humanistic psychology

1. Humanistic Psychology
• Humanistic psychology (also known as the “third
force”) started in the 1950s.
• This perspective grew largely out of frustration
with both behaviorism and psychoanalysis.
• The focus of psychology should not be on
observable behavior and how it can be
manipulated (behaviorism).
• Nor should it be on unconscious motivation and
how to understand it (psychoanalysis).

2. Humanistic Psychology
• Instead psychology should be about an
unbridled pursuit of a profound
understanding of human nature (human
emotion and the essence of being).

3. Humanistic Psychology
• Humanistic psychology has its theoretical
roots in existential philosophy.
• As discussed in previous lectures
(Romanticism Era), generally speaking,
the existentialists look for the meaning of
life, and they can be divided into theists
(rooted in Kierkegaard) and atheists
(rooted in Nietzsche).

4. Philosophical Roots
• Humanism was also influenced by the romantic
philosophers. Rousseau’s seminal work on
emotion, which is based on an assumed
goodness in people, is especially noteworthy.
• Martin Heidegger – wrote “Being and Time”
(1927), in which he thoroughly describes the
nature of the question of existence. Heidegger’s
work defined the existential movement, and
allows us to ask ourselves the same questions.
• Alfred Adler – influence of “healthy lifestyles.”

5. Humanism and
Existentialism
• Humanism and existentialism entered into
psychology as mutual partners of the third force.
• The major difference is that humanism assumes
people are basically good, whereas
existentialism assumes people are neither good
nor bad (human nature has no inherent quality).
• Both place a priority on the meaning of life and
purpose within life. In humanistic psychology,
the effort is focused more on the search for
meaning and the need for fulfillment and
purpose in life.

6. Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
• Maslow gets the credit for legitimizing
Humanistic Psychology within the field of
psychology.
• Started as a Harry Harlow-trained behaviorist,
but upon raising his first child, he abandoned
behaviorism.
• In the 1930s, many psychologists were fleeing
Europe and the Nazi aggressions. As a fellow
Jew living in in New York, he took it upon
himself to assist and befriend them
(Wertheimer, Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, etc.)

7. Abraham Maslow
• In 1951, he became chairman of the
psychology department at Brandeis
University, which positioned him well to
establish humanistic psychology as a
formal line of study.
• Ten years later, humanism was a
recognized field of study, with a university-
sponsored journal.

8. Formal Humanism
• Humanism’s formal tenets:
– Animal research does not reflect human
conditions.
– Human behavior is guided by a subjective
reality.
– The study of the individual is more revealing
than the study of group norms.
– Research should seek to expand and enrich
the human experience.

9. Hierarchy of needs
• According to Maslow we are motivated to
fulfill needs, but since our needs are
ordered hierarchically, we must proceed
incrementally, fulfilling our most basic
needs first before proceeding to the other
levels.

11. Deficiency Motivation
• The interest in and value of the hierarchy
of needs was in mapping out how we can
achieve our human potential.
• There are two types of human motivation.
• For those of us who have not achieved
self-actualization, Maslow says we are
motivated to fulfill our lower-level needs –
the “deficiency motivation.”
• Only after we fulfill our deficiencies, can
we move on to achieve our full potential –
the “being motivation.”

12. Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
• Carl Rogers applied humanistic principles in
clinical settings, proposing a client-centered
approach to psychotherapy.
• Like other humanists, Rogers believed self-
actualization to be natural, but he also believed
it could be nurtured (“assisted”).
• Because people need other people, Rogers
believed that self-actualizing did not need
separation from other needs, and could be
addressed clinically.
• His clinical work was unorthodox, but very
successful. At the request of others, Rogers put
together a method and theory for his results.

13. Rogerian Psychotherapy
• Carl Rogers faced his patients and looked
them in the eye. The client-centered
therapy was guided by three principles:
– Genuineness – he developed a true
empathetic relationship built on total honesty
and mutual respect.
– Acceptance – non-judgmental acceptance
was a key ingredient of his approach. He
accepted his patients’ beliefs and behaviors
without question.

14. Rogers’ Theory
– Understanding – the relationships were only
successful if he could feel the desire to
understand.
– Based on the results of his work, Rogers
concluded that we all had an “organismic
valuing process.” It is a process of judging
our experiences for whether or not they bring
us closer to self-actualization.

15. Rogers’ Theory
– We maintain experiences (good and bad) that
fit our self-actualization, and discard
experiences that are unrelated to self-
actualization.
– The ‘fitting’ experiences are valuable because
they involve our “need for positive regard.”

16. Positive Regard
• We all desire positive regard. However, we tend
to only get positive regard during certain
conditions (e.g. for good behavior, for winning)
• We create “conditions of worth” – we assume
we must fulfill certain conditions if we want to
fulfill our desire for positive regard.
• We start living for “conditional positive regard,”
which takes us away from self-actualization.
• Rogers, in turn, offered “unconditional positive
regard.” With “UPR”, his patients were able to
become fully functioning people.

17. • www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldTpm3QRBKs
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjTpEL8acfo

18. Existential Psychology
• As said earlier, the major difference between
humanism and existentialism is that humanism
assumes people are basically good, but
existentialism assumes people have no inherent
qualities. (no good or bad, no destiny, etc.)
• Existentialism is founded in the romantic-
socialistic movements that explored free-will and
self-governance as our basic human nature.
• Existential psychology has its roots in Martin
Heidegger, who defined the existential quest.

19. Before Heidegger
• It is important to note that existentialism has two
major divisions: theists and atheists.
• Starting with Kierkegaard, the theists propose that
our existence is defined by the way we choose to
relate to “the source of existence” (God).
• Strongly inspired by Nietzsche, the atheists
propose that we define our own existence. God,
in turn, is just a way of defining our existence.
• Both, however, believe that existence involves free
will, and our free will is what defines us.

20. Martin Heidegger
(1889-1976)
• Before Heidegger, existentialists were just
the philosophers who looked inward to
find the meaning of their existence. With
Heidegger, existentialism became an art-
form of asking the questions of existence.
• Some say that Heidegger was an atheist,
but it may be more appropriate to say that
he considered God to be part of the
question of existence.
• His famous question (translation), “Why
are there things, rather than nothing?” …

21. Why things, rather than
nothing?
• With the famous question, Heidegger
would not offer answers, but a deep
explanation of the question being asked.
• To start, the question shows how
existence is defined for its contrast with
“nothing.” The quest, therefore, is to
discover the “existant” which is the
negation of “nothing.”
• The “negation of nothing” involves two
issues, The Self (“Who am I?”) and …
The Situation (“Why am I here?”)

22. The Dasein
• Dasein is the word that Heidegger coined for the
existential state of the “person in the world”
(made from the two German words for “being
there.” Da = there, sein = being).
• We cannot separate ourselves from the world
around us, so we understand our existence “in
the world” … our understanding is “dasein.”
• In other words, “Who am I?” and “Why am I
here?” are the same existential question, though
one refers to “being” and the other to “there.”

23. Being and Time (1927)
• Heidegger proposed how to explore meaning in
existence from within our dasein. His book,
“Being and Time” (1927), is hard to read, but is
the best summary of his personal exploration.
• His concern was with asking the best questions.
In general, he discussed questions such as,
“how is my ‘being’ the same (or different)
whether I am ‘there’ or ‘there’.” He did not care
about answers, but about explaining the
questions.
• “Being and Time” became a model for those
interested in both existence and psychology.

24. Dasein and Psychology
• The authentic life – To truly accept life, we must
also accept death. Our mortality is part of our
dasein. This is true even if mortality only exists
“in the world” (the theistic approach).
• If we deny the mortality of our dasein, we do
not address the true meaning of our dasein.
• Further, we do not become all we can become.
“Becoming” occurs within the “being,” and
becoming is best done within an authentic life.
• The “authentic life” is where existentialism
generally crosses over into psychology.

25. Dasein and Psychology
• If we maintain an inauthentic life, then we will
develop highly undesirable psychological
consequences.
• If we deny our “being” (our free will), we could
experience guilt. Concerning mental health, if
we are unable to accept our true “being,” we
could end up with an anxiety disorder.
• We should also separate our “being” from our
“thrown-ness.” Thrown-ness consists of our
coincidental truths, such as our gender, age, the
time we are born in and the place we live in.

26. Jean-Paul Sartre
(1905-1980)
• Sartre was an atheistic philosopher who
provided his own answers to Heidegger’s
questions regarding existence.
• His conclusions were profound, and he became
the most prominent existential philosopher. In
fact, he gave the field the name “existentialism”
and outlined its predecessors.
• As with all the existentialists, Sartre is difficult to
explain. His work, however, can be described as
a re-arrangement of Heidegger’s “existence”
questions.

27. Nothingness
• Heidegger said that existence must negate the
“nothingness.” Sartre, however, proposed that
the original nature of existence is “nothingness.”
• In other words, where Heidegger asked the
questions, Sartre provided answers by first
assuming that existence begins as nothingness.
• In his book “Being and Nothingness” (1943) he
proposed that “being” is an act of becoming. In
short, existence is nothing, the “being” is
becoming, and the “there” is prior becomings.

28. Nothingness and psychology
• Sartre made the ultimate statement that human
nature has no original form (or “it begins as
nothingness”), so we define our own existence.
• Sartre never directly addressed the field of
psychology, but he defined the atheistic
approach to existence – not just saying “God is
dead,” but offering an explanation of morality
and meaningfulness in the absence of a God.
• Since Sartre, existentialists have been easily
divided into belief in existence-is-within-God
(theists) or God-is-within-existence (atheists).

29. Ludwig Binswanger
(1881-1966)
• Binswanger was a student of Carl Jung, and a
uniquely close friend of Freud. Add in his
friendship with Heidegger, and he was in a good
place to develop existential psychoanalysis.
• He developed “daseinanalysis,” a psychoanalysis
that addressed the here-and-now! His
contribution did not offer original ideas, but it
did give us a more coherent form of
psychological existentialism.
• The goal of his existential psychology was to go
from “being in the world” to “being beyond the
world – free to impose our will on our “there.”

30. Being beyond the world
• Daseinanalysis starts with the “world-design,”
which is the way we relate to the “there.”
• Our “world-design” is the main influence on our
personality (extraversion, positivity, etc.).
• Our mental health is related to the quality of our
world-design. Better design = better health; sick
society = mental illness.
• The ultimate goal of daseinanalysis is to achieve
a healthy mental-state in which we learn how to
transform our circumstances with free will.

31. Rollo May (1909-1994)
• He brought Heidegger’s existentialism to
the U.S. in the 1950’s. He was also close
friends with Paul Tillich (a theological
existentialist).
• May represents the theistic existentialists,
meaning he is rooted in Kierkegaard – true
existence is a relationship with our creator.
• As a result, May’s psychology addresses
the difference between religious theology
and existential theology.

32. Existential Theology
• God – “the creator”, the purpose of our
existence. If there was no reason for us to
exist, we wouldn’t exist.
• Relationships with God – We have different wills
and different “theres”, so we have unique
relationships with our creator. One relationship
may have no relevance to another relationship.
• Good and evil – creations of the free will. Our
ability to define good and evil (laws, etc.)
reflects our ability to define our existence.
• Heaven/hell – not “there.” It is not “in the
world,” so it has no relevance to our free will.

33. May on Existential Theology
• May’s words…
“Call it confidence with the universe,
trust in God, belief in one’s fellow-
man, or what-not, the essence of
religion is the belief that something
matters – the pre-supposition that life
has meaning.”

34. • www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cay743y-Sak
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-B2MVr30Yw

35. “Theo-existo-psycho-
analysis”
• May merged theological existential psychology
with other theories, particularly Freud …
• First step, we must accept our “destiny” – all the
things we cannot control, including the
attributes with which we are born and the
environment we end up in. (based on
Heidegger’s “thrown-ness”)
• Then, we must have “courage” – the ability to
face our anxieties and accept our
responsibilities.
• Destiny and courage are components of four
“stages” of existentialism …

36. Existential Stages
• Innocence – our pre-ego (pre-self-conscious)
infancy. We are pre-moral (neither bad nor
good). Our only will is to fulfill our needs.
• Rebellion – adolescent development of ego by
rebelling against authority. We want freedom
(free will) but must learn responsibilities.
• Ordinary – normal adult ego. We know how to
be responsible, but we still prefer conformity
and traditional values.
• Creative – the authentic adult (existential
stage). We face the anxieties of free will with
courage.

37. May’s Psychoanalysis
• May called our motivations “daimons” (can be
good or bad). We live with a daimonic construct –
a collection of our daimons (Jungian).
• We also create “wishes” – the “playful imagining
of possibilities” of a daimon.
• Finally, we have “will” – the ability to act on our
motivations to make our wishes come true.
• Mental health is therefore the result of how we
use free will to try and make wishes come true.
This is categorized into three “personality types.”

38. Personality Types
• First, say that your daimon is “eros” – your
motivation is to be loved. (Eros is Cupid). May
defines two disorder personalities and one
healthy personality, based on will and____.
• One disorder is the “neo-Puritan” – they are all
will and no love (Perfection-driven and empty).
• The other is the “infantile” – they are all wishes
but no will (dependent and conforming).
• The healthy people are “creative” – can combine
our love (motivation) and will (“being”).

39. Personality Types
• May’s three personality types apply to all
motivations, but he defined them by the
daimon, not the will …
• 1) all will, no [daimon],
• 2) all [daimon], no will,
• 3) will and [daimon].

40. Mental Health
• The key to successful therapy …
–1) “no daimon” patients needed to
overcome their guilt to realize their
daimons.
–2) “no will” patients needed the courage
to face the anxieties of their free will.