Humanistic Psychology: An Overview and Application to Psychopathology

Scott Rower

Alliant International University

Overview

In 1962 the famed Abraham Maslow founded a reactionary third leg of

psychology. In his opinion the existence of behaviorism and psychoanalysis alone were

leading to a deindividualization and dehumanization in the practice of psychology. This

third force was that of humanistic psychology (Buhler & Allen, 1972). At its inception

humanistic psychology was intended to create the study of and correction to full and

healthy human living. This approach was self-touted to approach people in a more

holistic essence rather than looking into just one’s specific hang-ups or fixations. Later

the approach focused on not only alleviating presenting symptoms but aiding the

progression of a patient toward the goal of becoming a fully functioning person. The

tenet of viewing a person as a whole starts with taking into consideration the patient’s

entire life instead of just what ails them as they seek treatment. Though it was proper

procedure at the time for psychiatrists to take the patient’s history, the practice was a

contradiction because the patient’s treatment was rarely related to the patient’s life as a

whole (Buhler & Allen, 1972).

Humanistic psychology has within it existential philosophy considerations to

relate a person and his own experiences. It is thought within this framework that one can

not observe and acknowledge his or her own problems until he or she is ready to do

something about it. Every intention of the patient therefore translates to an attention; the

attention translates to “I can” (Buhler & Allen, 1972). There are five main postulates that

summarize the theory (Bugental, 1964). The first is that human beings cannot be reduced

into components. The next, human beings exist in a uniquely human context. Human

consciousness includes an awareness of oneself in context of other people. Human

beings have choices and responsibilities. Lastly, human beings are intentional, seeking

meaning, creativity and value.

The humanistic approach tends to look past a pathologized view of a person and

focuses more on the healthy aspects of a person. The aim is to create a stronger and

healthier sense of self. This goal of self actualization is brought about through

understanding and the working through by the client and therapist of the client’s personal

life experiences (Bugental, 1964). This type of approach can come in many forms,

Maslow is famous for explaining the matter through his hierarchy of needs and

motivations, Rollo May views therapy as a process of acknowledging human choice and

the tragic aspects of human existence and Carl Rogers developed his person-centered

therapy within the humanistic model.

The therapist assumes the role of the facilitator towards effective self searching by

the client. With this there are basic conditions that need to be supported for effective

therapy for take place. There must be a fundamental sense of concern by the client to be

mindful of what genuinely matters in concern to resolving any issues and evolving into a

better functioning person. Concern can morph through work into the lesser form of

effective intention, but it still should never fade completely. Another guideline is that

when the journey of therapy unfolds, multiple paths to be taken can surface and the

therapist must trust in the client’s choice of what to work on. The client’s own sense is

the best teller of validity and the active participation and responsibility of the client is

important as well. Next, the therapist should make clear that the therapeutic undertaking

is only of the client’s own, that only the client can carry it out and is solely responsible

for any change. Lastly there must be recognition by the client that the process can never
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be completed perfectly, that they may lose sight of the correct path many times and it

only through this process that the client will have the means for taking charge of his or

her own life (Bugental, 1978).

Carl Rogers’ approach to the subject involves a client’s drive to realize their own

potential. When a client comes to a therapist there is an incongruence that must be

worked out to be made congruent with their true self. This incongruence is most often

formed from pressures to conform to others’ wants and expectations and thus the client

embodies what is not authentic. The many people who live in this incongruent state lose

out on the potential that comes from a having relationships with others that fully reflect

who they are on the inside. Moreover, these individuals expend energy to keep up their

false self concept and they are under constant threat of exposure which leads to the

employment of defensive mechanisms (Buhler & Allen, 1972).

Abraham Maslow worked within the same framework of humanistic psychology

but he had a different approach to the subject than Carl Rogers. Maslow’s basic theory

started with his hierarchy of needs. He suggests that humans have a number of needs that

are innate and can be classified as conative, cognitive, neurotic and aesthetic needs.

These needs are arranged in order of their relative potency and for visual convenience

into a pyramid. The base of the pyramid starts with physiological needs such as food,

water, air and sleep. Once this first level is met an individual can go on to work on

meeting the needs of the next layer up. The second layer is the need for security and

safety, the third is the need for love and belonging, the forth is the need of esteem and

finally the apex of the pyramid is reaching what Maslow calls self actualization. One of

the main points of his argument is that one can not go on to even think about dealing with
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issues of friends and group identification in the third level if they are stuck on the second

level by a threat to their own safety (Buhler & Allen, 1972). Also Maslow wrote

extensively on the peak and goal of the pyramid, self actualization, which is the

fulfillment of what a person is capable of becoming and which is often beyond what one

would expect from oneself.

Application to Psychopathology

When a client comes to a therapist there is a sense of possibility that their issues

may be identified, explored and resolved through working with the therapist. There will

be, with all hopes, an awakened potential that is otherwise blocked off at the moment.

There is hope that life can be different than it has been and this is a chief motivation

enthusiastically supported by the humanistic approach. Often a client has becomes blind

to all the factors of their situation by unconsciously suppressing their awareness, they

may unload the responsibility of their situation onto others or they may fall back into

patterns that were more appropriate at a younger age (Bugental, 1978). All these

behaviors were described by Sigmund Freud as defensive mechanisms but the humanistic

therapist also takes particular note of these types of behaviors.

A client that presents with some of these behaviors to a therapist following

Rogers’ approach would mentally note that this is most likely the product of an

incongruency of the inner self to the outwardly presenting self. A case example could be

a boy that is referred to a therapist because he is seen as not adapting to a new school and

a new region after recently moving from a different part of the country. His religion

could be a contributing force to his difficulty fitting in as the local children are not
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appearing to be accepting of it. As reported by the boy’s mother, he is withdrawn from his

usual congenial self. The boy is resistant to therapy and denies he is having trouble. The

goal here would be to disband the incongruency of his denial and have it become more

in-tune with the reality that he is having a hard time adjusting. If labeled by the DSM

criteria, the boy would qualify for adjustment disorder with anxiety and or depressive

features. The boy shows the classic defensive mechanism of denial which helps to aid

him in dealing with his everyday life at school by masking the threat to his conscious but

the threat is by no means dealt with. The longer this threat is not dealt with the more

rigid and difficult that boy will become with dealing with his role as an outcast.

Eventually if the threat is taken to an extreme enough degree, the defense could

altogether cease to function leaving the boy with irrational, disorganized and bizarre

behavior as he becomes aware of his perceptual incongruency of the situation (Bugental,

1978).

In treatment, to go about opening the boy up to his current experience and lessen

his defensiveness, the therapist would need to have him identify that it is normal for

someone in a religious minority, or anyone who is new to a town for that matter, to feel

like an outcast at first. He must then ease into allowing the boy to take full control of his

ability to deal with the issue (Buhler & Allen, 1972). There are several models within the

humanistic approach that the therapist would build his rapport with the client around. If

the therapist chose for this case to use the congruent mirror approach he would try his

best to experience within himself the emotions as he fully listens to the client’s state of

mind. Also, the therapist tries to mirror back as accurately as possible to the client what

the therapist is hearing the client say with strict attention to not include any interpretation,
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teaching or guidance. This approach is goaled to try and foster a congruent relationship

between the client and therapist which in turn reflects back, with the help of the

mirroring, to the client to hopefully foster growth potential for self-renewal. With all

hope, by the conclusion of therapy the boy would be more mentally harmonious and

would realize an enlarged sense of self potential (Bugental, 1978).

The fundamental goals of the humanistic theory can be boiled down into realizing

inherent potential and resolving any existential fears; this happens to dovetail most

effectively with treating clients whom are battling anxiety as well as depressive disorders.

In another example, a woman client comes to therapy complaining of early morning

awakening, uncontrollable crying, fatigue and a lack of motivation. According to the

DSM, the client would fit a preliminary diagnosis of major depressive disorder.

The nurturing sense of humanistic therapy often gives a client back their own

sense of self approval needed for themselves to overcome their own issues, which is what

the process will entail for this second theoretical client. The therapist is there for the

client to be open, to be accepting of all the aspects of the client’s personality that unfold

over the course of long term therapy and to not show any sense of disapproval that the

client expects and so new doors of inner opportunity often open. When this process

works as anticipated through work on both the part of the therapist as well as the client

over the course of many sessions, the client is much more apt to develop trust in their

own reality. The reaffirming words, behaviors and reflected feelings of the therapist

nurture a relearning of inner trust to express what is deeply most true for the client. This

expression of what often can be completely forgotten to have existed literally leads to a

reawakening of possibility and sense of control over one’s own life (Bugental, 1978).
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Clients are free to be more of themselves than they ever thought possible and to discern

what comes from themselves compared to what comes from a “should” of external

experience. Assuming ideal humanistic treatment in this manner, this client will be a

different, more genuinely experiencing person at the conclusion of treatment compared to

the repressed and depressed woman who first came into the therapist’s office.

In a third example, is a man who is brought to therapy by his wife for

compulsively hoarding possessions and for his lack of emotional reciprocation. The man

is far past frugal and a collector to the fact that he is excessively storing away food,

books, magazines and money. A classification of the man by other standards would be

that he has attachment issues with possible depression. For the humanistic therapist

though this type of case would be a standard case for examination into the man’s

fulfillment of Maslow’s needs pyramid. Within the clinical interview it is revealed that

the man was unfortunately raised by very poor parents in an unstable environment and

that most of his own parenting was done by himself. Therefore, Maslow’s model

explains that the client’s need for safety was never fully fulfilled in childhood and it is

there that he became fixated. Never having a definite feeling of security led the man to

have an insatiable need for structure, order and predictability which lead to his current

symptoms. Specifically the man’s cognitive needs as a child were never met and they

have thus manifested themselves in adulthood as neurotic needs (Buhler & Allen, 1972).

One of the many effects of this type of upbringing is that the man never received

any emotional parenting. In a normal childhood a child is reinforced their safety by the

interpersonal relationships they develop within the family which aids the child through

normal progression through the second layer of the pyramid (Buhler & Allen, 1972). In
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his attempt to compensate for this need the client collects whatever he relates to him as

giving him security and control. The client must be made aware that his seeking of safety

by lesser means through the possessions he is hoarding will never satiate this need. The

client never fully processed his awareness of and comfort with love and belonging by

relating to others. This would be a main goal of therapy as well as instilling a feeling of

self security by inner awareness and congruency over his attachments to external objects.

Humanistic theory goes above and beyond the call to relinquish the public from

mental distress as other theories do and looks into how to develop beyond the state of

normalcy. The search for personal meaning of the self and also of existence, that is

promoted by this approach, leads people both with and without mental suffering down a

path toward a more richly experienced life. Thus the humanistic psychologist takes the

advice of the Delphic Oracle- “know thyself” and expands the urge to “be thyself”

(Buhler, 1962).
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References

Bugental, J. F. T. (1964). The third force in psychology. Journal of Humanistic

Psychology, 4, 19-25.

Bugental, J. F. T. (1978). Psychotherapy and process: The fundamentals of an

existential-humanistic approach. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley Publishing

Company.

Buhler C. (1962). Values in psychotherapy. New York: Free Press.

Buhler C. & Allen, M. (1972). Introduction to humanistic psychology. Monterey, CA:

Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.