Humanistic Psychology

• THE POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY MOVEMENT

• (Sometimes called the "human strengths" movement)
• In agreement with humanistic psychology, positive
psychologists argued that psychology has tended to:
– Examine individuals suffering from distress
– Use those experiences as their foundation for theorizing about
people
– End up with theories that emphasize the negative while
overlooking human strengths
• To rectify this, positive psychologists have tried to
portray the nature of human strengths and virtues
• Their methods are not primarily phenomenological, but
are nomothetic and psychometrically based.
 Positive Emotions
• The Virtues of Positive Emotions
• Psychologists commonly have studied emotions
such as fear, anxiety, and anger
• Have devoted lesser attention to the role of
positive emotions – pride, love, happiness – in
personality development and functioning
• There are dozens of theories of depression, but
hardly a word, until recently, about happiness.
 Positive Emotions
• Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory of
positive emotions (Fredrickson, 2001)
– Positive emotions “broaden” thought and action
tendencies by widening the range of
• Ideas that come to mind
• Actions that individuals pursue
– Interest leads people to pursue novel activities
– Pride motivates one to continue activities
– Positive emotions can further build human
competencies and achievements
– In short, positive emotions don’t lead to contentment
and idleness, but rather motivate thought and actions.
 Flow: Congruence between skills and
activities
• Developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi; describes a
feature of conscious experience characterized by:
– A perceived match between personal skills and environmental
challenge
– A high level of focused attention
– Involvement in an activity such that time seems to fly by and
irrelevant thoughts and distractions do not enter into
consciousness
– A sense of intrinsic enjoyment in the activity
– A temporary loss of self-consciousness such that the self is
not aware of functioning or regulating activity
– If skills are much higher than demands: boredom
– If skills much lower than demands: frustration/aggression
 Existential Psychology
• The Darker Side of the Third Force
• Most existential
psychologists/therapists were
influenced by Heidegger’s existential
phenomenology.
• Europeans: Ludwig Binswanger
(Daseinanalysis), Viktor Frankl
• Americans: Rollo May (founder), Irving
Yalom, Ernest Becker
• Each has distinctive emphasis, but
some common themes.
 Existentialist Themes
• Freedom and Responsibility
• Phenomenologically, we are free.
• Because we are free, we are
responsible for our lives (at least for
our attitudes toward what befalls us).
• Many people deny or relinquish their
freedom (it’s my genes, it’s my
parents, it’s my environment).
 Existentialist Themes
• Thrownness and the search for
meaning
• Here I am. What now? What does it
all mean? What shall I do?
• All existential psychologists
emphasize the importance of finding
a meaning in life as a primary human
motivation.
• Without meaning, people will even
give up their lives.
 Viktor Frankl

• Man’s Search for Meaning (1946)

– Formerly: From Death Camp to Existentialism
– In camps from 1942-1945: Both parents,
brother, and wife died in camps.
– In his books, Frankl describes his insights into
human nature that grew out of his
observations of his fellow camp prisoners
(and even the Nazi guards, etc).
– What did he observe about human
motivation?
 Viktor Frankl
• In camps, physiological, safety, belongingness, and
self-esteem needs threatened every day.
• Many people lost the will to live (suicides common),
or became selfish, greedy, & ruthless as Maslow
might have predicted.
• Yet many endured, were kind and dignified through
it all, and even gave up many physiological and
safety needs for the sake of others.
• In such cases, these actualized people had a deep
spiritual and philosophical life, some “eternal”
meaning was driving them.
• The “will to meaning:” People will sacrifice lower-
level needs for the sake of something higher.
 Existential Themes
• Existential Anxiety
– Anxiety produced by the “burden of
freedom”. When we contemplate our
possibilities and the necessity of choice.
– Not a bad thing: existential anxiety can
motivate change.
• Existential Guilt
– A dull guilty feeling that we have
squandered our freedom, that we have
wasted our lives.
– Not guilt over a specific action (e.g., cursed
my mother), but over ones whole
existence.
 Existential Themes
• Death
 Existential Themes
• Heidegger described human beings (Dasein)
as “beings-towards-death", in that our
finitude is a horizon continually before us.
• Human awareness of death can be a stimulus
for a deep search for meaning—and no time
to waste.
• But the anxiety created by reflection on
death can also lead us to throw ourselves into
“everydayness” and “busyness” in an
attempt to distract ourselves from reflection.
Beware of
existential
meltdown
 Becker’s Thesis:
• “The main thesis of this book is that the idea
of death, the fear of it, haunts the human
animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of
human activity - activity designed largely to
avoid the fatality of death, to over come it by
denying in someway that it is the final destiny
for man.”
 Assumptions
• All animals experience fear and anxiety when
immediately threatened by death.
• Humans are self-conscious, symbol-using animals who
are capable of being aware of death at every moment.
• Such awareness, if constantly present before the mind,
would lead to paralyzing anxiety and fear.
• “This fear is actually an expression of the instinct of self-
preservation, which functions as a constant drive to
maintain life and to master the dangers that threaten it.
The fear of death must be present behind all our normal
functioning, in order for the organism to be armed toward
self-preservation. But the fear of death cannot be present
constantly in one’s mental functioning, else the organism
could not function.”
 How do we avoid paralysis?

• We simply repress the fear of death, or use

defenses like intellectualization (understand
it abstractly, but keep the emotions from
surfacing).
• More generally, we adopt world-views (“hero-
systems,” “Immortality Projects”) that give us
a sense of permanence and elevate our self-
esteem. Culture provides a kind of symbolic
immortality.
 Becker and Freud
• For Freud, the primary repressions
are sexual and destructive drives.
– Culture and civilization are sublimations
of these drives.
• For Becker, the primary repression is
the fear of death.
– Culture and civilization are attempts to
create something of lasting value,
something that transcends our personal
mortality.
 How is personality formed in the
existential view?
• Broadly, personality is shaped by what we invest with
meaning and pursue as an ultimate end.

• Becker: “fetishization” – whatever we elevate to ultimate

importance in creating meaning for our lives.
– A fetish “is a segment of the world which ‘has to bear the full load
of life meaning’.
– “The individual has to protect himself against the world, and he
can do this only as any other animal would: by narrowing down
the world, shutting off experience, developing an obliviousness
both to the terrors of the world and to his own anxieties.”
– “Character is the restrictive shaping of possibility.”
Most men spare themselves this trouble
[of the terrors of death] by keeping
their minds on the small problems of
their lives just as their society maps
these problems out for them. These
are what Kierkegaard called the
"immediate" men…They "tranquilize
themselves with the trivial" - and so
they can lead normal lives."
 Søren Kierkegaard
Enten-Eller [Either-Or] (1842)
Each person faces a choice between
three broad “modes of
existence:”

The aesthetic mode

The ethical mode

The religious mode

ierkegaard reflected on what people

fetishized,” where they put ultimate
mportance in their lives
 Aesthetic Mode (Living for Oneself)

– Beauty & Health

– Wealth, status, and fame
– Talent and genius
– Crude hedonism (Eat, drink, & be merry;
sex, drugs, & rock-n-roll)
– Refined Hedonism:
• Romanticism: Ironic detachment from life;
avoid serious attachments and commitments.
• Sophisticated amusements, life as
“interesting,” “charming,” “poetic.”
 Ethical Mode (Living for others)
• A life of reason, duty, and social
responsibility
• Firm commitments to
– Community and institutions
– Political Causes
– Social Welfare
– Family and Children
– Work and the future
– Life as serious; actions judged by right or
wrong, not amusing vs. dreary.
 Are these satisfactory?
• Kierkegaard presented the best of both modes of
existence. He believed that neither was satisfactory, both
ended in despair.
– Ethical Mode: Life of duty and social roles can end in
feelings of being smothered, trapped, questioning what
“might have been.” (existential guilt)
– Aesthetic Mode: Life of detachment and hedonism can end
in emptiness, boredom, lack of selfhood. Pleasures do not
last (satiation); one can grow perverse, needing more
shocks to the nervous sytsem to feel alive. Aestheitic aims
are ultimately outside your freedom and control.
• “We have looked at neurosis as a problem of character and
have seen that it can be apprehended in two ways: as a
problem of too much narrowness toward the world or too
much openness. There are those who are too narrowly
built-into their world, and there are those who are floating
too freely apart from it.”--Becker
 Religious Mode
• Commitment to God (The Eternal)
• Only religious existing can conquer dread;
all worldly activities must be placed in an
eternal perspective.
• From the religious perspective, one can be
ethical and one can be detached, but
these are relative, not ultimate, values.
• “Fetishizing” anything other than God is
idolotry (Thou shalt have no other gods….)
 Terror Management
Theory
• “Experimental Existentialism”
• Terror management theory (TMT) of Solomon,
Greenberg, and Pyszczynski examines the
consequences of the combination of two factors:
– 1. People’s desire to live (which people share with all
other animals)
– 2. People’s awareness of the inevitability of death (an
awareness that is uniquely human)

– Social and cultural institutions protect against terror by

furnishing
– 1) meaning in life and
– 2) a way to achieve self-esteem (living up to the
standards and values of the culture)
 TMT

• TMT’s implications:

– If cultural beliefs buffer against fear of

death, and if people are induced to think
about death, then they should display a
stronger-than-usual need to posses and
to defend their cultural beliefs
– Over 200 studies have shown that this is
so.
 Terror Management Theory
• The Mortality Salience Paradigm
– Two groups of participants, randomly assigned to
conditions:
– One group is asked to write about what they think will
happen when they die and their feelings about it
• This is done to activate, or “warm up” the concept of death.
• This is called the “Mortality Salience” condition
– The other group (control group) writes about something
unrelated (e.g., favorite TV show)
– Later, both groups rate their degree of commitment to
various values and belief systems, or
– Rate their liking or disliking of people who support or
oppose their values or beliefs.
 Terror Management
• Those in mortality salience conditions,
compared to controls, show more attachment
to their culture and previously held ideas.
– More nationalism
– More liking for “ingroup” members; more hostility to “outgroup”
members
– More donations to charities
– Harsher sentences for criminals
– Liberals become more liberal, conservatives more conservative
– Among young people, more attachment to youth culture
– Among religious people, more attachment to religious faith;
among non-religious, more attachment to materialism.
 Existential Approaches to
• Much variability
Therapy
among different existential
therapists.
– Most existential therapists are not technique-oriented.
Freely draw techniques from other orientations.
– Some existential therapists resemble psychoanalysts,
using interpretations, offering insights, pointing out
defenses.
– But the insights are based on philosophical views
about the nature of human existence.
 Common to Existential
Therapies
• Understand the client’s subjective world
• Challenged clients to take responsibility for
how they choose to be, decide how they
want to be different, and take actions.
• Major themes in therapy sessions are
anxiety, freedom, isolation, death, and the
search for meaning.
• Assist client in facing life with courage,
hope, and a willingness to find meaning in
life.
 Frankl’s Logotherapy:
Techniques
• A type of existential therapy that focuses on
challenging clients to search for meaning in their lives.

• Dereflection: Too much self-attention and rumination

can intensify anxiety and symptoms. Hyper-self-
consciousness can interfere with spontaneous activity.
– Dereflection is an attempt to move clients focus away from
their fears, obsessions, and troubles to other, external issues.

• Paradoxical intention: A therapeutic strategy in which

clients are instructed to engage in and exaggerate
behaviors they seek to change, often to the point of
laughter.
– By prescribing the symptom, therapists help clients achieve
distance from symptoms.
 Commonalities of Existential and
Humanistic Approaches
• Both influenced by Husserl’s phenomenology.
• Both view the conscious self as the primary
psychological structure.
• Both emphasize the integrity of the person as a
whole (rather than a collection of mechanisms)
• Both emphasize the present and the future rather
than dwelling on the past.
• Both emphasize the therapeutic relationship as a
key factor in treatment.
 Differences between Existential
and Humanistic Approaches
Humanistic Existential
Human nature is basically good. Human nature contains the
possibility of good or evil.
Personality depends primarily on Personality depends upon choices
the social environment and commitments freely made by
(unconditional regard, empathy, the person.
genuineness, etc.)
The “true self” must be discovered The self must be created
(finding oneself) (making oneself)

Therapist is entirely non-directive, Therapist can sometimes challenge

reflecting back what the client
expresses.
clients assertions (e.g., about
whether they have choices in a
given situation, or whether their
behavior is a defensive response to
existential anxiety).