by Walkerwriter

Created on: March 22, 2007   Last Updated: May 02, 2007

Humanistic psychology. This is sometimes called the third force in psychology and developed mostly in the 1950 and 60's partly as a reaction again the basic aspects of psychoanalysis and behaviourist psychology. It was felt that these two approaches to psychology were largely negative in their views of human nature and potential. Humanistic psychology wanted to stress a more positive approach that sees each person as unique and with great potential for growth.

Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers are the two best known Humanistic psychologists. Maslow (1908-1970) wanted to study healthy happy individuals to see what makes them so. He contrasted this to Freud, whom he considered focused on the sickness in human beings. Maslow devised the notion of Self-actualisation', by which he meant the process of fulfilling our individual potential. He came up with a way of visualising this process with his hierarchy of needs' pyramid. In this we have the basic needs at the bottom, that should be fulfilled first these are the physiological needs such as hunger, sleep etc. It progresses up in seven steps towards more mental needs, such as the need for the esteem of others and self respect. And then towards aesthetic needs, such as with the beauty of nature and art . Then the final stage is self-actualisation itself.

Maslow thought that only human beings have the potential to reach this stage, but admitted that few people actually do reach the stage of self-actualisation. This is a weakness of the theory, as it is perhaps not practical for the vast majority of people if the end is so difficult to reach. Maslow also talks of peak experiences', in which the individual is totally wrapped up in a meaningful moment in which they feel fully alive. However, some have criticised Maslow by saying that there is little guidance given as to how to achieve these states or evidence collected to indicate their existence. As Cardwell et al have mentioned: " There is little direct empirical evidence for the model, and indeed it is hard to imagine how one would collect such evidence." (1996, page 167). The lack of scientific rigour of humanistic psychology has attracted criticism, especially among more systematically minded psychologists.

Other important humanistic psychologists, Slife and Williams (1995), emphasised that in the process of becoming self actualised that there was often a conflict between what the individual wanted deep down and what their environment was pressuring them to do or think.

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