Prof.

Guild
Psychology 1
7/12/16
Presentation 3
Humanistic, humanism and humanist are terms in psychology relating to an approach
which studies the whole person, and the uniqueness of each individual. Essentially, these terms
refer the same approach in psychology.
Humanism is a psychological perspective that emphasizes the study of the whole person.
Humanistic psychologists look at human behavior not only through the eyes of the observer, but
through the eyes of the person doing the behaving. Sometimes the humanistic approach is called
phenomenological. This means that personality is studied from the point of view of the
individuals subjective experience. For Rogers the focus of psychology is not behavior (Skinner),
the unconscious (Freud), thinking (Wundt) or the human brain but how individuals perceive and
interpret events. Rogers is therefore important because he redirected psychology towards the
study of the self. The humanistic approach in psychology developed as a rebellion against what
some psychologists saw as the limitations of the behaviorist and psychodynamic psychology. The
humanistic approach is thus often called the third force in psychology after psychoanalysis and
behaviorism (Maslow, 1968).
Humanism rejected the assumptions of the behaviorist perspective which is characterized
as deterministic, focused on reinforcement of stimulus-response behavior and heavily dependent
on animal research. Humanistic psychology also rejected the psychodynamic approach because it
is also deterministic, with unconscious irrational and instinctive forces determining human

thought and behavior. Both behaviorism and psychoanalysis are regarded as dehumanizing by
humanistic psychologists. Humanistic psychology expanded its influence throughout the 1970s
and the 1980s. Its impact can be understood in terms of three major areas:
1) It offered a new set of values for approaching an understanding of human nature and the
human condition.
2) It offered an expanded horizon of methods of inquiry in the study of human behavior.
3) It offered a broader range of more effective methods in the professional practice

of psychotherapy.
Who are the two primary humanistic psychologists?

Abraham Maslow (1943) developed a hierarchical theory of human motivation.

Maslow was a major American psychologist, a visionary, an inspired thinker, who radically
altered the course of development of the discipline of psychology. Born in New York, he was
educated at the University of Wisconsin, where he studied primate behavior under Harry Harlow
and Clark Hull. He returned to New York in 1935 by accepting a research position with Edward
Thorndike at Columbia University. Through his contact with the New School for Social
Research, near Greenwich Village, he came to know and study with: Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm,
Karen Horney of the psychoanalytic school; Kurt Goldstein, Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka
of the Gestalt school of thought; together with many other recently arrived intellectuals from
Europe. He also fell under the influence of Ruth Benedict, an anthropologist at Columbia, who
persuaded him to undertake some fieldwork with the Blackfoot Indian tribe. This was a crucial
and formative time for Maslow, who had been largely trained in the behavioral school of
psychology, which he now began to realize had little bearing on real world issues, and could
contribute very little to solving social problems. After teaching at Brooklyn College for fourteen
years, he left in 1951 to take up the new chair of psychology at Brandeis University, near Boston.

With the publication of Motivation and Personality in 1954, his change of direction was
complete. He was the co-founder, with Carl Rogers and Rollo May, of the Humanistic
Psychology movement. He coined the idea of a Third Force, and in the late 60's instigated
a Fourth Force - Transpersonal Psychology. He was president of the APA in 1967-68. Maslow
was primarily a theoretician and researcher in the new movement. His major concepts included:
self-actualization (a term he borrowed from Goldstein), human motivation and the hierarchy of
needs, metaneeds, d-needs and b-needs, peak experiences, etc.

Carl Rogers (1946) publishes Significant aspects of client-centered therapy

Rogers pioneered the development of client-centered therapy. A major figure in the history of
psychology, with a basically optimistic view of humankind, he was a co-founder of the
Humanistic Psychology movement. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, he was educated at University of
Wisconsin and Union Theological Seminary, leaving to study psychology at Columbia. After his
Ph.D., he began working in child guidance. This work led him to seek better ways of
understanding and helping his clients through their difficulties and suffering, which led to the
development of his person-centered approach to counselling - a non-directive technique that
values the persons themselves. Rogers regarded the self as an organizing principle - "an
organized consistent gestalt, constantly in the process of forming and reforming." Thus a person
is in a process of becoming and the fully functioning person is regarded as the norm, such that
the person can trust their own ability to deal with the world, and consequently show a high
degree of spontaneity, compassion and self-direction. He was president of the APA in 1946, and
founded the Centre for Studies of the Person in La Jolla, California. His main theoretical
concepts include: client-centered/person-centered counselling/therapy, actualizing tendency,

becoming, self, encounter groups, cross-cultural communication, and the core conditions:
empathy, unconditional positive regard, congruence, etc.

Tell us about the theories of Abraham Maslow, including the concept of

self-actualization and Carl Rogers, including the concepts of conditions of
worth and unconditional positive regard.

Maslow stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs. When one need is fulfilled a
person seeks to fulfill the next one, and so on.
The earliest and most widespread version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs includes five
motivational needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.
This five stage model can be divided into basic and psychological needs which ensure survival
(e.g. physiological, safety, love, and esteem) and growth needs (self-actualization).

The deficiency, or basic needs are said to motivate people when they are unmet. Also, the
need to fulfil such needs will become stronger the longer the duration they are denied. For
example, the longer a person goes without food the more hungry they will become. One must
satisfy lower level basic needs before progressing on to meet higher level growth needs. Once
these needs have been reasonably satisfied, one may be able to reach the highest level called selfactualization. Every person is capable and has the desire to move up the hierarchy toward a level
of self-actualization. Unfortunately, progress is often disrupted by failure to meet lower level
needs. Life experiences, including divorce and loss of job may cause an individual to fluctuate
between levels of the hierarchy. Maslow noted only one in a hundred people become fully selfactualized because our society rewards motivation primarily based on esteem, love and other
social needs.

The original Maslow's hierarchy of needs model has been expanded to include cognitive and
aesthetic needs and later transcendence needs:
1. Biological and Physiological needs - air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep.
2. Safety needs - protection from elements, security, order, law, stability, freedom from fear.
3. Love and belongingness needs - friendship, intimacy, affection and love, - from work group,
family, friends, and romantic relationships.
4. Esteem needs - achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, self-respect,
and respect from others.
Maslow posits esteem needs take two forms: (a) a need for strength, achievement, mastery
and competence; (b) a need for reputation, status, recognition and appreciation. Fulfilment of
these needs leads to a sense of self-confidence, worth, and value to the world.

5. Cognitive needs - knowledge and understanding, curiosity, exploration, need for meaning and
predictability.
6. Aesthetic needs - appreciation and search for beauty, balance, form, etc.

7. Self-Actualization needs - realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal

growth and peak experiences.
8. Transcendence needs - helping others to achieve self-actualization.
Mahatma Gandhi, Viktor Frankl, and Nelson Mandela may serve as examples of people
who each personify a reality self-actualization. At risk of his life, Mahatma Gandhi utilized civil
disobedience for purposes of freedom, Viktor Frankl was a holocaust survivor who never

relinquished his grasp of lifes meaning, and Nelson Mandela maintained an attitude of meaning
in life even while he was imprisoned. The safety needs of these individuals may have been
threatened in these particular life circumstances, but it may be understood that many people
whose safety needs are compromised may be cognizant of being values. They may find life to be
meaningful explicitly because of situations of danger to their lives, situations represented by the
dichotomy of life and death, in particular.
YouTube example: https://youtu.be/pSquy1NGxZU?t=5m28s
Not everyone reaches Maslows self-actualization level. So, why do some people reach it
while others do not? One explanation can be found in the personality theory of humanistic
psychologist Carl Rogers. According to Rogers, the answer lies in our upbringing. Some parents
set up conditions of worth, conditions after which affection is given. In the ideal world all we
would have is unconditional love, but in reality we are surrounded by conditional love, which we
receive from the authority figures in our life - our careers, parents, teachers
and religious educators, media and television. The child whose school report is poor and whose
parents react with anger. The girl who is told constantly by her mother how proud she is of how
pretty she is. The boy, whose coach shouts at him for missing a kick. All of these are ways in
which children learn what they must do to be valued: to do well at school, to be beautiful or to be
athletic, for example.
For Rogers, a major goal of psychotherapy is to enable people to open themselves up to
experiences and begin to live according to their own values rather than living by the values of
others in an attempt to gain positive regard. He called his therapy person-centered therapy,
preferring not to use the term patient. Rogers believed that the therapist must give the client

unconditional positive regard (UPR), meaning valuing the person as doing their best to move
forward in their lives constructively and respecting the persons right to self-determination no
matter what they choose to do. UPR can be misunderstood as being nice to people, smiling at
them and nodding. But its not about what you do. UPR is an attitude.