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NATURE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND: HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Victor Frankl did not agree with Freud that only unconscious processes are important. Human beings determine their own fates through conscious decisions, but the unconscious mind often defeats their efforts...

NATURE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND: HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Victor Frankl did not agree with Freud that only unconscious processes are important. Human beings determine their own fates through conscious decisions, but the unconscious mind often defeats their efforts to make good, conscious decisions. NATURE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND: HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY One’s self-concept is the key towards making good conscious decisions, but the society makes it difficult to make an accurate self-concept. Upsetting information (i.e., gap between ideal and actual self) will be pushed down to the unconscious, yielding two negative outcomes: 1. Most individuals have inaccurate self-concepts. 2. Those unconscious information sometimes threatens one’s self-concept and leads to anxieties. CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES: NEUROSCIENCE PERSPECTIVE In 1894, Spanish scientist and physician Santiago Ramon y Cajal published the first description of neurons – the cells that make up the brain and the nervous system. His view that the brain was made up of a network of interacting neural cells laid the foundation of the modern understanding of the role of the brain in psychology. CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES: SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES People are all the same in fundamentally important ways and yet different in other equally important ways. The modern sociocultural perspective in psychology was shaped by social learning theory. Our personalities, beliefs, attitudes, and skills are learned from others. The sociocultural perspective counteract the false impression that all human beings are the same in the eyes of psychology CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES: SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES The sociocultural perspective also promotes cultural relativity, which has two important ideas: 1. The sociocultural perspective encourages a form of thinking that cultures are different to each other in relative terms, but not in judgmental terms. 2. The sociocultural perspective gives a reminder that not all members of a given culture, ethnic group, or gender, are alike. There are usually more differences among persons within each group than between different groups. BASELINE INFORMATION ABOUT BEHAVIOR 1. Human beings are biological creatures. 2. Every person is different, yet all people are much the same. 3. People can be understood fully only on the context of their cultures and other social influences. 4. Human lives are a continuous process of change. 5. Behavior is motivated. 6. Humans are social animals. 7. People play an active role in creating their experiences. 8. Behavior can be adaptive or maladaptive.