Chapter 8
ERICH FROMM’S HUMANISTIC PSYCHOANALYSIS
ABOUT THE THEORIST
Erich Fromm
- Born in Frankfurt, Germany on March 23,
1900
- Father: Naphtali Fromm; Mother: Rosa
Krause Fromm
- Had a first wife, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann
but divorced
- Became friends, then lovers with Karen
Horney before separating
- Married Henry Gurland whom died, then
married for Annis Freeman
- Died in Switzerland on March 18, 1980
FROMM’S BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
- Human Dilemma
o Humans acquired the ability to
reason, which means they can think
about their isolated condition.
- Existential Dichotomies
o Life and Death
▪ First and most fundamental
dichotomy
o Goal of complete realization and
shortness of life to reach goal
o Alone and cannot tolerate isolation
HUMAN NEEDS
- Humans are motived by physiological
needs: hunger, sex and safety
- Existential Needs
o Relatedness
▪ Drive for union with another
person
▪ Three basic ways people may
relate to the world: submission,
power, love
▪ A submissive person transcends
the separateness of his
individual existence by
becoming part of somebody or
bigger than himself
▪ Symbiotic Relationship
❖ When a submissive
person and a domineering
person find each other
❖ Blocks growth toward
integrity and psychological
health
❖ Drawn to one another by a
desperate need for
relatedness
▪ Love
❖ A person can become
united with the world and,
at the same time, achieve
individuality and integrity
❖ Union with somebody, or
something outside oneself
under the condition
retaining the
separateness and integrity
of one’s own self
❖ Care, responsibility,
respect, and knowledge
o Transcendence
▪ Urge to rise above a passive and
accidental existence and into
 "the realm of purposefulness
and freedom"
▪ People transcend their passive
nature by either creating life or
by destroying it
▪ Humans can destroy through
malignant aggression (killing for
BURDEN OF FREEDOM
reasons other than survival; not
common to all humans) but they
can also create and care about
their creations
o Rootedness
▪ The need to establish roots and
to feel at home again in the
world
❖ Productive strategy: We
grow beyond the security
of our mother and
establish ties with the
outside world.
❖ Nonproductive strategy:
We become fixated and
afraid to move beyond the
security and safety of our
mother or a mother
substitute.
o Sense of Identity
▪ Capacity to be aware of
ourselves as a separate entity
▪ Without a sense of identity,
people could not retain their
sanity, and this threat provides a
powerful motivation to do almost
anything to acquire a sense of
identity
❖ Neurotics people attach
themselves to powerful
people
❖ Healthy people have less
need to conform to the
world
o Frame of Orientation
▪ A road map which we find our
way through the world
▪ Enables people to organize the
various stimuli that impinge on
them
▪ Humans have the mental
capacity to imagine many
alternative paths to follow
▪ To keep from going insane, they
need a final goal or “object of
devotion”
- Humans have been torn from nature, yet
they remain part of the natural world,
subject to the same physical limitations as
other animals.
- Self-awareness, imagination and reason
set humans apart from animals
o Reason
▪ Responsible for feelings of
isolation and loneliness
▪ Enables us to be reunited with
the world
- High freedom equals high isolation
o Roles provided security,
dependability, and certainty, more
freedom no longer tied, separated
from roots and isolated from one
another
o Burden of freedom results in basic
anxiety, or the feeling of being alone
in the world
- Mechanisms of Escape
o Basic anxiety produces a frightening
sense of isolation and aloneness,
people attempt to flee from freedom
from variety of escape mechanisms
o Driving forces in normal people: both
individually and collectively
o 3 Primary Escape Mechanisms
▪ Authoritarianism
❖ Tendency to give up the
independence of one’s
own individual self and to
fuse one’s self with
somebody or something
outside oneself
❖ Masochism: Results from
basic feelings of
powerlessness, weakness
and inferiority; aimed at
joining the self to a more
 powerful or institution;
often disguised as love or
loyalty but can never
contribute positively to
independence
CHARACTER ORIENTATIONS
❖ Sadism: More neurotic
and socially harmful than
masochism; Aimed at
reducing basic anxiety
through achieving unity
with another person; 3
kinds of sadistic
tendencies:
➢ Need to make
others dependent
on oneself
➢ Compulsion to
exploit others, to
take advantage of
them, and to use
them
➢ Desire to see others
suffer
▪ Destructiveness
❖ Rooted in the feelings of
aloneness, isolation, and
powerlessness
❖ Seeks to do away with
other people
❖ By destruction (people or
objects), a person or a
nation attempts to restore
lost feelings of power
▪ Conformity
❖ Conform to try to escape
aloneness and isolation by
giving up their individuality
and becoming whatever
other people want them to
be
❖ Become like robots,
reacting predictability and
mechanically
❖ Broken only by achieving
self-realization or positive
freedom
- Positive Freedom
o Represents a successful solution to
the human dilemma of being part of
the natural world and yet separate
from it.
- Person’s relatively permanent way of
relating to people and things
- Personality
o The totality of inherited and acquired
psychic qualities which are
characteristic of one individual,
makes the individual unique
- Character
o The relatively permanent system of
all noninstinctual strivings through
which man relates himself to the
human and natural world
o Substitute for instincts
o People act according to character
and not instincts
- People relate to the world in two ways:
o Assimilation
▪ Acquiring and using things
o Socialization
▪ Relating to oneself and others
- Nonproductive Orientations
o Strategies that fail to move people
closer to positive freedom and self-
realization
o Receptive
▪ Receiving things passively
▪ Feels that source of all good lies
outside themselves
▪ Only way they can relate to the
world is to receive things,
including love, knowledge and
material possessions
o Exploitative
▪ Taking things through force
▪ Feels that source of all good lies
outside themselves
▪ Aggressively take what they
desire rather than passively
receive it
▪ Use cunning or force to take
someone else’s spouse, ideas,
or property
 o Hoarding
▪ Feels that source of all good lies
inside (value things inside)
▪ Seek to save what they already
obtained
▪ Hold everything inside and do
not let go
▪ Keep money, feelings, and
thoughts to themselves
▪ Live in the past and are repelled
by anything new
PERSONALITY DISORDERS
o Marketing
▪ See themselves as commodities
and value themselves against
the criterion of their ability to sell
themselves (exchange value).
▪ See self as in constant demand;
must make others believe that
they are skillful and salable
▪ Personal security rests on shaky
ground since adjusts personality
according to what’s in fashion
▪ “I am as you desire me”
▪ Without past or future, no
permanent principles or values
- Productive Orientations
o Work toward positive freedom and
continuing realization of their
potential
o Most healthy of all character types
o Can only be accomplished through
productive working, loving, reasoning
▪ Productive Work
❖ Work as means of creative
self-expression, producing
life’s necessities
▪ Productive Love
❖ Necessitates a passionate
love of all life and is called
biophilia
❖ Love of others and self-
love are inseparable but
that self-love must come
first
▪ Productive Thinking
❖ Motivated by a concerned
interest in another person
or object
❖ See others as they are not
as would wish them to be
❖ Know self for who they
are, no self-delusion
o Healthy people rely on some
combination of all five character
orientations
- Failures to work, think, and especially to
love productively
- Incapable of love and have failed to
establish union with others
o Necrophilia
▪ The love or any attraction of
death and the hatred of all
humanity
▪ Destructiveness is a reflection of
a basic character
o Malignant Narcissism
▪ Interest in their own body
▪ Impedes perception of reality so
that everything belonging to
another person is devalued
▪ Hypochondriasis
❖ Obsessive attention to
one’s health
▪ Moral Hypochondriasis
❖ Preoccupation with guilt
about previous
transgressions
▪ Achieve security by holding onto
the distorted belief that their
extraordinary personal qualities
give them superiority
o Incestuous Symbiosis
▪ Extreme dependence on the
mother or mother surrogate
▪ Need a someone to care, dote,
admire them, dote on them, and
admire them;
▪ Anxious and depressed when
their needs are not fulfilled.
 - Some possess all three personality
disorders called syndrome of decay,
opposite of syndrome of growth.
PSYCHOTHERAPY
- Trained as an orthodox Freudian analyst
but became bored with the usual
psychoanalysis.
- He developed humanistic psychoanalysis
as his own system of therapy.
- Fromm focused with his humanistic
psychoanalysis that is leaning more on the
interpersonal or social aspect of doing
therapy.
- Aim of therapy is to know oneself. Without
this, we cannot recognize others, too.
- Patients do therapy to seek satisfaction of
their basic human needs.
- Fromm’s way of therapy focuses on
building a personal relationship between a
patient and a therapist as it promotes
relatability and accurate communication
with the patient.
 Chapter 9
ABRAHAM MASLOW’S HOLISTIC-DYNAMIC THEORY
ABOUT THE THEORIST
Abraham Maslow
HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
- Born on April 1, 1908 in Brooklyn, New
York
- Father: Samuel Maslow; Mother: Rose
Maslow
- Maslow tolerated his absent father but felt
hatred and deep-seated animosity towards
his mother
- Maslow’s personal life was filled with pain,
both physical and psychological. As an
adolescent, he was terribly shy, unhappy,
isolated, and self-rejecting, and he
suffered many ailments later in his life.
- Died on June 8, 1970, Menlo Park,
California
MASLOW’S VIEW ON MOTIVATION
- Holistic approach to motivation
o The whole person, not any single part
or function, is motivated.
- Motivation is usually complex
o A person’s behavior may spring from
several separate motives.
o The motivation for a behavior may be
unconscious or unknown to the
person
- People are continually motivated by one
need or another.
o When one need is satisfied, it
ordinarily loses its motivational
power and is then replaced by
another need.
- All people everywhere are motivated by
the same basic needs.
- Needs can be arranged on a hierarchy.
- Lower-level needs must be satisfied or at
least relatively satisfied before higher level
needs become motivators
o Conative Needs
▪ Referred to as basic needs
▪ They have a striving or
motivational character
- Physiological Needs
o Most basic needs of any person
o Differ from other needs in at least
two important respects:
▪ They are the only needs that can
be completely satisfied or even
overly satisfied
▪ They have a recurring nature
- Safety Needs
o Physical security, stability,
dependency, protection, and
freedom from threatening forces
such as war, terrorism, illness, fear,
anxiety, danger, chaos, and natural
disasters
o They cannot be overly satiated
o Trying to satisfy safety needs, and
when they are not successful in their
attempts, they suffer basic anxiety.
- Love and Belongingness Needs
o The need to belong
o Also include some aspects of sex and
human contact as well as the need to
both give and receive love
o Adults often engage in self-defeating
behaviors, such as pretending to be
 aloof from other people or adopting a
cynical, cold, and calloused manner
in their interpersonal relationships
- Esteem Needs
o Self-respect, confidence,
competence, and the knowledge that
others hold them in high esteem.
o There are two levels of esteem
needs:
▪ Reputation
❖ The perception of the
prestige, recognition, or
fame a person has
achieved in the eyes of
others
▪ Self-esteem
❖ A person’s own feelings of
worth and confidence.
❖ Based on more than
reputation or prestige; it
GENERAL DISCUSSION OF NEEDS
reflects a “desire for
strength, for achievement,
for adequacy, for mastery
and competence, for
confidence in the face of
the world, and for
independence and
freedom
o Once people meet their esteem
needs, they stand on the threshold of
self-actualization, the highest need
recognized by Maslow.
- Self-Actualization Needs
o Includes self-fulfillment, the
realization of all one’s potential, and
a desire to become creative in the
full sense of the word
o Three other categories of needs:
▪ Aesthetic Needs
❖ Not universal
❖ People with strong
aesthetic needs desire
beautiful and orderly
surroundings, and when
these needs are not met,
they become sick in the
same way that they
become sick when their
conative needs are
frustrated.
▪ Cognitive Needs
❖ When cognitive needs are
blocked, all needs on
Maslow’s hierarchy are
threatened
❖ Knowledge is necessary to
satisfy each of the five
conative needs
▪ Neurotic Needs
❖ Lead only to stagnation
and pathology
❖ They perpetuate an
unhealthy style of life and
have no value in the
striving for self-
actualization
- Hypothetical average person has his or her
needs satisfied to approximately these
levels: physiological, 85%; safety, 70%;
love and belongingness, 50%; esteem,
40%; and self-actualization, 10%.
- Reversed Order of Needs
o Unmotivated Behavior
o Expressive Behavior
▪ Unmotivated behavior
▪ Often an end in itself and serves
no other purpose than to be.
▪ Frequently unconscious and
usually takes place naturally and
with little effort.
▪ Has no goals or aim but is
merely the person’s mode of
expression.
o Coping Behavior
▪ Ordinarily conscious, effortful,
learned, and determined by the
external environment.
▪ Serves some aim or goal
(although not always conscious
or known to the person)
o Deprivation of Needs
▪ Metapathology
 ❖ The absence of values,
the lack of fulfillment, and
the loss of meaning in life.
o Instinctoid Nature of Needs
▪ Can be modified by learning
▪ Criterion of separating
instinctoid from non-instinctoid
needs:
❖ Level of pathology upon
frustration
❖ Persistent and their
satisfaction leads to
psychological health.
❖ Species-specific
❖ Can be molded, inhibited,
or altered by
environmental influences
- Comparison of Higher and Lower Needs
o Higher level needs are later on the
phylogenetic or evolutionary scale.
▪ 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
o Higher level needs produce more
happiness and more peak
experiences, although satisfaction of
lower-level needs may produce a
degree of pleasure.
SELF-ACTUALIZATION
- Criteria for Self-Actualization
o Free from psychopathology
▪ Neither neurotic nor psychotic
nor did they have a tendency
toward psychological
disturbances.
o Self-actualizing people had
progressed through the hierarchy of
needs and therefore lived above the
subsistence level of existence and
had no ever-present threat to their
safety.
o Embracing of the B-values
▪ Self-actualizing people felt
comfortable with and even
demanded truth, beauty, justice,
simplicity, humor, and each of
the other B-values
o Full use and exploitation of talents,
capacities, potentialities, etc.
▪ Fulfilled their needs to grow, to
develop, and to increasingly
become what they were capable
of becoming.
- Values of Self-Actualizers
o “Eternal verities,” what he called B-
values.
o These “Being” values are indicators
of psychological health and are
opposed to deficiency needs, which
motivate non-self-actualizers.
▪ “Metaneeds” to indicate that
they are the ultimate level of
needs
▪ Characterized by expressive
rather than coping behavior and
is associated with the B-values.
- Characteristics of Self-Actualizing People
o More efficient perception of reality
▪ Can more easily detect
phoniness in others
▪ They are not fooled by facades
and can see both positive and
negative underlying traits in
others that are not readily
apparent to most people.
▪ Less afraid and more
comfortable with the unknown.
o Acceptance of self, others and nature
▪ Can accept themselves the way
they are
▪ Not overly critical of their own
shortcomings; and are not
burdened by undue anxiety or
shame.
o Spontaneity, Simplicity, and
Naturalness
▪ Nonconventional but not
compulsively so
o Problem-Centering
 ▪ Their interest in problems
outside themselves.
▪ This interest allows self-
actualizers to develop a mission
in life, a purpose for living that
spreads beyond self-
aggrandizement.
▪ Self-actualizing people extend
their frame of reference far
beyond self
o The Need for Privacy
▪ A quality of detachment that
allows them to be alone without
being lonely.
▪ They are self- movers, resisting
society’s attempts to make them
adhere to convention.
o Autonomy
▪ Depend on themselves for
growth even though at some
time in their past they had to
have received love and security
from others.
o Continued Freshness of Appreciation
▪ Have the wonderful capacity to
appreciate again and again
MASLOW’S PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF
o The Peak Experience
SCIENCE
▪ Peak experiences are quite
natural and are part of human
makeup.
▪ People having a peak
experience see the whole
universe as unified or all in one
piece, and they see clearly their
place in that universe.
o Gemeinschaftsgefühl
▪ Adler’s term for social interest,
community feeling, or a sense of
oneness with all humanity.
o Profound Interpersonal Relations
o The Democratic Character Structure
▪ Have a desire and an ability to
learn from anyone.
▪ They realize that less healthy
individuals have much to offer
them, and they are respectful
and even humble before these
people.
o Discrimination Between Means and
Ends
▪ Set their sights on ends rather
than means
▪ Have an unusual ability to
distinguish between the two.
o Philosophical Sense of Humor
▪ Intrinsic to the situation rather
than contrived
▪ Spontaneous rather than
planned.
o Creativeness
▪ Have a keen perception of truth,
beauty, and reality—ingredients
that form the foundation of true
creativity.
o Resistance to Enculturation
▪ Neither antisocial nor
consciously non- conforming
▪ Autonomous, following their own
standards of conduct and not
blindly obeying the rules of
others.
- Desacralization
o The type of science that lacks
emotion, joy, wonder, awe, and
rapture
- Maslow argued for a Taoistic attitude for
psychology, one that would be non-
interfering, passive, and receptive.
- Maslow insisted that psychologists must
themselves be healthy people, able to
tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty. They
must be intuitive, nonrational, insightful,
and courageous enough to ask the right
questions.
- Why do people run away from greatness
and self-fulfillment?
o The human body is simply not strong
enough to endure the ecstasy of
fulfillment for any length of time.
o Most people, he reasoned, have
private ambition to be great, to write
 a great novel, to be a movie star, to
become a world-famous scientist,
and so on.
o However, when they compare
themselves with those who have
accomplished greatness, they are
appalled by their own arrogance:
“Who am I to think I could do as well
as this great person?”
THE JONAH COMPLEX
- The fear of being one’s best
- Attempts to run away from one’s destiny
PSYCHOTHERAPY
- 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
 Chapter 10
CARL ROGERS’ PERSON-CENTERED THEORY
ABOUT THE THEORIST
Carl Rogers
- Born on January 8, 1902 in Oak Park,
Illinois
- Mother: Julia M. Cushing; Father: Walter A.
Rogers
- Closer to his mother than to his father
who, during the early years, was often
away from home working as a civil
engineer.
- His parents were both devoutly religious,
which got Carl interested in the Bible
- Died on February 4, 1987 in La Jolla,
California
PERSON-CENTERED THEORY
- Rogers' theory grew out of his experiences
as a practicing psychotherapist and he
advocated a balance between tender-
minded and hardheaded studies that
would expand knowledge of how humans
think and feel
THE SELF AND SELF-ACTUALIZATION
- He called for empirical research to support
both his theory and therapeutic practice,
however he was more concerned with
helping people than with discovering why
they behaved as they did.
- He was more of a therapist than theorist.
- Basic Assumptions:
o Formative Tendency
▪ There is a tendency for all matter,
both organic and inorganic, to
evolve from simpler to more
complex forms
o Actualizing Tendency
▪ Tendency within all humans (and
other animals and plants) to move
toward completion or fulfillment of
potentials
▪ This tendency is the only motive
people possess.
▪ The need to satisfy one’s hunger
drive, to express deep emotions
when they are felt
▪ Maintenance
❖ Includes such basic needs as
food, air, and safety
❖ Also includes the tendency to
resist change and to seek the
status quo.
▪ Enhancement
❖ Need for enhancing the self
is seen in people’s
willingness to learn things
that are not immediately
rewarding.
❖ Expressed in different forms,
including curiosity,
playfulness, self-exploration,
friendship, and confidence
that one can achieve
psychological growth.
o Not limited to humans
o Actualization tendency is realized only
under certain conditions
- Self-actualization is a subset of the
actualization tendency and is therefore
not synonymous with it.
 - The actualization tendency refers to
organismic experiences of the individual;
refers to the whole person—conscious and
unconscious, physiological and cognitive.
- Self-actualization is the tendency to
actualize the self as perceived in
awareness.
- Two Self Subsystems
o The Self Concept
▪ All those aspects of one’s being
and one’s experiences that are
perceived in awareness
▪ The self-concept is not identical
with the organismic self
o The Ideal Self
▪ One’s view of self as one wishes
to be.
▪ A wide gap between the ideal self
and the self-concept indicates
incongruence and an unhealthy
personality
AWARENESS
- Without awareness the self-concept and
the ideal self would not exist.
- “The symbolic representation (not
necessarily in verbal symbols) of some
portion of our experience.”
- Levels of Awareness
o First: Some events are experienced
below the threshold of awareness and
are either ignored or denied.
o Second: Some experiences are
accurately symbolized and freely
admitted to the self-structure. Such
experiences are both non-threatening
and consistent with the existing self-
concept.
o Third: Involves experiences that are
perceived in a 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.
- Denial of Positive Experiences
o Compliments, even those genuinely
dispensed, seldom have a positive
influence on the self-concept of the
recipient
o May be distorted because the person
distrusts the giver, or may be denied
because the recipient does not feel
deserving of them
BECOMING A PERSON
- An individual must make contact—positive
or negative—with another person.
o Contact is the minimum experience
necessary for becoming a person.
o Need to be loved, liked, or accepted by
another person, a need that Rogers
referred to as positive regard.
▪ Prerequisite for positive self-
regard, defined as the experience
of prizing or valuing one’s self.
▪ Necessary for positive self-regard,
but once positive self-regard is
established, it becomes
independent of the continual
need to be loved.
BARRIERS TO PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH
- Conditions of Worth
o They perceive that their parents,
peers, or partners love and accept
them only if they meet those people’s
expectations and approval.
o Become the criterion by which we
accept or reject our experiences.
o Our perceptions of other people’s view
of us are called external evaluations.
▪ Prevent us from being completely
open to our own experiences
- Incongruence
o The source of psychological disorders.
- Vulnerability
o When they are unaware of the
discrepancy between their organismic
self and their significant experience.
- Anxiety and Threat
o Anxiety
▪ A state of uneasiness or tension
whose cause is unknown
 o Threat
▪ An awareness that our self is no
longer whole or congruent
o Can represent steps toward
psychological health because they
signal to us that our organismic
experience is inconsistent with our
self-concept.
- Defensiveness
o Protection of the self-concept against
anxiety and threat by the denial or
distortion of experiences inconsistent
with it
o Two chief defenses:
▪ Distortion
❖ Misinterpret an experience in
order to fit it into some
aspect of our self-concept
▪ Denial
❖ Refuse to perceive an
experience in awareness, or
at least we keep some aspect
of it from reaching
symbolization.
❖ Denial is not as common as
distortion because most
experiences can be twisted or
reshaped to fit the current
self- concept.
- Disorganization
o Can occur suddenly, or it can take
place gradually over a long period of
time.
PSYCHOTHERAPY
- Client-Centered Therapy
o The client-centered approach holds
that in order for vulnerable or anxious
people to grow psychologically, they
must come into contact with a
therapist who is congruent and whom
they perceive as providing an
atmosphere of unconditional
acceptance and accurate empathy
o Conditions
▪ First, an anxious or vulnerable
client must come into contact with
a congruent therapist who also
possesses empathy and
unconditional positive regard for
that client.
▪ Next, the client must perceive
these characteristics in the
therapist.
▪ Finally, the contact between client
and therapist must be of some
duration.
▪ Client-centered therapy is unique
in its insistence that the
conditions of counselor
congruence, unconditional
positive regard, and empathic
listening are both necessary and
sufficient
o Counselor Congruence
▪ Congruence exists when a
person’s organismic experiences
are matched by an awareness of
them and by an ability and
willingness to openly express
these feelings
▪ Congruence involves (1) feelings,
(2) awareness, and (3)
expression, incongruence can
arise from either of the two points
dividing these three experiences.
o Unconditional Positive Regard
▪ Positive regard is the need to be
liked, prized, or accepted by
another person. When this need
exists without any conditions or
qualifications
▪ The attitude is without
possessiveness, without
evaluations, and without
reservations.
▪ Unconditional positive regard
means that therapists accept and
prize their clients without any
restrictions or reservations and
without regard to the clients’
behavior.
▪ “Regard” means that there is a
close relationship and that the
 therapist sees the client as an discuss external events and
important person; “positive” other people, but they still
indicates that the direction of the disown or fail to recognize
relationship is toward warm and their own feelings.
caring feelings; and ▪ Stage 3
“unconditional” suggests that the ❖ As clients enter into Stage 3,
positive regard is no longer they more freely talk about
dependent on specific client self, although still as an
behaviors and does not have to object.
be continually earned. ➢ Clients talk about
o Emphatic Listening feelings and
▪ Empathy “means temporarily emotions in the past
living in the other’s life, moving or future tense and
about in it delicately without avoid present
making judgments” feelings.
▪ Empathic listening is a powerful ➢ They refuse to
tool, which along with accept their
genuineness and caring, emotions, keep
facilitates personal growth within personal feelings at
the client. a distance from the
▪ Empathy is effective because it here-and-now
enables clients to listen to situation, only
themselves and, in effect, become vaguely perceive
their own therapists. that they can make
- Process personal choices,
o Stages and deny individual
▪ Stage 1 responsibility for
❖ Stage 1 is characterized by most of their
an unwillingness to decisions.
communicate anything about ➢ This is quite a
oneself. common stage to
➢ People at this stage enter therapy; it is
ordinarily do not important to use
seek help, but if for unconditional
some reason they positive regard to
come to therapy, accept the client
they are extremely just as they are,
rigid and resistant to supporting them to
change. They do not feel safe to explore
recognize any their feelings.
problems and ▪ Stage 4
refuse to own any ❖ Clients in Stage 4 begin to
personal feelings or talk of deep feelings but not
emotions. ones presently felt.
▪ Stage 2 ➢ They begin to
❖ Stage 2, clients become question some
slightly less rigid. They values that have
 been introjected
from others, and
they start to see the
incongruence
between their
perceived self and
their organismic
experience.
▪ Stage 5
❖ By the time clients reach
Stage 5, they have begun to
undergo significant change
and growth. They can express
feelings in the present,
although they have not yet
accurately symbolized those
feelings. They are beginning
to rely on an internal locus of
evaluation for their feelings
and to make fresh and new
discoveries about
themselves.
➢ They also
experience a greater
differentiation of
feelings and
develop more
appreciation for
nuances among
them.
➢ In addition, they
begin to make their
own decisions and
to accept
responsibility for
their choices.
▪ Stage 6
❖ People at Stage 6 experience
dramatic growth and an
irreversible movement toward
becoming fully functioning or
THE PERSON OF TOMORROW
self-actualizing
➢ They freely allow - More adaptable
into awareness - Open to their experiences
those experiences
that they had
previously denied or
distorted. They
become more
congruent and are
able to match their
present experiences
with awareness and
with open
expression.
➢ They no longer
evaluate their own
behavior from an
external viewpoint
but rely on their
organismic self as
the criterion for
evaluating
experiences.
➢ They begin to
develop
unconditional self-
regard, which
means that they
have a feeling of
genuine caring and
affection for the
person they are
becoming.
▪ Stage 7
❖ Stage 7 can occur outside
the therapeutic encounter,
because growth at Stage 6
seems to be irreversible.
Clients who reach Stage 7
become fully functioning
“persons of tomorrow”.
➢ They are able to
generalize their in-
therapy experiences
to their world
beyond therapy
o Accurately symbolizing them in
awareness rather than denying or
distorting them
 o A related characteristic of persons of
tomorrow would be a trust in their
organismic selves.
- A tendency to live fully in the moment
o Rogers referred to this tendency to live
in the moment as existential living.
- Remains confident of their own ability to
experience harmonious relations with
others
- More integrated, more whole with no
artificial boundary between conscious
processes
- Has basic trust of human nature
- Enjoy a great richness in life
 Chapter 11
ROLLO MAY’S EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY
ABOUT THE THEORIST
Rollo May
- Born on April 21, 1909 in Ada, Ohio
- His family was not the “education is the
most important thing I can provide you”
kind of family.
- His father was secretary for Young Men's
Christian Association, his mother is quite
neurotic, and his sister suffered psychosis.
- His main influence in his theory was Soren
Kierkegard
- He does not like theories of personality
- Died on October 22, 1994 in Tiburon,
California
BACKGROUND OF EXISTENTIALISM
- What is Existentialism?
o Common elements are found among
most existential thinkers.
o Existence takes precedence over
essence.
▪ Existence means to emerge or to
become; essence implies a static
immutable substance.
▪ Existence suggests process;
essence refers to a product.
▪ Existence is associated with
growth and change; essence
signifies stagnation and finality.
o Existentialism opposes the split
between subject and object
▪ People are more than mere cogs
in the machinery of an
industrialized society, but they are
also more than subjective thinking
beings living passively through
armchair speculation.
o People search for some meaning to
their lives.
o Existentialists hold that ultimately
each of us is responsible for who we
are and what we become.
o Existentialists are basically
antitheoretical.
▪ To them, theories further
dehumanize people and render
them as objects.
BASIC CONCEPTS
- Being-in-the-World (Dasein)
o We exist in a world that can be best
understood from our own perspective.
o Dasein literally means to exist in the
world; the hyphens in this term imply a
oneness of subject and object, of
person and world
o Alienation
▪ The illness of our time
▪ Manifests itself in three areas:
❖ Separation from nature,
❖ Lack of meaningful
interpersonal relations, and
❖ Alienation from one’s
authentic self.
- Umwelt
o The world of objects and things and
would exist even if people had no
awareness.
o The world of nature and natural law
and includes biological drives, such as
 hunger, sleep and such natural
phenomena as birth and death.
- Mitwelt
o The world with people
o We must relate to people as people,
not as things.
- Eigenwelt
o Refer to one’s relationship with
oneself to be aware of oneself as a
human being and to grasp who we are
as we relate to the world of things and
to the world of people
- Healthy people live in Umwelt, Mitwelt and
Eigenwelt simultaneously.
- They adapt to the natural world, relate to
others as humans, and have a keen
awareness of what all these experiences
mean to them.
- Nonbeing
o Death is not the only avenue of
nonbeing, but it is the most obvious
one.
o The fear of death or nonbeing often
provokes us to live defensively and to
receive less from life than if we would
confront the issue of our nonexistence.
o A healthier alternative is to face the
inevitability of death and to realize that
nonbeing is an inseparable part of
being.
ANXIETY
- People experience anxiety when they
become aware that their existence or
some value identified with it might be
destroyed.
- The subjective state of the individual’s
becoming aware that their existence can
be destroyed, that he can become
‘nothing’”
- Anxiety can spring either from awareness
of one’s nonbeing or from a threat to
some value essential to one’s existence.
- The acquisition of freedom inevitably leads
to anxiety. Freedom cannot exist without
anxiety, nor can anxiety exist without
freedom.
- Normal Anxiety
o To grow and to change one’s values
means to experience constructive or
normal anxiety.
o “Proportionate to the threat, does not
involve repression, and can be
confronted constructively on the
conscious level”
- Neurotic Anxiety
o “A reaction which is disproportionate
to the threat, involves repression and
other forms of intrapsychic conflict,
and is managed by various kinds of
blocking-off of activity and
awareness.”
o Neurotic anxiety is experienced
whenever values become transformed
into dogma.
GUILT
- Arises when people deny their
potentialities, fail to accurately perceive
the needs of fellow humans, or remain
oblivious to their dependence on the
natural world
- In this sense, both anxiety and guilt are
ontological;
- They refer to the nature of being and not
to feelings arising from specific situations
or transgressions.
- This alienation leads to a form of
ontological guilt that is especially
prevalent in “advanced” societies where
people live in heated or cooled dwellings,
use motorized means of transportation,
and consume food gathered and prepared
by others.
- Forms of Guilt
o Separation Guilt
▪ Concept similar to Fromm’s notion
of the human dilemma
o Due to Mitwelt
▪ Stems from our inability to
perceive accurately the world of
others
o Due to Eigenwelt
 ▪ Associated with our denial of our
own potentialities or with our
failure to fulfill them.
▪ Grounded in our relationship with
self
▪ Reminiscent of Maslow’s concept
of the Jonah complex, or the fear
of being or doing one’s best.
INTENTIONALITY
- The ability to make a choice implies some
underlying structure upon which that
choice is made.
- The structure that gives meaning to
experience and allows people to make
decisions about the future.
- "The structure of meaning which makes it
possible for us, subjects that we are, to
see and understand the outside world,
objective that it is."
CARE, LOVE AND WILL
- Care
o A state in which something does
matter
o Care is not the same as love, but it is
the source of love.
o To love means to care, to recognize
the essential humanity of the other
person, to have an active regard for
that person’s development.
- Love
o “Delight in the presence of the other
person and an affirming of [that
person’s] value and development as
much as one’s own”
o Without care there can be no love.
o Forms of Love:
▪ Sex
❖ Biological function that can
be satisfied through sexual
intercourse or some other
release of sexual tension.
▪ Eros
❖ A psychological desire that
seeks procreation or creation
through an enduring union
with a loved one
❖ The wish to establish a
lasting union
❖ Built on care and tenderness
❖ It longs to establish an
enduring union with the other
person, such that both
partners experience delight
and passion and both are
broadened and deepened by
the experience.
▪ Philia
❖ Intimate nonsexual friendship
between two people.
❖ Philia cannot be rushed
▪ Agape
❖ Agape is altruistic love.
❖ It is a kind of spiritual love
that carries with it the risk of
playing God.
❖ It does not depend on any
behaviors or characteristics
of the other person. In this
sense, it is undeserved and
unconditional.
- Will
o “The capacity to organize one’s self so
that movement in a certain direction or
toward a certain goal may take place”
- Union of Love and Will
o When love is seen as sex, it becomes
temporary and lacking in commitment;
there is no will, but only wish. When
will is seen as will power, it becomes
self-serving and lacking in passion;
there is no care, but only manipulation
FREEDOM AND DESTINY
- Blend of the four forms of love requires
both self-assertion and an affirmation of
the other person.
- It also requires an assertion of one’s
freedom and a confrontation with one’s
destiny. Healthy individuals are able both
to assume their freedom and to face their
destiny.
- Freedom Defined
 o Comes from an understanding of our
destiny: an understanding that death
is a possibility at any moment, that we
are male or female, that we have
inherent weaknesses, that early
childhood experiences dispose us
toward certain patterns of behavior.
o This condition often leads to increases
in anxiety, but it is normal anxiety, the
kind that healthy people welcome and
are able to manage.
- Forms of Freedom
o Existential Freedom
▪ The freedom of action—the
freedom of doing.
o Essential Freedom
▪ Freedom to act, to move around
does not ensure essential
freedom: that is, freedom of being
▪ Existential freedom often makes
essential freedom more difficult.
- What is Destiny?
o “The design of the universe speaking
through the design of each one of us”
o Destiny does not mean preordained or
foredoomed
- Freedom and destiny are thus inexorably
intertwined; one cannot exist without the
other. Freedom without destiny is unruly
license.
THE POWER OF MYTH
- Myths are not falsehoods; rather, they are
conscious and unconscious belief systems
that pro- vide explanations for personal
and social problems.
- Communication in two levels:
o Rationalistic language
▪ Truth takes precedence over the
people who are communicating.
o Through myths
▪ The total human experience is
more important than the empirical
accuracy of the communication.
- Elements of existential crisis common to
everyone:
o Birth
o Separation or exile from parents and
home
o Sexual union with one parent and
hostility toward the other
o The assertion of independence and
the search for identity
o Death
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
- Without some goal or destination, people
become sick and engage in a variety of
self-defeating and self-destructive
behaviors.
- May saw psychopathology as lack of
communication—the inability to know
others and to share oneself with them.
PSYCHOTHERAPY
- May suggested that psychotherapy should
make people more human: that is, help
them expand their consciousness so that
they will be in a better position to make
choices. These choices, then, lead to the
simultaneous growth of freedom and
responsibility.
- May believed that the purpose of
psychotherapy is to set people free. He
argued that therapists who concentrate on
a patient’s symptoms are missing the
more important picture. Neurotic
symptoms are simply ways of running
away from freedom and an indication that
patients’ inner possibilities are not being
used.
- May insisted that psychotherapy must be
concerned with helping people experience
their existence, and that relieving
symptoms is merely a by-product of that
experience.