Humanistic Theories Notes

Humanistic Theories

The Roots of Humanistic Psychology

• Humanistic psychology arose from:
  • European existential philosophy
  • The work of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow
• Existential therapy:
  • Emphasized freedom to choose.
  • Focused on developing a lifestyle to reduce emptiness, anxiety, and boredom.

Key Elements of the Humanistic Approach

1. Personal Responsibility

• We are responsible for what happens to us.
• All behavior is a personal choice (e.g., relationships, passivity, education).
• People actively shape their lives.
• Freedom to change is limited only by physical constraints.
• Taking responsibility means:
  • No blaming others for problems.
  • If you want things to change, it's up to you.

2. Here and Now

• We must learn to live in the present to become fully functioning.
• We spend too much time dwelling on the past and worrying about the future.
• Slogan: "Today is the first day of the rest of your life."
• Humans need not be victims of their past or have apprehensions about their future.

3. Experience of the Individual

• No one knows you better than yourself.
• Humanistic therapists:
  • Seek to understand clients' experiences.
  • Provide a therapeutic atmosphere for clients to help themselves (non-directive).
• Successful therapy leads clients to:
  • Understand themselves.
  • Develop strategies for dealing with their problems.
• Contribution to research method: phenomenology.

4. Personal Growth

• Carl Rogers: "Whether one calls it a growth tendency, a drive toward self-actualization, or a forward-moving directional tendency…it is the mainspring of life."
• Happiness requires growth in a positive direction (Burger, 2019).
• We are all motivated to progress toward a satisfying state of being.
• Rogers called this becoming a "fully-functioning" person.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow's Background

• Born in 1908 in Brooklyn, New York.
• Isolated and unhappy childhood without close friends or loving parents.
• Father was aloof and periodically abandoned the family.
• Mother favored younger siblings, showed no affection, and punished him for minor wrongdoings.
• Mother often threatened young Maslow with punishment from God.
• He reasoned his mother's warnings were not scientifically sound.
• He learned to hate and mistrust religion, becoming a committed atheist.
• Teenage years marked by a large inferiority complex.
• He focused on reading and education to escape poverty and loneliness.
• He married his cousin, Bertha. Provided a sense of belonging and direction. Stated life had little meaning until married.
• Studied law initially, then focused on Behavioral Psychology.
• Experimental psychology work included dominance and sexual behavior in primates.
• He resolved to devote himself to developing a psychology that would deal with the highest human ideals.
• Abraham Maslow spent most of his career filling gaps he found in other personality approaches.
• He wondered what psychology could do for the happy, healthy side of personality.
• He would work to improve the human personality and demonstrate that people are capable of displaying better behavior than prejudice, hatred, and aggression.
• Maslow replaced Freud's pessimistic view with an optimistic and uplifting portrayal.
• He focused his work on the conscious aspects of personality, acknowledging unconscious motives.

Motivation and Hierarchy of Needs

• Basic assumptions regarding motivation:
  • Holistic - the whole person is motivated.
  • Complex - behavior results from several separate motives.
  • Continually motivated - when one need is satisfied, it is replaced by another.
  • People are motivated by the same basic needs.
  • Needs can be arranged in a hierarchy.
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs concept assumes that lower needs must be at least partially satisfied before higher needs become influential.
• Maslow described these needs as instinctoid or hereditary.
• We come equipped with these needs at birth, however, the behaviors we use to satisfy them are learned and varied.
• Needs are strongest at the bottom and weakest at the top.

The Hierarchy of Needs

• Maslow identified five basic categories of needs (both deficiency and growth) and placed them in his well known hierarchy of needs
• Which needs affect our behavior depends on our life circumstances, ONE AT A TIME.
• Maslow identified two types of motives:
  • Deficit needs (Deficiency motives) - result from a lack of some needed object. Lower needs. Lack can cause crisis.
  • Growth needs (Being motives) - less necessary for survival, they can contribute to our personal growth. Leads to improved health, happiness, contentment, fulfillment, and longevity.
  • Satisfying a growth need may lead to an increase in (not just a satiation) of motivation

Hierarchy of Needs: Basic Needs

Physiological Needs

• Hunger, thirst, air, sleep, what we need to survive, the only needs that can be completely satisfied or even overly satisfied, have a recurring nature.

Safety Needs

• Need for security, stability, protection, structure, order, and freedom from fear or chaos.
• Children’s safety needs are shown in their preference for a structure or routine
• Neurotics compulsively avoid new experiences

Hierarchy of Needs: Psychological Needs

Love and Belongingness Needs

• Expressed through a close relationship with a friend, lover, or mate, or through social relationships formed in a group
• Need to both give and receive
• Maslow did not equate love with sex (a physiological need) but he recognized that sex is one way of expressing the love need.

Esteem Needs

• The need to perceive oneself as competent and achieving and the need for admiration and respect.
• Two levels of esteem: reputation and self-esteem
• Reputation is the perception.
• Self-esteem is based on real competence and not merely on others’ opinions

Hierarchy of Needs: Growth Needs

Need for Self Actualization

• What do we want out of our life, where are lives are headed, what do we want to accomplish.
• This need is satisfied when we identify our true self and reach our full potential.
• Self-actualizing people maintain their feelings of self-esteem even when scorned, rejected, and dismissed by other people.
• Conditions for Achieving Self-Actualization
  • We must be free of constraints imposed by society and by ourselves.
  • We must not be distracted by the lower-order needs.
  • We must be secure in our self-image and in our relationships with other people, and we must be able to love and be loved in return.
  • We must have a realistic knowledge of our strengths and weaknesses, virtues and vices.

Hierarchy of Needs (Continued)

• The original 5 needs are called the conative needs, meaning that they have a striving or motivational character.
• Maslow identified three other categories of needs— aesthetic, cognitive, and neurotic

Aesthetic Needs

• Some people in every culture seem to be motivated by the need for beauty and aesthetically pleasing experiences.
• People with strong aesthetic needs desire beautiful and orderly surroundings.

Cognitive Needs

• A desire to know, to solve mysteries, to understand, and to be curious.
• Knowledge is necessary to satisfy each of the five conative needs.
• When cognitive needs are blocked, all needs on Maslow’s hierarchy are threatened.
• Maslow believed that healthy people desire to know more, to theorize, to test hypotheses, to uncover mysteries

Neurotic Needs

• Neurotic needs are nonproductive serve as compensation for unsatisfied basic needs
• Hoarding drive - unsatisfied safety needs may develop a strong desire to hoard money or property
• Neurotic needs lead to pathology whether or not it is satisfied.

Needs (General)

• Needs emerge gradually, and a person may be simultaneously motivated by needs from two or more levels.
• Needs are generally satisfied in the hierarchical order but people may prioritize other drives due to some unconscious behavior.
• Maslow believed that even though all behaviors have a cause, some behaviors are not motivated. Caused by other factors such as conditioned reflexes, maturation, or drugs

Needs: Expressive vs. Coping Behavior

• Expressive behavior:
  • Often unmotivated; often an end in itself and serves no other purpose than to be;
  • No goals or aim but is merely the person’s mode of expression; include one’s gait, gestures, voice, and smile
• Coping behavior:
  • Always motivated and aimed at satisfying a need;
  • Conscious, effortful, learned, and determined by the external environment. the individual’s attempts to cope with the environment and secure a need

Pathology Resulting From Unsatisfied Needs

• Lack of satisfaction of any of the basic needs leads to some kind of pathology.
• Deprivation of physiological needs results in malnutrition, fatigue, loss of energy
• Threats to one’s safety lead to fear, insecurity, and dread
• Deprivation of self-actualization needs also leads to metapathology - the absence of values, the lack of fulfillment, and the loss of meaning in life

Instinctoid Nature of Needs

• Maslow hypothesizes that some human needs are innately determined, called instinctoid needs
• Thwarting of instinctoid needs produces pathology, whereas the frustration of noninstinctoid needs does not.
• instinctoid needs are persistent and their satisfaction leads to psychological health.
• instinctoid needs are species-specific.
• instinctoid needs can be molded, inhibited, or altered by environmental influences
• many instinctoid needs are weaker than cultural forces “protect the weak, subtle, and tender instinctoid needs if they are not to be overwhelmed by the tougher more powerful culture”
• instinctoid needs are basic and unlearned, but they can be changed and even destroyed by forces of civilization
• a healthy society should seek ways in which its members can receive satisfaction not only for physiological and safety needs but also for love, esteem, and self- actualization needs

Higher vs Lower Needs

• Higher needs and lower needs are both Instinctoid.
• higher needs appear later during the course of individual development
• lower level needs must be cared for in infants and children before higher level needs become operative
• higher level needs produce more happiness and more peak experiences
• satisfaction of lower level needs may produce a degree of pleasure. Hedonistic pleasure is usually lesser & temporary

Self-Actualization: Criteria

• Self-actualizers differ from others in terms of their basic motivation
• Free of psychopathology - neither neurotic nor psychotic
• Progressed through the hierarchy of needs
• Embraced the B-values
• Fulfilled the needs to grow, to develop, and to increasingly become what they were capable of becoming

Self-Actualization: The B (Being) - Values

• Metaneeds - ultimate level of needs.
• Metamotivation - expressive rather than coping behavior; required to pass over the threshold to self-actualization
• All people have a holistic tendency to move toward completeness or totality
• Deprivation of any of the B-values results in metapathology; the lack of a meaningful philosophy of life.

Table 9.1 Maslow's metaneeds and metapathologies

Characteristics of Self-Actualizing People

• More Efficient Perception of Reality
  • Not fooled by facades and can see both positive and negative underlying traits in others
• Acceptance of Self, Others, and Nature
  • Accept nature, including human nature, as it is and do not expect perfection either in themselves or in others
• Spontaneity, Simplicity, and Naturalness
  • Unconventional but not compulsively so; highly ethical but may appear nonconforming; unpretentious and not afraid or ashamed to express deeply felt emotions
• Problem-Centering
  • Concerned with problems outside themselves
• The Need for Privacy
  • Have a quality of detachment that allows them to be alone without being lonely
• Autonomy
  • Achieved only through satisfactory relations with others
  • Depend on themselves for growth
• Continued Freshness of Appreciation
  • “retain their constant sense of good fortune and gratitude for it”
• The Peak Experience
  • Experiences that were mystical in nature and that somehow gave them a feeling of transcendence
• Gemeinschaftsgefühl
  • Adler’s term for social interest, community feeling; identify with all other people and have a genuine interest in helping others
• Profound Interpersonal Relations
  • No frantic need to be friends with everyone, but the few important interpersonal relationships they do have are quite deep and intense
• The Democratic Character Structure
  • Friendly and considerate with other people regardless of class, color, age, or gender
• Discrimination Between Means and Ends
  • Enjoy doing something for its own sake
• Philosophical Sense of Humor
  • Intrinsic to the situation rather than contrived; it is spontaneous rather than planned; non-hostile
• Creativeness
  • Creative in their own way through a keen perception of truth, beauty, and reality/
• Resistance to Enculturation
  • Sense of detachment from their surroundings and are able to transcend a particular culture; do not waste energy fighting against insignificant customs and regulations of society

Self-Actualization: The Jonah Complex

• The fear of being one’s best
• The intense emotion that accompanies perfection and fulfillment carries with it a shattering sensation such as “This is too much” or “I can’t stand it anymore. ”
• The Jonah complex stands out most sharply in neurotic people, nearly everyone has some timidity toward seeking perfection and greatness

Psychotherapy (Maslow's View)

• The aim of therapy would be for clients to embrace the Being values, that is, to value truth, justice, goodness, simplicity, and so forth
• Clients must be free from their dependency on others so that their natural impulse toward growth and self-actualization could become active.
• Most people who seek therapy have these two lower level needs relatively well satisfied but have some difficulty achieving love and belongingness needs.
• A healthy interpersonal relationship between client and therapist is therefore the best psychological medicine.

Carl Roger's Person-Centered Theory

Carl Rogers' Background

• Carl Rogers was born on January 8, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. He is the fourth of the six children.
• When he was 12, The family moved to a farm 30/45 miles away from Chicago. Rural life awakened his interest in science and scientific approach.
• His parents held strict religious view and emphasized moral behaviour, the suppression of displays of emotion and the virtue of hard work. Openly expression of emotions was not allowed.
• Rogers had little social life outside his family, and he came to believe his parents favored an older brother. As a result, there was considerable competitiveness between them
• He spent 6 months traveling to China to attend a student religious conference. The interaction with other young religious leaders changed him into a more liberal thinker and moved him toward independence from the religious views of his parents.
• Rogers described himself as shy, solitary,dreamy, and often lost in fantasy
• In an attempt to escape his loneliness, he read incessantly, any book he could find.
• His solitude led him to depend on his own,resources and experiences, his personal view of the world.
• In 1922, Rogers attended an international Christian student conference in Beijing China. The China travel made him into a more liberal thinker and moved him towards independence from the religious views of his parents.
• In 1924, Rogers graduated from the University of Wisconsin, he married a childhood friend Helen and had two children. He moved to New York and enrolled at Union Theological Seminary in NY that year, to prepare for a career as a minister.
• Studying Theology caused him to question his religious beliefs. A career in theology promised an opportunity to help people, but his freedom of thought would be limited.
• He developed a renewed interest in Psychology when he enrolled in Columbia University with his friends from the seminary.
• After his graduate studies in Psychology, he worked at a child guidance clinic in Rochester, NY. He joined the faculty at Ohio State U. and Univ. of Chicago, before returning to Univ. of Wisconsin.
• In 1946, served as president of APA and received the organization’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award and Distinguished Professional Contribution Award in 1956.
• In 1963, he founded the Center for Studies of the Person. The last 15 years of his life were devoted to issues of social conflict and world peace. Rogers was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1987, the same year of his death.

Person-Centered Theory: Basic Assumptions

• Formative Tendency: Rogers believed that there is a tendency for all matter, both organic and inorganic, to evolve from simpler to more complex forms. Human consciousness evolves from a primitive unconsciousness to a highly organized awareness.
• The Actualizing Tendency:
  • The tendency to move towards completion or fulfillment.
  • Encompasses all of our physiological and psychological needs.
  • Organismic experiences.
• Tendencies to maintain and to enhance:
  • Maintenance is similar to the lower steps on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It also includes the tendency to resist change and to seek the comfortable status quo
  • Enhancement is a need to become more, to develop, and to achieve growth. People have within themselves the creative power to solve problems, to alter their self- concepts, and to become increasingly self-directed

The Fully Functioning Person

• A person who pays attention to the organismic valuing process is self-actualizing or fully functioning.
• Experiences that we perceive as promoting actualization are evaluated as good and desirable; we assign them a positive value.
• Experiences perceived as hindering actualization are undesirable and, thus, earn a negative value.
• These perceptions influence behavior: we prefer to avoid undesirable experiences and repeat desirable experiences
• Fully functioning people are open to new experiences.
• They try to live each moment as it comes.
• The idea is to experience life, not just to pass through it.
• Fully functioning individuals also learn to trust their feelings.
• They are sensitive to the needs of others, but they are not overly concerned with meeting the standards society sets for them.
• They experience and embrace both positive and negative emotions, thus, they lead richer lives than most.

Rogers postulated two self subsystems:

• The Ideal Self, defined as one’s view of self as one wishes to be. All those attributes, usually positive, that people aspire to possess
• The Self-Concept includes all those aspects of one’s being and one’s experiences that are perceived in awareness (though not always accurately) by the individual

The Self-Concept

• The way you think about yourself and your abilities or appearance
• One's conception of oneself or of one's role
• Perceived in awareness (though not always accurately) by the individual
• An established self-concept does not make change impossible, merely difficult.
• Change most readily occurs with acceptance by others, which allows a person to reduce anxiety

Levels of Awareness (Consciousness)

• Ignored or denied - below the threshold of awareness. Potential stimuli or emotion that doesn’t reach our perception or consciousness.
• Accurately symbolized - nonthreatening and consistent with the existing self-concept. Accurately symbolized and freely added to the self-concept.
• Distorted form - When our experience is not consistent with our view of self, we reshape or distort the experience so that it can be assimilated into our existing self-concept

Development of the Self

• The formation of the self-concept involves distinguishing what is directly and immediately a part of the self from the people, objects, and events that are external to the self
• As the self emerges, infants develop a need for what Rogers called Positive regard - acceptance, love, and approval from other people. Reciprocal in nature .
• Satisfying to receive positive regard and frustrating not to receive it or to have it withdrawn
• It is rewarding to satisfy someone else’s need for positive regard.
• Unconditional positive regard
  • Approval granted regardless of a person’s behavior. In Rogers’s person-centered therapy, the therapist offers the client unconditional positive regard.
• Positive Self-Regard
  • In time, positive regard will come more from within us than from other people. A feeling of contentment
  • Reciprocal. When people receive positive regard and develop positive self-regard, they may provide it in turn

Conditions of Worth

• Instead of receiving unconditional positive regard, most people receive conditions of worth - a belief that we are worthy of approval only when we express desirable behaviors and attitudes and refrain from expressing those that bring disapproval from others; similar to the Freudian superego. It is derived from: conditional positive regard- infants learn that parental affection has a price; it depends on behaving in certain acceptable ways

Incongruence: Actualization vs. Self-Concept

• The organism and the self are two separate entities
• Experiences that are incongruent or incompatible with our self-concept become threatening and manifest as anxiety.
• Vulnerability - being unaware of incongruence. Often behave in ways that are incomprehensible
• Anxiety and Threat - anxiety comes from awareness of incongruence. Our anxiety begins to evolve into threat as awareness grows. Can lead to psychological health

Defensiveness

• Protection of the self-concept against anxiety and threat
• When one of our experiences is inconsistent with one part of our self-concept, we will behave in a defensive manner in order to protect the current structure of our self-concept.
• Distortion - misinterpret an experience in order to fit it into some aspect of our self-concept
• Denial - refuse to perceive an experience in awareness. Denial is not as common as distortion because most experiences can be twisted or reshaped to fit the current self-concept

On Psychopathology

• Rejection of diagnostic labels: Rogers considered “ …such categories as pseudoscientific efforts to glorify the therapist’s expertise and depict the client as a dependent object.. ” (Rogers, 1951)
• Defenses: Organism’s response to experiences that threaten the self-concept (distortion, denial)
• Neurosis: Powerful conditions of worth in self-concept. Incongruent with totality of experience.
• Psychosis: Person is badly hurt by life, needs corrective influence of a deep interpersonal relationship

Person-Centered Therapy

• Direction comes from the client rather than from the therapist’s insights, so referred to as nondirective therapy, later client- centered therapy
• Empathy/Emphatic listening -sees things fro the client’s point of view and that the client feels safe and unthreatened
• Congruence/Genuineness -a therapist is a complete human being with feelings. not passive, not aloof, and definitely not “nondirective. ”
• Unconditional Positive Regard -attitude is without possessiveness, without evaluations, and without reservations

Conditions in Person-Centered Therapy

• Increase the independence and integration of the client
• Focus on the person, not the problem
• Create the conditions necessary for positive growth
• Develop openness to new experiences, trust in themselves, internal source of evaluation, and willingness to continue growing

The Person of Tomorrow: What kind of person would emerge?

• If the three necessary and sufficient therapeutic conditions of congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathy are optimal, then what kind of person would emerge?
  1. More adaptable
  2. Open to their experiences
  3. Live fully in the moment.
  4. Harmonious relations with others
  5. More integrated
  6. Basic trust of human nature
  7. Enjoy a greater richness in life