HUMANISTIC THEORIES

Carl Roger's Person-Centered Theory

 The Roots of Humanistic Psychology
• Humanistic psychology evolved primarily from two areas:
European existential philosophy and the work of some
American psychologists, most notably Carl Rogers and
Abraham Maslow.
• Existential psychologists include Viktor Frankl, Ludwig
Binswanger, Medard Boss and Rollo May. Existential therapy
emphasized the freedom to choose and develop a lifestyle
that reduces feelings of emptiness, anxiety and boredom.
 Key Elements of the Humanistic Approach
1. An emphasis on PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
- Although we may try to deny it, we are ultimately
responsible for what happens to us.
- all of our behavior is a personal choice (we choose to remain
in relationships, be passive, go to school, call our friends, etc)
• Humanistic psychologists see people as active shapers of their
own lives, with freedom to change limited only by physical
constraints.
• Taking responsibility means no more blaming others for your
problems, if you want things to change, its up to you to do
the changing
 Key Elements of the Humanistic Approach
2. An emphasis on the HERE AND NOW
- We cannot become fully functioning individuals until we
learn to live our lives as they happen.
- We tend to spend our time hanging on to the past, and
planning and worrying to much about the future.
-“Today is the first day of the rest of your life”
- Humans need not to be victims of our past, or to have
apprehensions of our future
 Key Elements of the Humanistic Approach
3. A focus on the EXPERIENCE of the INDIVIDUAL
- No one knows you better than yourself.
- Humanistic therapists seek to understand what their clients
are experiencing and provide a therapeutic atmosphere that
allows clients to help themselves. (non-directive)
- During the course of a successful therapy, clients come to
understand themselves and develop an appropriate strategy for
dealing with their problems.
- contribution to the research method: phenomenology
 Key Elements of the Humanistic Approach
4. An emphasis on PERSONAL GROWTH
- “Whether one calls it a growth tendency, a drive toward
self-actualization, or a forward moving directional tendency.. it
is the mainspring of life” - Carl Rogers
• There is more to life than simply meeting our basic needs,
happiness requires that we grow in a positive direction
(Burger, 2019)
• We are all motivated to progress toward some ultimately
satisfying state of being.
• Rogers called this becoming a “fully-functioning” person
• while Maslow used the term “self actualization.”
Carl Rogers (1902 – 1987)
Carl Rogers was born on January 8, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois,
a suburb of Chicago. He is the fourth of the six children of
Walter and Julia.

When he was 12, The family moved to a farm 30/45 miles away
from Chicago. Rural life awakened his interest in science and
scientific approach.

His parents hold strict religious view and emphasized moral

behaviour, the suppression of displays of emotion and the virtue
of hard work. Openly expression of emotions was not allowed. He
developed an ulcer at 15, just like 2 of his brothers.
Rogers believed that his parents showed favouritism to an elder
brother, so there was considerable competitiveness between them.

As the strict requirements of his parents and the isolated rural

life, he was lonely and had little social life outside his family.
Instead, he became interested in Bible and reading other books
before school age, and which became an important source of his
own view of the world.
In 1919, Rogers started to study agriculture in the University of
Wisconsin. But in the 3rd year, he abandoned agriculture and deeply
devoted in religion.

In 1922, Rogers attended an international Christian student

conference in Beijing China. The China travel made him into a more
liberal thinker and moved him towards independence from the
religious views of his parents.

In 1924, Rogers graduated from the University of Wisconsin, he

married a childhood friend Helen and had two children. He moved to
New York and enrolled at Union Theological Seminary in NY that
year, to prepare for a career as a minister.
Once in NY, two developments led to a change in his plans. One,
studying Theology caused him to question his religious beliefs. A
career in theology promised an opportunity to help people, but his
freedom of thought would be limited. Two, a renewed interest in
Psychology when he enrolled in Columbia University with his friends
from the seminary.

After his graduate studies in Psychology, he worked at a child

guidance clinic in Rochester, NY. He joined the faculty at Ohio State
U. and Univ. of Chicago, before returning to Univ. of Wisconsin in
1957.

Rogers battled with a well-established Freudian approach to therapy

& a dominant behavioral approach in the academe.
In 1946, served as president of APA
and received the organization’s
Distinguished Scientific Contribution
Award and Distinguished Professional
Contribution Award in 1956.

In 1963, he founded the Center for

Studies of the Person. The last 15
years of his life were devoted to
issues of social conflict and world
peace. Rogers was nominated for a
Nobel Peace Prize in 1987, the same
year of his death.
 Humanism vs. Existentialism…
Humanism and Existentialism BOTH:
• Respect for client’s experience and trust in clients ability to
change
• Believe in freedom, choice, values, personal responsibility,
autonomy, meaning
Existentialism Humanism
• Clients come into counseling Clients do not suffer from
because they are facing anxiety anxiety in creating an identity
in trying to construct an Clients need to believe that
identity in a world without they have the natural potential
intrinsic meaning to actualize
 Basic Assumptions
• Formative Tendency- Rogers believed
that there is a tendency for all
matter, both organic and inorganic,
to evolve from simpler to more
complex forms.

The Actualizing Tendency - the tendency to

move towards completion or fullfillment.
A person who pays attention to the
organismic valuing process is self-actualizing or
fully functioning.
 Basic Assumptions: The Fully Functioning Person
• Fully functioning people are
open to new experiences.
• They try to live each
moment as it comes.
• The idea is to experience
life, not just to pass
through it.
• Fully functioning individuals also
learn to trust their feelings.
• They are sensitive to the needs
of others, but they are not
overly concerned with meeting
the standards society sets for
them.
• They experience and embrace
both positive and negative
emotions, thus, they lead richer
lives than most.
 Basic Assumptions

The Self-Concept
• The self-concept includes all those aspects of one’s being
and one’s experiences that are perceived in awareness
(though not always accurately) by the individual.

- the way you think about yourself and

your abilities or appearance
- one's conception of oneself or of one's
role
 Basic Assumptions: Self Concept
• Organismic self- Portions of the organismic self may be
beyond a person’s awareness or simply not owned by that
person.
• The Ideal Self- defined as 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.

organismic self / ideal self organismic self / ideal self

 Basic Assumptions: Anxiety and Defense
• Rogers was well aware that the
world is full of disappointments
and difficulties, all of which are
potenial sources of anxiety.
• A fully functioning person
acknowledge and deal with these
problems instead of relying on
psychological defenses to avoid
them
• The use of these defenses take
us further away from
experiencing life fully
• Subception - we initially process
threatening information at a
level somewhere below
consciousness.
• Distortion - is our most
common defense when our self-
concept is attacked
• Denial - a more extreme defense
of refusing to accept
• Disorganization - happens when
the gap between self concept &
reality becomes so large that
even the defenses are
inadequate = extreme anxiety
 On Psychopathology
• Rejection of diagnostic labels:
Rogers considered “...such categories as pseudoscientific
efforts to glorify the therapist’s expertise and depict the
client as a dependent object..” (Rogers, 1951)
• Defenses: Organism’s response to experiences that
threaten the self-concept (distortion, denial)
• Neurosis: Powerful conditions of worth in self-concept.
Incongruent with totality of experience.
• Psychosis: Person is badly hurt by life, needs corrective
influence of a deep interpersonal relationship.
 Conditions in Person-Centered Therapy
• Direction comes from the client rather than from
the therapist’s insights, so referred to as
nondirective therapy, later client-centered therapy
– Empathy/Emphatic listening
– Congruence/Genuineness
– Unconditional Positive Regard
 Conditions in Person-Centered Therapy
• Increase the independence • Create the conditions
and integration of the necessary for positive
client growth
• Focus on the person, not • Develop openness to new
the problem experiences, trust in
themselves, internal source
of evaluation, and
willingness to continue
growing
 The Person of Tomorrow:

1. More adaptable
2. Open to their experiences
3. Live fully in the moment.
4. Harmonious relations with others
5. More integrated
6. Basic trust of human nature
7. Enjoy a greater richness in life
 Humanistic Theories
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
• Abraham Maslow spent most of his career filling the gaps he
found in other approaches to personality.
• He wondered what psychology could do for the happy,
healthy side of personality.
• Maslow replaced Freud's pessimistic and dismal view of human
nature with an optimistic and uplifting portrayal.
• Although he acknowledged the existence of unconscious
motives, he focused his work on the conscious aspects of
personality.
 Motivation and Hierarchy of Needs
• Which needs affect our behavior depends on the
circumstances in our lives.
• Maslow identified two types of motives:
• Deficiency motives (D motives) - result from a lack of some
needed object.
• Growth needs (B motives) - are satisfied by expressing the
motive, such as unselfishly giving love to another person and
taking steps to develop your unique potential
• Satisfying a growth need may lead to an increase in (not
just a satiation) of motivation
 The Hierarchy of Needs
• Maslow identified five basic categories of needs (both
deficiency and growth) and placed them in his well known
hierarchy of needs

• Physiological Needs
- hunger, thirst, air, sleep, what
we need to survive
Hierarchy of Needs
• Safety Needs
- need for security, stability,
protection, structure, order and
freedom from fear or chaos
 Hierarchy of Needs
• Love and Belongingness • Esteem Needs
Needs - The need to perceive oneself
D- love is based on deficiency, as competent and achieving
we need to satisfy the and the need for admiration and
emptiness we experience respect
without it
B-love is a non-possessive
unselfish love based on a
growth need rather than
deficiency
 Hierarchy of Needs
• Need for Self Actualization
- what do we want out of our
life, where are lives are headed,
what do we want to accomplish Self actualizing individuals
This need is satisfied when we havemore free will than
identify our true self and reach average people
our full potential