Humanistic Psych Exam 1 Study Guide

What are the four forces of psychology?

1) Psychoanalytic

2) Behaviorism

3) Humanism

4) Transpersonal

Humanistic psych rejects which of the following forces

1 and 2 (psychoanalytic and behaviorism)

What are the 4 tenets of humanistic psychology?

1) attention on the experiencing person

2) focus on distinctively human qualities

3) dignity and worth of a human

4) meaningfulness

Explain psychodynamic psychology and its components

Id, ego, superego

Conscious, preconscious, subconscious

Defense mechanisms

Psychosexual stages of development

What does behaviorism focus on?

- Focus on observable behavior

- Focuses on punishment and reinforcement

What does humanism challenge?

1) the assumption that psychology should emulate the philosophy and procedures of natural science

2) the predominant view of human beings as primarily responding to, and being shaped by, the various determining influences that impinge upon them from within or without

(humans are shaped by determining influences) - it challenges this → less of focus on the past and more on what can you do now to try and change the outcome

What are the 4 basic tendencies in humans

1) The tendency to strive for personal satisfaction in sex, love, and ego recognition.

2) The tendency toward self-limiting adaptation for the purpose of fitting in, belonging, and gaining security.

3) The tendency toward self-expression and creative accomplishments

4) The tendency toward integration or order-upholding

What popularized the movement of humanistic psychology?

- Other schools had climates that made students feel secrecy and shame

- Alienation in american society

- More technology

- Counterculture, HP

- **Vietnam war, war against pollution ,

What did both counterculture and hp emphasize?

- Freedom and the rejection of the idea of "role-appropriate" behavior.

- The need to expand one's consciousness (drugs, TM, etc.)

- Avoidance of the Western tendency to view polarities in a dichotomous (either-or fashion, e.g., mind vs. body, male vs. female, etc.)

- the concept of community.

Talk about Rogers' early development.

- Grew up on a farm, moved from suburbs to the farm

- First college major was agriculture

- Went to seminary in New York

Talk about Rogers' professional development.

Worked at many different midwestern universities

What is Rogers' major hypothesis?

If I can provide a certain type of relationship, the other person will discover within himself [sic] the capacity to use that relationship for growth, and change and personal development will occur

What are the three main qualities about Rogers' relationship (according to his hypothesis)

Accepting/warmth

Genuineness

Empathy

If all 3 qualities are met, what will that contribute to?

Contribute their motivation for change and person will become :)

Name and explain the 7 stages of Gestalt cycle

1) Withdrawal: at withdrawal, the organism (the body) is at rest

There is no clear figure

Thus, body is not calling for food, the person is not thinking about hunger or contemplating eating in the near future

2) Sensation: either internal or external disturbance (a need) strives for gratification

In hunger example: the internal mechanisms of the body are activated at a level we usually are not fully aware of them (ex. blood sugar level going down)

3) Awareness: at some point we gradually/suddenly become aware of the bodily "arousal"

In hunger example: we experience the typical signs of hunger

Feeling empty, stomach growling, thinking about food

4) Mobilization: object-figure or need becomes sharper and clearer, generating energy and images of possibilities for satisfaction

In hunger example: the images would most likely be of food

5) Action: the person now chooses and implements a course of appropriate action

You can choose to deny what's going on and not act

In hunger ex.: involves deciding what to have, where to eat, etc.

6) Final contact: takes place at the boundary of self and environment

There should be contact at that boundary

It reflects focused attention

It marks the closure of a particular gestalt

In hunger ex.: when you're actually eating the potato chip

Ex. also emotional boundaries

7) Satisfaction: the "afterglow" following full and complete experiences of intimacy or creative expression

In hunger ex.: it reflects the "good" feeling of being full, energized, and ready for the next gestalt (ex. walking to class)

Desensitization

- interruption in the Gestalt cycle

- minimizing the sensation which involves an avoidance of experiencing self or the environment

- ex. laying in the sun for too long

- usually occurs in the sensation phase

Deflection

- turn aside from direct contact with another person that becomes a way of reducing one's awareness of the impact of the other or the environment

- Ex. a woman asks, "do you love me?" the man answers "what do you mean by love" thus, he does not share a direct feeling but rather chooses abstract language, watered-down descriptions, or avoids eye contact

- May interrupt at any point in the cycle but especially distracts from a person's awareness

Introjection

- being ruled by internal "shoulds"

- Ex. the tendency to uncritically accept others' beliefs and standards, without assimilating them to make them congruent with who we are

- May interrupt at any point in the cycle

ex. boys shouldn't cry

Projection

- seeing in others what I don't acknowledge in myself (you ascribe to others what you don't like about yourself)

- We disown certain aspects of ourselves by ascribing them to the environment. By seeing in others the very qualities that we refuse to acknowledge in ourselves, we avoid taking responsibility for our own feelings and the person that we are

- Can be used in healthy and constructive ways in planning or anticipating future situations

- May interrupt at any point in the cycle but often seen in the action phase

- Prejudice and discrimination are fostered by projection

- ex. cheating on someone because you think your partner is cheating on your

Retroflection

- means to turn sharply back against

TWO TYPES:

1) Type 1: the person does to him/herself what she/he wants to do or with someone or something

2) doing to yourself what you want or wanted to have done for you by others

Egotism

- blocking spontaneity by control

- Characterized by the individual stepping outside of himself and becoming a spectator or a commentator on himself and his relationship with the environment

- Ex. judging yourself lecturing while you're giving a lecture

Confluence

- Confluence: dysfunctional closeness

- The boundaries between 2 people become blurred

- Ex. in the past, students have asked Schell if he can be their therapist and he said he cannot do that (the APA guidelines say you cannot have a dual relationship - cannot be both professor and therapist) → if he were to do that → he'd be blurring a boundary between student and teacher → could create problems

- Overly-closeness can reflect an existential issue called aloneness (fear of existential separation) ?

- May interrupt at any point in the cycle

- The person who seeks dysfunctional closeness or merging in relationships there is both the inability to tolerate difference in the other and the unwillingness to discover the resources of the self

- In a merged partnership, neither individual can develop fully

The two philosophical systems that greatly influence humanistic psychology are

1) Humanism:

2) Existentialism: focus on death, freedom, responsibility, meaning of life

Some people that influence Humanistic psych?

- Socrates

- School of Chartres

- Erasmus

-Nicolas V

Existentialism

A philosophy based on the idea that people give meaning to their lives through their choices and actions

Humanism

Growth into your own potential

What is existentialism influenced by?

- Kierkegaard

- Heidegger

- Sartre

- Camus

Major existential concepts

- Being and non-being:

- Being-in-the-world

- The I-Thou/I-it relationship

- Intentionality

- Existential vs. neurotic anxiety

- Existential guilt vs. neurotic guilt

- Authentic and inauthentic experiences

What are Rogers' personal learnings

- I can trust my experience

- Evaluation by others is not a guide for me

- Experience is, for me, the highest authority

- I enjoy the discovering of order in experience

- The facts are friendly

- It has been my experience that persons have a basically positive direction

- Life, at its best, is a flowing, changing process in which nothing is fixed

What are Rogers' professional learnings:

- In his own relationships, it is better in the long run to not act as something he is not (genuineness)

- I am more effective when I can listen and accept myself

- I have found it of enormous value when I can permit myself to understand another person

- Empathy

- It is enriching to open channels whereby others can communicate their feelings and private worlds to me

- It is rewarding when I can accept another person - Even when their actions are morally unacceptable in your point of view

- The more open I am to the realities in me and in the other person, the less I am rushing to "fix things"

What 3 qualities block communication?

- Judgement

- Evaluation (fear of being evaluated)

Approval/disapproval

What stops us from listening?

- Lack of courage b/c we run risk of changing ourselves if we truly try to understand someone (think of talking to a murderer)

- When emotions are strongest, it's tough to take a listening stand

Technique of gestalt therapy

- confrontation

- Awareness of Contradictions between non-verbal and verbal behavior.

- The Gestalt therapist asks "what" and "how" questions, never "why."

- Games of Dialogue

- Top-dog versus under-dog

- Unfinished Business

-I Take Responsibility

- Exaggeration and Repetition

- Awareness of Language patterns

- Power language

What is main of Gestalt therapy

focusing on awareness

What is main of Rogerian theory

focus on growth; not fully fixed