What is the humanistic approach?
An approach to psychology that emphasises the importance of subjective experience and each person’s capacity for self determination.
What are the assumptions of the humanistic approach?
- Free will, you have the ability to chose what we do, but we have constraints on it like morals and laws.
- Holistic- cannot look at just one part of a person
- Scientific method is not appropriate because it is too objective and humans behave in a subjective way.
- Sees self-actualisation as crucial part of being human.
What is self- actualisation?
The innate desire to become the best version of ourselves through personal and psychological growth.
What is the ‘self’ and ‘ideal self’?
Self: Ideas and values we have about ourselves and perceptions of our abilities.
Ideal self: our perception of the best version of ourselves.
What is incongruence and its consequences?
1.When there is too large a gap between the self and ideal self.
2. As a result, the person feels low-self worth and low self esteem.
3. This prevents us from achieving self-actualisation.
What are the basic needs in the hierarchy? 1&2 bottom
- Physiological needs: food water, warmth and rest
- Safety needs: security and safety.
What are the psychological needs in the hierarchy? 3&4 middle
Psychological needs:
1. Belongingness and love needs: intimate relationships and friends
2. Esteem needs: prestige and feeling of accomplishment.
What are the self-fulfilment needs in the hierarchy? top
Self-actualisation:
1. Achieving one’s full potential, including creative activities.
What is Rogerian therapy?
- Aims to reduce the gap between the self and the ideal self.
- Increases the likelihood of achieving congruence.
- Increases the likelihood of achieving self-actualisation.
According to Rogers and Maslow where do conditions like low-self esteem originate?
- In childhood, where adults restrict their love.
- They do this by imposing conditions of worth, like “I will be proud of you only if you achieve top grades at
school”. - This represents a lack of unconditional positive regard.
What is a good therapist in Rogerian therapy?:
A good therapist as being open, genuine, empathetic and most importantly, providing the unconditional positive regard which the patient most likely lacked during childhood.
AO3: Practical Application
- Roger’s client therapy has had a major impact on how therapies are used in the USA and UK.
- Acknowledges that individuals have free will and the ability to improve themselves.
- Contrast with Freud, who tends to dwell on childhood experiences which can be frustrating for someone who has already identified their problems.
AO3: Not suitable for serious mental disorders
- Schizophrenia and depression.
- Some symptoms include paranoia and delusional thinking.
- Their grasp on reality is diminished and they cannot articulate their thoughts in the way the therapy requires.
- Limited application.
AO3: Holistic Approach
- Focuses on the individual’s subjective experiences as a whole, when investigating behaviour.
- In contrast, with the cognitive approach that sees humans as analogous to computers
- Refreshing and less deterministic approach.
AO3: Untestable and subjective concepts
- Lack of empirical evidence and no way of systematically observing and measuring the processes it describes.
- Self actualisation cannot be objectively measured due to individual differences and and a lack of universal scale.
AO3: Culture bound explanation
- Ideas that focus on self-improvement are typical of Western individualistic cultures, where needs of individual supersede the group
- Humanism may be more readily accepted by Western cultures that identify more with those values.
- As opposed to Eastern culture where a desire for personal growth may be seen as selfish
