28/08/2018

HUMANISTIC
THEORIES

ABRAHAM MASLOW’S
Maslow: Holistic-Dynamic HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

Theory • 1. PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS (approximately

85% of the population satisfies this need)
– Food and water
– Rest and sleep
– Exercise and health

• 2. SAFETY NEEDS (approximately 75% of

the population satisfies this need)
– Physical security
– Dependence
– Stability, order, structure
– Freedom from fear

Overview of Holistic-Dynamic ABRAHAM MASLOW’S

Theory HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

• Assumes Whole Person Is Motivated by • 3. LOVE AND BELONGINGNESS NEEDS

One Need or Another
• People Have Potential to Grow toward
Psychological Health/Self-Actualization
• Lower Level Needs Must Be Satisfied
Before Higher Level Needs Can Be Met
(approximately 50% of the population satisfies
this need)
– Love and affection
– Belonging (to a family or group)
– Friendship
– Spending time with other people

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ABRAHAM MASLOW’S
The Jonah Complex
HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
• 4. ESTEEM NEEDS (approximately 40% of the
population satisfies this need)
– Self esteem
• Achievement
• Confidence
• Mastery
• Strength
– Esteem from others
• The Jonah complex is an abnormal syndrome defined as the fear of
• Recognition being or doing one’s best
• Appreciation • Probably all of us have some timidity about seeking perfection or
• Attention greatness
• Status & Reputation • People allow false humility to stifle creativity, and therefore they
prevent themselves from becoming self-actualizing

ABRAHAM MASLOW’S Carl Rogers: Person-Centered

HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
Theory
• 5. SELF-ACTUALIZATION NEEDS
(approximately 10% of the population
satisfies this need)
– Living up to your potential
– Accepting your strengths and limitations
– Accepting other people for whom and what
they are
– Being spontaneous
– Acting creatively (even if not artistic)
– Acting independently (of other’s opinion

ABRAHAM MASLOW’S
Basic Premise
HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
• 6. SELF-TRANSCENDENCE NEEDS
– it is other-focused instead of self-focused • Humans are motivated
and concerns higher goals than those which through an innate
are self-serving.
potential to actualize,
– self-transcendence brings the individual
what he termed “peak experiences” in maintain and enhance
which they transcend their own personal the self
concerns and see from a higher perspective.
• Sees people as basically
good

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Emergence of Self-Concept Rogers agreed that people have natural tendencies to

grow, become healthy, and move toward self-
actualization.
• Self-concept: How I see myself
• As infants grow, they develop the need for Congruence/Genuineness: Being
positive regard honest, direct, not using a façade
• Positive regard: Acceptance, love and
approval from others
–Ex. An toddler is praised for being a “fast-
learner” Acceptance, a.k.a Unconditional
Positive Regard: acknowledging
• Child does not receive positive regard: fails to The three feelings without passing judgment;
develop actualizing tendency fully conditions that
–Ex. A little girl performed in a recital but facilitate growth
(just as water,
parents did not attend discouraged
nutrients, and Empathy: tuning into the feelings of
light facilitate the others, showing your efforts to
growth of a tree): understand, listening well

Rogers’ Person-Centered Perspective Carl Rogers

• We all start out with positive feelings about Two types of self
self
• This gets eroded by significant persons in our
lives (conditions of worth) • Real Self: the self as a result of experience;
who I am now
• We start to have negative feelings about self
• To get back to a positive feeling about self, we • Ideal Self: Person I would like to be
need POSITIVE SELF REGARD

Carl Rogers
How do we get this Positive Self Regard?

• Someone who will listen to me unconditionally

• Someone who will respect me whether I am good or
bad
• Someone who will bring me back to feeling good
about myself • The greater the difference between the Real Self and
the Ideal Self, the more maladjusted the person is
• Someone who will not judge me and accept me as I (incongruence)
am.

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Background of Existentialism

EXISTENTIAL
• What Is Existentialism?
– Existence takes precedence over essence

THEORIES
– There is no split between subject and object
– People search for some meaning in their lives
– Each of us is responsible for who we are and
what we become
• Basic Concepts
– Being-in-the-world
– Nonbeing

Being
Rollo May: Existential
Psychology • Being-in-the-world
– Alienation: The illness of our time
• Separation from nature
• Lack of meaningful interpersonal relationships
• Alienation from one’s authentic self

– Modes of being-in-the-world (simultaneous)

• Umwelt - the environment around us
• Mitwelt - relationship with other people
• Eigenwelt – our relationship with our self

Overview of Existential Psychology Nonbeing or Nothingness

• Rooted in European Existential Philosophy • Nonbeing
• Based in Clinical Experience – Fear of death
• People live in the Present and are Responsible for – Living defensively
Experiences
– Not making active choices
• People lack Courage to Face Destiny and Flee
from Freedom – Expressed in various forms
• Healthy People Challenge Destiny and Live
Authentically

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Anxiety Care, Love, and Will

• Human Behavior Is Motivated by Sense of Dread and
Anxiety
• Union of Love and Will
• Normal Anxiety • Forms of Love
–Sex
– That “which is proportionate to the threat, does not involve
repression, and can be confronted constructively on the conscious

–Eros
level” (May, 1967)
• Neurotic Anxiety
– “a reaction which is disproportionate to the threat, involves
repression and other forms of intrapsychic conflict, and is
–Philia
–Agape
managed by various kinds of blocking-off of activity and
awareness” (May, 1967)

Guilt The Power of Myth

• Guilt Arises when:
– People deny their potentialities • Myths have powerful effects on individuals and
– Fail to accurately perceive the needs of others cultures
– Remain oblivious to their dependence on the natural • Believed that Westerners have an urgent need for
world
myths
• Anxiety and Guilt are Ontological
• Because they have lost many of their traditional
• Three forms of Ontological Guilt:
myths, they turn to religious cults, drugs, and
– Umwelt
popular culture to fill the vacuum
– Mitwelt
– Eigenwelt

Intentionality Psychopathology
• Intentionality is the structure that gives • Apathy and emptiness as the chief existential
meaning to experience and allows people disorders of modern times
to make decisions about the future • People have become alienated from the natural
• Bridges the gap between subject and object world (Umwelt), from other people (Mitwelt), and
from themselves (Eigenwelt)
• Can be unconscious • Symptoms can be temporary or permanent
• Psychopathology is a lack of communication
– Inability to know others and to share oneself
with them

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Psychotherapy
• The goal of May’s psychotherapy was to make
people more fully human (e.g., expand their
consciousness)
• The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free
• Existential psychotherapy de-emphasizes
techniques while stressing the personal qualities of
the therapist
– Must establish one-to-one relationship

VICTOR FRANKL:
MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING
• Freedom and Responsibility
– Man is essentially free, and he must accept the
responsibility for directing his own life

• The Will To Meaning

– The striving to find a meaning in one's life is the
primary motivational force of man

• Existential Vaccum
– When a man experiences a loss of meaning in
life, he remains in a state of experiential crisis.
– Noogenic Neurosis
• Neurosis due to meaninglessness in life

GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY
Frederick Fritz Perls
• Goal
– awareness of what one is experiencing and
doing to gain self-understanding and capacity
for growth and change
• Personal Responsibility
– Focus on the "I" not on "You"; owning up
everything that is happening to us.
• Unfinished business
– need for closure; a healthy personality is a
personality that is without unfinished
businesses
• Staying with the feeling
– as humans, we have the right to feel what we
should feel