Why is humanistic approach important

Humanistic psychologists study the person as a whole. This is the opposite of behaviorist psychologists who believe that behavior is a product of the environment a person is in. Humanistic psychologists emphasize human experiences such as grief, love, and self-worth as the driving force behind human behavior. The humanistic perspective proposes that how people see themselves and how they attach meaning to their experiences relate to their behavior.

Decision-making and internal needs are considered far more than responses to external stimuli or instincts. Humanistic psychology , also called humanism, was developed in the s due to its limitations and behaviorist and psychoanalytic perspectives.

Abraham Maslow and Clark Moustakas established humanism to pursue a theory that focused on a positive outlook and had a more humanistic approach. Maslow and Moustakas believed that the core tenets of self-actualization, being, becoming, individuality, intrinsic nature, health, and creativity needed to be at the forefront of their new approach.

Humanism stresses that subjective reality is the basis of behavior and that focusing on the individual is more important than relying on averages produced by a group of individuals. This view is drastically different than the medical model, which assumes that physical problems cause emotional and behavioral issues and thus should be medically treated. There are some conditions where the medical model should be applied, such as cases of traumatic brain injury impacting behavior; however, humanistic psychology recognizes that using the medical model can be problematic for many mental health problems.

Humanistic psychology also maintains that mental health problems can improve through psychotherapy and are often linked to interpersonal relationships, not the medical model. Psychologists who follow the medical model believe that people with mental health issues have illnesses that need diagnosing and treating.

Diagnosing these illnesses is done through observing symptoms. Humanistic psychologists believe in the uniqueness of the individual that needs interpersonal relationships to thrive. The humanistic approach does not rely on symptoms and instead emphasizes how a person sees themselves and self-growth.

Objective studies are not used in humanistic therapy because therapists that use the humanistic model believe that human nature cannot be reduced to mere numbers and statistics. Instead, humanistic psychology uses participant observation, unstructured interviews, and other qualitative measures to collect data.

Using the humanistic approach, interviews and humanistic therapy are not directed towards any particular topic, and the patient is not lead towards any particular answer. This practice is also referred to as Rogerian Therapy and suggests people each have individual priorities of needs that dictate their drive and sense of self.

Using this approach, humanistic psychology therapists use non-pathological methods and target adaptive and beneficial traits and individual behaviors during treatment. One of the foundations of humanistic psychology is that people have a hierarchy of needs that must be met for a positive self-image and fulfillment. The hierarchy of needs was developed by Abraham Maslow a humanistic theory and comprised five tiers that are usually depicted as a pyramid.

The foundation of the pyramid is physiological needs. These needs are the basic needs a human has to survive-access to food, water, sleep, and warmth. Without these basic human needs being met, a person cannot be expected to contribute and be a well-adjusted member of society.

The next level is also basic needs but are the things we are concerned with after being fed and rested. These are human safety and security needs. A person must feel safe, trust those around them, and live a relatively safe life before they can begin building relationships.

The third step of the pyramid begins with our psychological needs. Once our basic needs are met, we are motivated to make friends and build intimate relationships. Research on such animals can tell us, so they argued, very little about human thought, behavior and experience. It is the only approach that explicitly states that people have free will, but its position on this topic is somewhat incoherent as on one hand it argues that people have free will.

However, on the other hand it argues that our behavior is determined by the way other people treat us whether we feel that we are valued and respected without reservation by those around us.

The approach is holistic as it does not try to break down behaviors in simpler components. As this approach views the individual as unique it does not attempt to establish universal laws about the causes of behavior, it is an idiographic approach.

As the approach views the individual as unique it does not believe that scientific measurements of their behavior are appropriate. The humanistic approach has been applied to relatively few areas of psychology compared to the other approaches.

Therefore, its contributions are limited to areas such as therapy , abnormality, motivation and personality. Client-centred therapy is widely used in health, social work and industry.

A possible reason for this lack of impact on academic psychology perhaps lies with the fact that humanism deliberately adopts a non-scientific approach to studying humans. Humanistic psychologists rejected a rigorous scientific approach to psychology because they saw it as dehumanizing and unable to capture the richness of conscious experience.

However, Rogers did attempt to introduce more rigour into his work by developing Q-sort — an objective measure of progress in therapy. In many ways, the rejection of scientific psychology in the s, s and s was a backlash to the dominance of the behaviorist approach in North American psychology. For example, their belief in free-will is in direct opposition to the deterministic laws of science. Another limitation is the humanistic approach is that it is ethnocentric. Many of the ideas that are central to humanistic psychology, such as individual freedom, autonomy and personal growth, would be more readily associated with individualistic cultures in the Western world such as the US.

Collectivist cultures such as India, which emphasise the needs of the group and interdependence, may not identify so easily with the ideals and values of humanistic psychology.

Therefore, it is possible that the approach would not travel well and is a product of the cultural context within which it was developed and an emic approach is more appropriate.

It proposes a positive view of human nature, however, it could be argued that this might not be very realistic when considering the everyday reality such as domestic violence and genocides.

Also, the areas investigated by humanism, such as consciousness and emotion are very difficult to scientifically study. The outcome of such scientific limitations means that there is a lack of empirical evidence to support the key theories of the approach. However, the flip side to this is that humanism can gain a better insight into an individual's behavior through the use of qualitative methods, such as unstructured interviews.

The approach also helped to provide a more holistic view of human behavio r, in contrast to the reductionist position of science. McLeod, S. Simply Psychology. Maslow, A. A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review , 50, Rogers, C. Significant aspects of client-centered therapy. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance.

Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Humanism is a philosophy that stresses the importance of human factors rather than looking at religious, divine, or spiritual matters.

Humanism is rooted in the idea that people have an ethical responsibility to lead lives that are personally fulfilling while at the same time contributing to the greater good for all people. Humanism stresses the importance of human values and dignity. It proposes that people can resolve problems through the use of science and reason. Rather than looking to religious traditions, humanism instead focuses on helping people live well, achieve personal growth, and make the world a better place.

The term "humanism" is often used more broadly, but it also has significance in a number of different fields including psychology.

Humanistic psychology is a perspective that emphasizes looking at the whole individual and stresses concepts such as free will, self-efficacy, and self-actualization. Rather than concentrating on dysfunction, humanistic psychology strives to help people fulfill their potential and maximize their well-being.

This area of psychology emerged during the s as a reaction to psychoanalysis and behaviorism, which had dominated psychology during the first half of the century. Psychoanalysis was focused on understanding the unconscious motivations that drive behavior while behaviorism studied the conditioning processes that produce behavior.

Humanist thinkers felt that both psychoanalysis and behaviorism were too pessimistic, either focusing on the most tragic of emotions or failing to take into account the role of personal choice. However, it is not necessary to think of these three schools of thought as competing elements. Each branch of psychology has contributed to our understanding of the human mind and behavior.

Humanistic psychology added yet another dimension that takes a more holistic view of the individual. Some religious traditions incorporate elements of humanism as part of their belief systems. Examples of religious humanism include Quakers, Lutherans, and Unitarian Universalists. Secular humanism rejects all religious beliefs, including the existence of the supernatural. This approach stresses the importance of logic, the scientific method, and rationality when it comes to understanding the world and solving human problems.

Humanism focuses on each individual's potential and stresses the importance of growth and self-actualization. The fundamental belief of humanistic psychology is that people are innately good and that mental and social problems result from deviations from this natural tendency. Humanism also suggests that people possess personal agency and that they are motivated to use this free will to pursue things that will help them achieve their full potential as human beings.

The need for fulfillment and personal growth is a key motivator of all behavior. People are continually looking for new ways to grow, to become better, to learn new things, and to experience psychological growth and self-actualization.

Some of the ways that humanism is applied within the field of psychology include:.