Humanistic psychology


Humanistic psychology is a psychological perspective that arose in the mid-20th century in answer to two theories: Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory and B. F. Skinner's behaviorism. Thus, Abraham Maslow established the need for a "third force" in psychology. The school of thought of humanistic psychology gained traction due to Maslow in the 1950s.
Some elements of humanistic psychology are
  • to understand people, ourselves and others holistically
  • to acknowledge the relevance and significance of the full life history of an individual
  • to acknowledge the importance of intentionality in human existence
  • to recognize the importance of an end goal of life for a healthy person
Humanistic psychology also acknowledges spiritual aspiration as an integral part of the psyche. It is linked to the emerging field of transpersonal psychology.
Primarily, humanistic therapy encourages a self-awareness and reflexivity that helps the client change their state of mind and behavior from one set of reactions to a healthier one with more productive and thoughtful actions. Essentially, this approach allows the merging of mindfulness and behavioral therapy, with positive social support.
In an article from the Association for Humanistic Psychology, the benefits of humanistic therapy are described as having a "crucial opportunity to lead our troubled culture back to its own healthy path. More than any other therapy, Humanistic-Existential therapy models democracy. It imposes ideologies of others upon the client less than other therapeutic practices. Freedom to choose is maximized. We validate our clients' human potential."
In the 20th century, humanistic psychology was referred to as the "third force" in psychology, distinct from earlier, less humanistic approaches of psychoanalysis and behaviorism.
Its principal professional organizations in the US are the Association for Humanistic Psychology and the Society for Humanistic Psychology. In Britain, there is the UK Association for Humanistic Psychology Practitioners.

Differences with psychoanalytic theory and behaviorism

Through disagreement with the predominant theories at the time, developed by Freud and Skinner, Maslow was able to formulate the main points of humanistic theory.
Maslow had the following criticisms of the two main theories at the time:
  1. Freud's theory was deterministic, meaning that it attributed the behavior of people to unconscious desires.
  2. Freud and Skinner's theories focused on individuals with mental conflicts rather than all individuals.
  3. The other two theories focused too much on the negative traits of human beings, rather than focusing on the positive power Maslow believed individuals to have.
As a result, when Maslow developed his theory, he decided to focus on the conscious and decided to develop a new theory to explain how all individuals could reach their highest potential, as expressed in Toward A Psychology of Being.

Origins

One of humanistic psychology's early sources was the work of Carl Rogers, who was strongly influenced by Otto Rank, who broke with Freud in the mid-1920s. Rogers' focus was to ensure that the developmental processes led to healthier, if not more creative, personality functioning. The term 'actualizing tendency' was also coined by Rogers, and was a concept that eventually led Abraham Maslow to study self-actualization as one of the needs of humans. Rogers and Maslow introduced this positive, humanistic psychology in response to what they viewed as the overly pessimistic view of psychoanalysis.
The other sources of inspiration include the philosophies of existentialism and phenomenology.

Conceptual origins

Whilst origins of humanistic psychology date back to the early 1960s, the origins of humanism date back to the classical civilizations of China, Greece, and Rome, whose values were renewed in the European Renaissance.
The modern humanistic approach has its roots in phenomenological and existentialist thought. Eastern philosophy and psychology also play a central role in humanistic psychology, as well as Judeo-Christian philosophies of personalism, as each shares similar concerns about the nature of human existence and consciousness.
For further information on influential figures in personalism, see: Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, Emmanuel Mounier, Gabriel Marcel, Denis de Rougemont, Jacques Maritain, Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, Max Scheler and Karol Wojtyla.
As behaviorism grew out of Ivan Pavlov's work with the conditioned reflex, and laid the foundations for academic psychology in the United States associated with the names of John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner; Abraham Maslow gave behaviorism the name "the first force", a force which systematically excluded the subjective data of consciousness and much information bearing on the complexity of the human personality and its development. Behavioral theory continued to develop to both account for simple and complex human behavior through theorists such as Arthur Staats, Steven Hayes, and other post-Skinnerian researchers. Clinical behavioral analysis continues to be widely employed in anxiety disorder treatments, mood disorders, and even personality disorders.
The "second force" arose out of Freudian psychoanalysis, which were composed by psychologists like Alfred Adler, Erik Erikson, Carl Jung, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Melanie Klein, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Sigmund Freud himself. Maslow then emphasized the necessity of a "third force", saying that "it is as if Freud supplied us the sick half of psychology and we must now fill it out with the healthy half", as a critical review towards the cold and distant approach of the psychoanalysis and its deterministic way of viewing the human being.
In the late 1930s, psychologists, interested in the uniquely human issues, such as the self, self-actualization, health, hope, love, creativity, nature, being, becoming, individuality, and meaning—that is, a concrete understanding of human existence—included Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Clark Moustakas, who were interested in founding a professional association dedicated to a psychology focused on these features of human capital demanded by post-industrial society.
The humanistic psychology perspective is summarized by five core principles or postulates of humanistic psychology first articulated in an article written by James Bugental in 1964 and adapted by Tom Greening, psychologist and long-time editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. The five basic principles of humanistic psychology are:
  1. Human beings, as human, supersede the sum of their parts. They cannot be reduced to components.
  2. Human beings have their existence in a uniquely human context, as well as in a cosmic ecology.
  3. Human beings are aware and are aware of being aware—i.e., they are conscious. Human consciousness always includes an awareness of oneself in the context of other people.
  4. Human beings have the ability to make choices and therefore have responsibility.
  5. Human beings are intentional, aim at goals, are aware that they cause future events, and seek meaning, value, and creativity.
While humanistic psychology is a specific division within the American Psychological Association, humanistic psychology is not so much a discipline within psychology as a perspective on the human condition that informs psychological research and practice.

Practical origins

WWII created practical pressures on military psychologists, they had more patients to see and care for than time or resources permitted. The origins of group therapy are here. Eric Berne's progression of books shows this transition out of what we might call pragmatic psychology of WWII into his later innovation, Transactional Analysis, one of the most influential forms of humanistic Popular Psychology of the later 1960s-1970. Even though transactional analysis was considered a unique methodology, it was challenged after Berne's death.

Orientation to scientific research

Humanistic psychologists generally do not believe that we will understand human consciousness and behavior through mainstream scientific research. The objection that humanistic psychologists have to traditional research methods is that they are derived from and suited for the physical sciences and not especially appropriate to studying the complexities and nuances of human meaning-making.
However, humanistic psychology has involved scientific research of human behavior since its inception. For example:
  • Abraham Maslow proposed many of his theories of human growth in the form of testable hypotheses, and he encouraged scientists to put them to the test.
  • Shortly after the founding of the American Association of Humanistic Psychology, its president, psychologist Sidney Jourard, began his column by declaring that "research" is a priority. "Humanistic Psychology will be best served if it is undergirded with research that seeks to throw light on the qualities of man that are uniquely human"
  • In May 1966, the AAHP release a newsletter editorial that confirmed the humanistic psychologist's "allegiance to meaningfulness in the selection of problems for study and of research procedures, and an opposition to a primary emphasis on objectivity at the expense of significance." This underscored the importance of research to humanistic psychologists as well as their interest in special forms of human science investigation.
  • Likewise, in 1980, the American Psychological Association's publication for humanistic psychology ran an article titled, What makes research humanistic? As Donald Polkinghorne notes, "Humanistic theory does not propose that human action is completely independent of the environment or the mechanical and organic orders of the body, but it does suggest that, within the limits of experienced meanings, persons as unities can choose to act in ways not determined by prior events...and this is the theory we seek to test through our research".
A human science view is not opposed to quantitative methods, but, following Edmund Husserl:
  1. favors letting the methods be derived from the subject matter and not uncritically adopting the methods of natural science, and
  2. advocates for methodological pluralism. Consequently, much of the subject matter of psychology lends itself to qualitative approaches, and quantitative methods are mainly appropriate when something can be counted without leveling the phenomena.
Research has remained part of the humanistic psychology agenda, though with more of a holistic than reductionistic focus. Specific humanistic research methods evolved in the decades following the formation of the humanistic psychology movement.