic vs. nomothetic approach

Idiographic: study one certain individual’s unique characteristics and experiences

Case study, personal life narrative, etc.

Nomothetic: the general pattern that apply to the population as a whole

Identify the mean in the noise

intentionality

Free will as driving force behind behavior

Not sexual and aggressive instincts

motivation and goal-setting

Humans always striving towards growth, self-actualization

Get fulfillment from pursuing behaviors consistent with our values

creativity

Fundamental characteristic of humans

Implies free will and potential for change

If we are creative, we have autonomy, free will and potential for change

Conflicts with psychoanalysis: trying for homeostasis between id and superego

Unifying themes of humanistic psychotherapies

Client’s lives and problems can only be understood through the client’s lens

Therapist cannot take top-down perspectives

Get into their client’s shoes and see through their perspectives

Clients are inherently good and capable of determining their own outcomes

Goal to amplify strengths in addition to addressing problems

Capitalize strengths, helping clients to grow these strengths and solve problems

Addressing the problem & maximizing the good

Therapeutic relationship is curative and primary mechanism of therapy

Distinct: the relationship is the therapy

The relationship itself is a mechanism of action

Psychoanalysis: the relationship is important because it offers opportunities for certain skills, important because it reveals conflicts, but not curative by itself

Forms of humanistic psychology

Person-centered therapy

Gestalt therapy

Existential therapy

Emotion-focused therapy

Person-centered therapy

Developed by Carl Rogers (originally trained in psychoanalysis)

Experienced frustration with the psychoanalysis approach: didn’t like therapists as authority figures constantly searching for unconscious conflicts

Emphasized the unique and valuable perspective of the client

It is the client who knows what hurts, what directions to go, what problems are crucial, what experiences have been deeply buried

The client as an expert on themselves

Self-actualization

All humans have an actualizing tendency

- Universal human motivation, results in growth, development, and autonomy

- “The urge to express and activate all the capacities of the organism”

An inherent biological tendency, not moral imperative (choices we make)

Drive to become fully functioning

- Unlikely

- Acorns have the potential to grow into tree, but only happens if the contexts and environments are optimal

- Most people experience non-optimal environment that places limits on the growth potential

Conditions of worth

Attitudes, beliefs, and values that are expressed by others and taken on by the self

Disapproval or rejection of behaviors, feelings -> belief that acceptance, love, worth is conditional

Often: conditional on what others want/expect from you

Learn to evaluate experiences by whether they satisfy externally imposed conditions

Conditions of Worth Leads to: Incongruence

Internalized conditions of worth becomes the ideal self

- The ideal self: not a good thing

- The self made up by expectation, desires from outside

Distort behaviors, feelings into a socially approved self to be consistent with the ideal self rather than consistent with the real self

Incongruence: degree of discrepancy between the real self and the ideal self

Considered the root of psychological distress

In sum - person-centered therapy

Person-centered psychotherapy views distress through a lens of thwarted potential rather than illness ideology

Person-centered psychotherapy

Goal: allow clients to become aware of their authentic thoughts and feelings to promote personal growth and self-actualization

- More aware and in touch with the real self

- Positive tone

Person-centered techniques

unconditional positive regard

empathy

congruence

Unconditional positive regard

therapist expresses care for and acceptance of the client, regardless of their behavior

Not necessarily approval; “I’m here for you regardless of what you did”

Expressed through non-possessive caring and willingness to listen

Non-possessive caring: expressing positive feelings such that the client feels valued but not obligated to please the therapist

Willingness to listen: no interrupting, changing the subject, or being distracted; expressing genuine interest in what the client has to say

Goal: to create an experience of being valued for who they are (their real self) in order to promote growth and decrease incongruence

If they experience it enough in therapy, they no longer feel they have to be the ideal self in real life

Empathy

therapist tries to see the world through the client’s lens

External vs. internal frame of reference

External: you as a therapist observing the client from the outside, applying your own values and theories to their sayings

Internal: inferring the client’s thoughts and emotions by taking their point of view

Reflective listening:

Conveys the therapist wants to understand their sayings and feelings

Increases client awareness of their feelings

It’s okay if your reflection is wrong and the clients can correct you, but signal to the client that you really want to understand them

Congruence

consistency between the therapists’ feelings and actions towards the client

Necessary foundation for a genuine relationship

Promotes trust between client and therapist

Person-centered therapy: graph

self-awareness

self-acceptance

interpersonal relationships

flexible thinking

prioritize self-evaluation vs. others evaluation

progress towards fully functioning

Gestalt therapy - goal

Developed by Fritz & Laura Perls

Goal: create conditions to increase self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-integration

- Conditions in the therapeutic setting

Gestalt therapy

Disunity of the self underlies distress

Growth is stalled when genuine self is subverted in favor of a self created to appease others

Techniques help client identify and assimilate the genuine self and reject the fake self

Techniques is very different from person-centered therapy

Much more active and expressive than person-centered therapy

Gestalt therapy techniques

present focus

role-playing

attention to nonverbal behavior

frustrating the client

Present focus

Therapist consistently works to keep client focused on current thoughts, emotions, physiology

Now = experience = awareness = reality

Attempts to talk about past or future: interpreted as an avoidance of present reality

Therapist would highlight the avoidance and redirect the client back to the present experience

Techniques: Role-playing

Used to explore inner conflicts and defenses that maintain symptoms

Empty-chair technique

Have an empty chair and let the client imagine that someone they need to talk to is sitting in that chair

Use the opportunity to express true feelings they haven’t expressed before

Unmailed letter technique

Write a letter but don’t mail it

Go through the experience of processing and getting out feelings but not having consequences

Role-playing reversals

Get in touch with suppressed feelings

Ask them to convey the opposite to what they are currently expressing

When they are pretending, they are getting in touch with the existing feelings that they don’t want to engage with

Attention to nonverbal behavior

Focus on body language, particularly when it contrasts words

May ask client to repeat and exaggerate behaviors to identify associated feelings

Frustrating the client

“The hot seat”

highlight the fakeness and explore it together

Mirror the client’s behavior: interact with client using the client’s own resistances and problematic styles

Goal to bring awareness so these patterns can be explored

Risky: alienate, offend the client

The legacy of humanistic psychotherapy

Few modern psychotherapists identify as humanist

Limited empirical support, despite Rogers emphasis on need for scientific study

Difficult to study

No specific therapeutic goals, methods are vague, hard to measure “get better”

Considered highly influential, particularly the emphasis on the therapeutic relationship & the curative role the relationship can have

Summary