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Questions and Answers
Which principle is not emphasized in Self-Determination Theory?
Which principle is not emphasized in Self-Determination Theory?
What is a potential downside of excessive optimism in positive psychology?
What is a potential downside of excessive optimism in positive psychology?
What aspect does positive psychology notably lack focus on?
What aspect does positive psychology notably lack focus on?
Which of the following is a suggested activity that may enhance happiness?
Which of the following is a suggested activity that may enhance happiness?
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What is a key difference between positive psychology and traditional humanistic psychology?
What is a key difference between positive psychology and traditional humanistic psychology?
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Which of the following is NOT a component of the Self-Determination Theory?
Which of the following is NOT a component of the Self-Determination Theory?
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Which statement best reflects the critique of positive psychology's research quality?
Which statement best reflects the critique of positive psychology's research quality?
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How does the humanistic approach contribute to understanding individual experiences?
How does the humanistic approach contribute to understanding individual experiences?
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Which aspect of therapy focuses on exploring life's big questions including death and free will?
Which aspect of therapy focuses on exploring life's big questions including death and free will?
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What concept emphasizes the importance of taking personal responsibility for one's actions in therapy?
What concept emphasizes the importance of taking personal responsibility for one's actions in therapy?
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What does Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggest is the ultimate motive for human behavior?
What does Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggest is the ultimate motive for human behavior?
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Which principle suggests that people are inherently good and possess free will?
Which principle suggests that people are inherently good and possess free will?
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What does Yalom emphasize in existential therapy that differentiates it from other therapeutic approaches?
What does Yalom emphasize in existential therapy that differentiates it from other therapeutic approaches?
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Which concept relates to the idea that one's existence is interconnected and the well-being of others is vital?
Which concept relates to the idea that one's existence is interconnected and the well-being of others is vital?
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In client-centered therapy, which of the following aspects is considered the most important for facilitating client growth?
In client-centered therapy, which of the following aspects is considered the most important for facilitating client growth?
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What is a common misconception people might have about bad faith in existentialism?
What is a common misconception people might have about bad faith in existentialism?
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Which principle does Carl Rogers emphasize regarding human behavior within therapy?
Which principle does Carl Rogers emphasize regarding human behavior within therapy?
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What aspect of self-actualization distinguishes it from immediate needs in Maslow’s perspective?
What aspect of self-actualization distinguishes it from immediate needs in Maslow’s perspective?
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In Client-centered Therapy, what does the therapist primarily ensure for clients?
In Client-centered Therapy, what does the therapist primarily ensure for clients?
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Which critique relates to the hierarchical aspect of Maslow's model?
Which critique relates to the hierarchical aspect of Maslow's model?
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According to Maslow, what is a critical feature of self-actualizers?
According to Maslow, what is a critical feature of self-actualizers?
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Which key concept does self-determination theory emphasize?
Which key concept does self-determination theory emphasize?
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Which statement best summarizes the essence of Maslow’s views on self-actualization?
Which statement best summarizes the essence of Maslow’s views on self-actualization?
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In the context of positive psychology, which statement is most accurate?
In the context of positive psychology, which statement is most accurate?
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Study Notes
PS338: Humanistic Perspectives
- Module delivered by Dr Jenny Groarke
- Course code: PS338
- University: University of Galway
Humanistic Psychology Overview
- Historical Underpinnings: Existentialism
- Influential Contributors: Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, George Kelly
Eight Elements of Humanistic Psychology
- Humanistic: Study of humans, not animals
- Holistic: Human system is greater than the sum of its parts
- Historic: Whole person from birth to death
- Phenomenological: Focus on interior, experiential, and existential aspects of personality
- Real life: Person in nature, society, and culture—not just the experimental lab
- Positivity: Joy, fruitful activities, virtuous actions and attributes
- Will: Choices, decisions, voluntary actions
- Value: A philosophy of life that describes what is desirable
Historical Underpinnings
- Emerged as an explicit movement in psychology in the 1950s
- Marked by the founding of the American Association for Humanistic Psychology (AAHP)
- Founders included George Kelly, Abraham Maslow, and Carl Rogers
- These thinkers felt core aspects of human experience were being overlooked by psychology of the time
Conscious Awareness
- Humanistic psychologists analyze individuals from their own viewpoint, not an external observer's viewpoint
- Subjective awareness/experiential approach: how people experience their worlds and themselves.
- Also known as the phenomenological approach.
Phenomenology: Awareness is Everything
- At the center of humanity
- Phenomenology is psychologically more important than the world itself.
- Basis of free will
Quotes from Phenomenology
- "We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are" — Talmud
- "It is not things in themselves that trouble us, but our opinions of things" — Epictetus
- "If you are distressed about anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment" — Marcus Aurelius
- "I do not react to some absolute reality, but to my perception of this reality. It is this perception which for me is reality." — Carl Rogers
Phenomenology: Construal and Introspection
- Construal—everyone's interpretation of the world is different.
- Construal forms the basis of personal life
- Free will is attained through choosing personal construals
- Introspection
Phenomenology
- Study of conscious experience from the individual's perspective.
- Awareness is everything
- Focus on interior, experiential, and existential aspects of personality
- Experience is happening now
- Experience is not reduced or compartmentalized
Existential Philosophy
- Existential is related to human existence
- Thousands of years of philosophy, particularly important are those philosophers whose work makes sense of human existence
- Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy are key to existential therapy
Existentialism
- Reaction against rationalism, science, and the Industrial Revolution
- Purpose: regain contact with the experience of being alive and aware
- Key questions: What is the nature of existence?, How does it feel? and And what does it mean?
Kierkegaard
- Protested against Christian dogma and "objectivity of science" both of these avoided the inherent anxieties of human existence
- Truth is discovered subjectively through individual action
- Most lacking is people's courage to live passionately and take risks, committing to a deeper understanding of existence
Nietzsche
- 'God is Dead' proposition and its implications for re-evaluating existence
- Invitation to shake off moral restraints and embrace free will and to live intensely
- The value is placed on standing out from the crowd
- The concepts of freedom, choice, responsibility, and courage are introduced
Heidegger
- Used the phenomenological approach to understand the meaning of being.
- Poetry and deep philosophical thinking bring greater insight than scientific insight.
- Favored hermeneutics to understand how people subjectively experience something.
Sartre
- 'Father' of existentialism—we give meaning to our lives through our own choices and actions
- Contributed other existential strands including emotions, imagination, and personal insertion into social and political worlds
- Other contributors include Camus, Marcel, Jaspers, and Tillich.
Existentialist and Humanistic Theorists
- Both focus on Phenomenology
- Believe in Free Will
- Believe meaning is important
- Emphasize uniqueness of each individual
Humanism and Existentialism Differ
- Existentialists don't believe in "human nature" or see it as containing both good and evil.
- Humanists think human nature is basically good
- Humanists have an optimistic outlook on humanity and the future
- Existentialists tend to be more gloomy/stark
Basic Assumptions of Existential Therapy
- The primacy of experience—Every individual is unique
- Isolation—We are born alone and die alone
- Self-awareness—Live in the here and now
- Free choice—People can choose what they become
- Responsibility—We are responsible for our own lives
- Personal meaning—What is the purpose of living? (How we live our life - being-in-the-world)
Three Parts of Experience
- Biological experience (Umwelt)
- Social experience (Mitwelt)
- Psychological experience (Eigenwelt)
- These dimensions are interwoven
- We are stretched between a positive pole of what we aspire to on each dimension and a negative pole of what we fear
"Thrown-ness" and Angst
- Thrown-ness—an important basis of experience; being thrown into modern society
- Angst or existential anxiety
- Includes anguish, forlornness, and despair
Bad Faith
- Our moral imperative is to face thrown-ness and angst
- Requires existential courage or optimistic toughness
- Can be avoided
- Living in bad faith creates three problems
-
- Living a cowardly lie
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- Unhappiness
-
- It is impossible — It is impossible not to choose. If I do not choose, I am still choosing. (Sartre)
Sartre and Bad Faith
- Statements of bad faith: inauthentic to assume existence is controlled by external forces.
- Displacement of responsibility onto others
- Self-perception as helpless victim of circumstances
- Attributing behavior to unconscious drives
- Absolving oneself of responsibility through temporary insanity or other ways
Authentic Existence
- The alternative to bad faith
- Will not relieve loneliness and unhappiness because every person is alone and doomed
- Life has no meaning beyond what you give it
- The essence of the human experience: understanding that you must die
- Allows awareness of freedom; this gives us dignity
- The existential challenge
- Ask: What does life want from me?
- Strive to better the human condition
Authentic Existence
- You are mortal, your life is short
- Master of your own destiny
- Be honest, insightful, and morally correct
- Takes moral courage
- Easier said than done!
The Eastern Alternative
- Existentialism is European/Western, focused on the individual.
- Existentialism is fundamentally wrong.
- Anatta—the illusion of a separate self is harmful; true nature of reality is interconnectedness; all people are interconnected
- Immortality
The Eastern Alternative - Anicca and Enlightenment
- Anicca—impermanence
- Enlightenment—achieved by understanding anicca to the point that the well-being of others is also seen as your own; leads to universal compassion
- Nirvana—serene, selfless state
Irvin Yalom
- Existential therapy explores life's "big questions": Death, meaninglessness, free will
- Working with clients to make meaning
- Taking personal responsibility and ownership of life
Optimistic Humanism: Rogers and Maslow
- Begin with existential assumptions (phenomenology is central; people have free will)
- Add another crucial idea (people are basically good)
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
- Basic assumption: The ultimate need or motive is to self-actualize
- Hierarchy of needs: how human motivation is characterized.
- Lower needs must be met first
Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
- Late 1950s key figure in establishing the Association and Journal of Humanistic Psychology
- His focus on positive aspects of personality was a reaction to his mother's mistreatment.
Maslow's Theory of Motivation
- Human needs form a hierarchy (often portrayed as a pyramid)
- Human needs vary in intensity
- Some needs are primitive, basic, and demanding (physiological needs—air, water, food)
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (Diagram)
- A pyramid illustrating the hierarchy: Physiological needs at bottom, rising to Self-actualization at the top. Includes levels of Status, esteem, Belonging, social activity, Safety, sex, and Basic physical needs
Maslow
- Self-actualization is the ultimate goal.
- Lower needs are deficiency based motives (arising from deprivation)
- Self-actualization is more like a distant call of unrealized potential; satisfying it is about seeking growth, not avoiding unpleasant situations
Maslow
- Self-actualization fully absorbed Maslow's interest.
- Everyone has the potential to self-actualise
- Self-actualization can occur for anyone in the process of becoming more congruent, more integrated, and more complete
- Some people actualise more significantly than others
- Identified probable self-actualizers, including Thomas Jefferson, William James, Abraham Lincoln, Henry David Thoreau, and Albert Einstein
Typical Features of a Self-Actualizer
- Involved in a cause or something outside their own selves; devoted, working toward something, something precious, calling or vocation
- Work and joy is viewed as one whole
- Dichotomy (work/joy) disappears
Characteristics of Self-Actualisers (Table)
- Efficiency and accuracy in perceiving reality
- Acceptance of self, others, and nature
- Spontaneity in thought and emotion; natural rather than artificial
- Focus on problem-centered concerns, including eternal philosophical questions
- Independence and autononmy when it comes to satisfactions
- Fresh appreciation of ordinary events
- Often experiencing "oceanic feelings"—sense of oneness with nature
Hierarchy of Needs – Practical Applications
- Career choice
- Employee motivation
- Understanding happiness in different cultures
Critique of Maslow's Hierarchy
- Little evidence to bear the hierarchical aspect
- Cultural bias: Some cultures place other needs before physiological needs; Example: the starving artist
- Little proof to propose that people are motivated to gratify only one need level at a time (except in situations with disagreements)
Self-Actualization: Rogers
- People have one basic tendency and striving—to actualize, maintain, and enhance their own experience
- People are understood from the perspective of their phenomenal field: Personal experience
- Goal of existence is to satisfy this need
Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
- People are inherently good, with an innate desire for becoming better
- Did not view personality development as satisfying a hierarchy of needs but rather that personality development centers on one's self-concept and how others treat them
- Aware that individuals can behave in ways that are incredibly cruel, horribly destructive, immature
Rogers – Structure of Personality
- Self Actualisation
- The need for positive regard
- Self concept
Actualisation Tendency (Rogers)
- Tendency towards growth; expressed in physical functioning (ie. immune system works to remove disease)
- Grows bigger and stronger (ie. potato sprouting)
- Also true for personality; person strives to grow and improve, seeking experiences that enhance life
- Organism evaluates experiences and actions to see if they are in line with this tendency. When not, there will be a feeling that something is off.
Positive Regard
- People have a strong motive to be accepted and have affection.
- Two types
- Unconditional positive regard: affection given without special conditions
- Conditional positive regard: affection given only if certain conditions are met.
Need for Self Actualisation, Positive Regard and Others Responses
- Need for self-actualization
- Unconditional positive regard from others leads to self-actualisation and vice versa
- Conditional positive regard leads to discrepancies between self and experience
Self Concept
- Rogers assumed that the self doesn't exist at birth but develops gradually as infants differentiate self from non-self
- The self-concept is a set of qualities a person views as part of himself/herself
- Two distinctions
- Actual self (how you really are)
- Ideal self (how you want to be)
Self Concept
- Self-concept develops over time, heavily dependent on the attitudes of significant others
- Punishing self-actualizing behaviour creates conflict between the need for positive regard and the actualising tendency
Self Concept and Psychopathology
- Individuals trying to create a self-concept that goes against actualising tendency may see themselves as having low self-esteem with a negative self concept
- This negative self concept can induce negative behaviour that reinforces this perception of inadequacy and worthlessness
- Behaviour is the interplay between outside world and how we feel about ourselves internally and our perception
Incongruence
- Breakdown in the unitary sense of self
- Incongruence between self-concept and experience causes use of defences to maintain consistency
- Defences include denial and distortion of experience
The Fully Functioning Person
- Clearly aware of reality and self
- Face the world without fear, self-doubt, or neurotic defenses; life is rich in emotion and self-discovery
- Importance of unconditional positive regard
- Conditions of worth: limit freedom
- Goal of therapy: to help the client become a fully functioning person
Client-Centered Therapy
- Role of therapist: Genuine, authentic person, not an authority figure
- Techniques: Empathy, unconditional positive regard, perspective taking and reflection
- Focuses on understanding the subjective experience of the person
Client-Centered (Rogerian) Therapy
- Non-directive counselling process
- Search for underlying meaning and values
- Therapeutic relationship where the client gains a better understanding of themselves
Client-Centered Therapy Process
- Semi-structured individual therapy
- Therapist provides unconditional positive regard; genuine empathic warmth; congruence
- Active listening to the client's story. Gain an understanding of person's feelings, beliefs, values, and convictions
In 1986, Rogers Stated...
- Empathy is potent; releases and confirms the most frightened client into the human race.
- Understanding = the individual belongs.
Client-Centered Therapy – Efficacy Research
- Real and ideal self-perceptions align more closely after therapy
- Criticism of research—both real and ideal selves change with therapy; closely aligning the two is not always a good measure of psychological adjustment
Personal Constructs: Kelly
- Based on how one's cognitive system assembles various construals of the world to construct individually held theories
- Help to determine how new experiences are construed.
- Each person has a unique set of construals.
Personal Constructs: Kelly (Role Construct Repertory Test)
- Role Construct Repertory (Rep) Test
- Identify three important people.
- Determine how two are similar and different from the third.
- Repeat with ideas, traits, etc.
- Discrimination reveals personal constructs
Personal Constructs: Kelly – Other Concepts
- Chronically accessible constructs
- Sources of constructions
- Personal constructed system
- Sociality corollary
Personal Constructs: Kelly – Constructive Alternativism
- Constructs and reality
- Implications of constructive alternativism for science
- Scientific paradigms are frameworks for construing the meaning of data.
- Researchers choose which paradigm to use.
- Importance of being aware of other paradigms as being equally plausible.
Personal Constructs: Kelly
- Maximizers versus satisficers
- Questioning personal constructs
- Personal construals of reality affect daily life
Positive Psychology
- Health means more than the absence of disease.
- Traditional psychology emphasizes psychopathology and malfunction; positive psychology focuses on positive phenomena
- Rebirth of humanistic psychology
- Focuses on uniquely human capacities and the meaning of life
- True happiness comes from overcoming important challenges.
Virtues
- Character strengths
- Problem of deciding how people should behave
- Look for attributes viewed as virtues in all cultures
- Core virtues (courage, justice, humanity, temperance, wisdom, transcendence)
- May be evolutionarily based, but not everyone has them
VIA Character Strengths & Virtues (Diagram)
- A circular diagram showing the VIA Character Strengths & Virtues framework, with different virtues linked to each other in a network or circular pattern.
Self-Determination Theory
- People are motivated to grow by three needs—Autonomy, competence, and relatedness
Positive Psychology
- Investigates processes, traits, and social institutions that promote a happy/meaningful life
- Factors that contribute/detract from happiness
- Activities that increase happiness, such as remembering blessings and doing favors for others
Positive Psychology
- Very optimistic viewpoint
- Criticized for not sufficiently addressing difficult issues or existential anxiety, and not being sufficiently balanced
- Some low quality research
A Word of Caution
- Poor, low quality research (type of interventions, lack of active control groups, small samples)
- Positivity bias in literature.
- The "burden of positivity"
- Toxic positivity
Humanistic and Positive Psychology in the 21st Century
- Should we always expect the best?
- Optimistic people are less fearful, more willing to take risks, and relatively happy; but can also take foolish risks OR fail to anticipate problems.
- Positive psychology not a full rebirth of humanism
The Mystery of Experience
- Unique contributions of humanistic approach
- Reminders of mysterious experience
- To understand another person, one must understand that person's construals
- Consequences of understanding differences in personal construals: cultural/moral relativism (don't judge other values/practices by your own)
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Test your understanding of key concepts in Positive Psychology and Self-Determination Theory with this quiz. Explore critiques, principles, and the differences between humanistic approaches. Perfect for students delving into psychology coursework.
