Humanistic (Third-Force) Psychology – Key Vocabulary

These vocabulary flashcards summarize core concepts, key terms, and influential figures from the lecture on Humanistic (Third-Force) Psychology, existential influences, and related contemporary developments.

Third-Force Psychology

The humanistic movement that arose as an alternative to behaviorism and psychoanalysis, emphasizing the uniquely positive, spiritual, and free aspects of human beings.

Humanistic Psychology

The preferred label for third-force psychology; focuses on human uniqueness, freedom, subjectivity, and the drive toward growth and self-actualization.

Mind–Body–Spirit Model

A tripartite view of human nature highlighting intellect (mind), biological makeup (body), and emotions/meaning (spirit).

Subjective Reality

Personal, inner experience regarded by humanistic psychologists as the primary cause of behavior.

Phenomenology

A methodology that studies conscious experience as it occurs, without reducing it to parts or imposing preconceptions.

Pure Phenomenology

Husserl’s attempt to catalog mental acts and processes free of assumptions, forming a basis for science and philosophy.

Intentionality

Brentano’s idea that every mental act refers to (or ‘intends’) something outside itself.

Existential Psychology

A psychological approach rooted in existential philosophy, stressing freedom, choice, responsibility, anxiety, and authenticity.

Dasein

Heidegger’s term meaning “being-in-the-world,” expressing the inseparability of person and world.

Authenticity

Living in accordance with one’s freely chosen values and full awareness of mortality, leading to continual personal growth.

Inauthenticity

Living by values imposed by society or others, denying one’s freedom and finitude.

Thrownness (Facticity)

The uncontrollable circumstances (time, culture, body, etc.) into which a person is born and within which freedom is exercised.

Anxiety (Existential)

The uneasy feeling that arises when confronting freedom, responsibility, and mortality; viewed as necessary for an authentic life.

Guilt (Existential)

The feeling resulting from failing to exercise one’s freedom or from living incongruently with one’s chosen values.

Umwelt

Binswanger’s term for the “around-world” of physical objects and events.

Mitwelt

Binswanger’s “with-world” of social relationships and interactions.

Eigenwelt

Binswanger’s “own-world” of inner, private, subjective experience.

World-Design (Weltanschauung)

An individual’s overarching worldview that gives meaning to life; can be open, closed, positive, negative, etc.

Ground of Existence

The limits set by one’s thrown circumstances within which personal freedom operates.

Being-Beyond-the-World

Binswanger’s term for transcending given circumstances through free choice and self-transformation.

Daseinanalysis

Binswanger’s existential form of therapy that explores a client’s mode of being-in-the-world.

Logotherapy

Frankl’s therapeutic approach focusing on the human “will to meaning” even under extreme suffering.

Daimonic

May’s term for any natural human impulse (e.g., sex, power, anger) that can be creative or destructive when it overtakes the whole person.

Myth (Rollo May)

Narrative patterns that give life meaning, foster community, guide morals, and help cope with existence.

Constructive Alternativism

Kelly’s idea that people are free to construe reality in multiple ways and can revise those constructions to reduce uncertainty.

Personal Construct

A bipolar mental category (e.g., friendly–unfriendly) used by an individual to interpret and predict events.

Fixed-Role Therapy

Kelly’s technique in which clients experiment with new roles to discover alternative ways of construing themselves and the world.

Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow’s pyramid of human motivations: physiological, safety, belonging/love, esteem, and self-actualization.

Self-Actualization (Maslow)

The ongoing realization of one’s potentials, talents, and mission; the highest human need.

Jonah Complex

Maslow’s term for the fear of one’s own greatness or potential, leading people to evade self-actualization.

Deficiency Motivation (D-Motivation)

Behavior driven by unmet basic needs and characterized by need-directed (D) perception.

Being Motivation (B-Motivation)

Growth-oriented motivation of self-actualizers, concerned with higher values like beauty, truth, and justice.

B-Perception

Open, accepting perception of reality without searching for need-satisfying objects; typical of self-actualizers.

Transpersonal Psychology

Maslow’s proposed “fourth force” focusing on mystical, spiritual, and cosmic aspects of human experience.

Organismic Valuing Process

Rogers’s innate inner guide that evaluates experiences in terms of their promotion of growth and well-being.

Positive Regard

Warmth, acceptance, and love received from significant others, essential for healthy development.

Conditions of Worth

Requirements imposed by others for receiving positive regard; lead individuals to disregard their own organismic valuing.

Unconditional Positive Regard

Rogers’s therapeutic attitude of nonjudgmental acceptance that fosters congruence and growth.

Congruence (Rogers)

Alignment between a person’s self-concept and their organismic experience; essential for psychological health.

Fully Functioning Person

Rogers’s term for an individual who lives authentically, trusts inner experience, and is open to growth.

Q-Sort Technique

A self-assessment method used by Rogers to measure discrepancies between real self and ideal self.

Positive Psychology

Contemporary movement (e.g., Seligman, Csikszentmihalyi) studying human strengths, virtues, and flourishing through rigorous science.

Flourishing

Living with vitality, engagement, and meaning—more than the mere absence of mental illness.