Humanistic Psychology

What are the four main themes of Existentialism?

1. A person's unavoidable uncertainty when confronted on the one hand by a universe devoid of any clear-cut or easily fixed meaning, and on the other hand, by the inevitability of his own eventual nothingness, or death. 2. His of her inherent freedom to choose the attitudes and actions that he or she takes in the face of this potentially meaningless situation. 3. The omnipresent constraints, or limits, that the person's situation places upon his or her freedom. 4. The impossibility of successfully evading responsibility for whatever choices he or she makes.

Both counterculture and HP emphasized

1. Freedom and the rejection of the idea of role-appropriate behavior 2. The need to expand one's consciousness 3. Avoidance of the western tendency to view polarities in a dichotomous 4. The concept of community.

Gestalt Techniques

1. Games of Dialogue - Creating a dialogue between two parts of the personality that have split. 2. Top Dog V. Under Dog - Top dog is that part of the personality that moralizes and lives in a world of shoulds. Top dog tends to be bossy and condemning. Under Dog tends to be childlike, impulsive, and irresponsible. 4. Unfinished business - A form of incomplete gestalt. The client is asked to finish unfinished business. The most common is resentment. All are usually unresolved feelings. 5. Playing the Projection - The major defense mechanism according to the gestalt therapists. The client is asked to play the projection, as a way of becoming aware of the parts of himself or herself that are being projected onto others. 6. Exaggeration and Repetition - Exaggeration is aimed at helping clients understand body language. 7. Reversals - The behavior of the client is often seen as reversal of underlying impulses The client who is expressing excessive timidity is asked to play an exhibitionist. 8. I take responsibility - The client is asked to say "I won't" rather than "I can't." He is also asked to say "I take responsibility for it." 9. The Rehearsal Experiment - Sharing with each other the role we want to play and how we will go about it. 10. Staying with the Feeling - Usually unpleasant ones that the client has trouble dealing with - so not to avoid it.

Existentialism's influence included...

1. Kierkegaard (1840s) who focused on alienation, need for commitment, a human condition that requires choice & decision (the need for ethics). 2. Heidegger who focused on Being 3. Sartre who focused on the absurdity of life, how humans are required to form commitments and make decisions without proper knowledge of their consequences giving rise to: (a) despair, (b) decision, (c) dread, and (d) self-deception 4. Camus who paints a pessimistic view of life and who humans are alienated from life & one's own feelings.

What made the humanistic movement popular?

1. Perceived schools as fostering an emotional climate in which feelings of secrety, shame, and depersonalization flourished. 2. Increased Alienation in American Society 3. Increased Technology 4. Vietnam and the War against pollution 5. Counterculture and HP held similar views of the counterculture were very humanistic.

Specific Milestones in Humanistic Psychology

1. Publication in England of John Cohen's Humanistic Psychology in 1958. 2. Founding of Journal of Humanistic Psychology in 1961. 3. Bugental's Address, Humanistic Psychology: A new breakthrough, to Orange County Psychological Association in 1962. 4. Formation of American Association for Humanistic Psychology in 1962. 5. Founding of the first graduate in humanistic Psychology in Sonoma State College in 1963. 6. Series of published works in 1960's. 7. Creation of subdivision in APA: Division of Humanistic Psychology in 1970. 8. Opening of Esalen Institute in 1962.

Humanism's Influence Included

1. Socrates—individual love of liberty, the open forum 2. School of Chartres—represented a return to Socrates (freer thinking) and a departure from Aristotle (more formal) which fueled the Renaissance. 3. Petrarch (d. 1374; father of humanism) may have been the first figure to be associated with humanism which got it's name from the focus of studies—Studia Humanitas (the humanities). This movement essentially emphasized the study of the classics which was thought to lead to a more highly developed human. It emphasized human's dignity and glorification 4. Nicholas V (1447-1455) was the first humanist Pope—he allowed criticism of the Vulgate. 5. Erasmus—"On Free Will" which gave impetus behind the Reformation emphasized freedom (and free will) and the creative power of the individual.

Central Emphases within Humanistic Psychology

1. Strongly Phenomenological or experiential (Each person has an unassailable right to his or her own unique feelings and point of view; strong interest in subjective experience. 2. Focus on the human's essential wholeness and integrity (influenced by Gestaltists; self-actualization - leading to greater completeness. 3. Insists that human beings retain an essential freedom and autonomy (people can transcend limits; choice is a central concept. 4. Humanistic Psychology is anti-reductionistic in its orientation (does not reduce conscious experiences to basic drives or defenses. 5. Human nature can never fully be defined.

What are the Theoretical Concepts

1. Study and Understand the whole person throughout the course of life. 2. There is a value in a single case study. N=1 3. Consideration of open systems theory.

Humanism Challenges the following

1. The assumption that psychology should emulate the philosophy and procedures of natural science. 2. The predominant view of human beings as primarily responding to, and being shaped by, the various determining influences that impinge upon them from within or without.

The Association of Humanistic Psychology's Published Four Tenets

1. The experiencing person. 2. Meaningfulness 3. Distinctively Human Qualities 4. An ultimate concern with and valuing of the dignity and worth of man.

What are the four basic tendencies in humans?

1. The tendency to strive for personal satisfaction in sex, love, and ego recognition. 2. The tendency toward self-limiting adaptation for the purpose of fitting in, belonging, and gaining security. 3. The tendency toward self-expression and creative accomplishments. 4. The tendency toward integration of order-upholding.

Projection

A trait, attitude, feeling, or bit of behavior which actually belongs to your own personality but is not experienced as such; instead it is attributed to objects or persons in the environment and then experienced as directed toward you by them instead of the other way around.

What are two leading humanistic writers?

Buhler and Schaffer

Egotism

Characterized by the individual stepping outside of himself and becoming a spectator or commentator on himself and his relationship with the environment.

Existential vs. Neurotic Anxiety

Death Awareness causes Anxiety. We are not alone, we cannot fully know what it is like to be someone else.

Who wrote "Free will" which emphasized "inner freedom" and man's essential freedom and the creative power of the individual?

Erasmus

The two philosophical systems that greatly influence humanistic psychology

Humansim Existentialism

The I-Thou Relationship

I-Thou: We are both the subject of our respective worlds. I know, without empathy, that you are the subject of your world. When I define you in essentialistic terms, (you are kind, stable) I know you are a process. (Not always kind, stable) You may see yourself as not kind. I-IT: When I use you for my own purposes.

Desensitization

Involves the avoidance of experiencing self or the environment.

Being and Non-Being

Language cannot easily capture "beingness." Basic conditions of left set some limits. The experience of what I am is at times dwarfed by the experience that I am. Self as subject and self as object.

Introjection

May interrupt at any point in the cycle.

Who was the first humanist Pope?

Nicholas V

Existential Guilt vs. Neurotic Guilt

Ontological guilt (genuine): When someone has brought real hurt or disappointment to another. Also occurs when we neglect certain potentialities within us. When this guilt is evaded we become neurotic. This person because less of an active subject and objectifies himself - accusing himself of having failed to meet arbitrary standards involving fair and loving treatment of others.

Intentionality

Our perception is guided somewhat by our intentions. My intentions help to create my interpersonal experience. I am responsible for my perceptions and thoughts conscious or unconscious.

Who is considered the "Father of Humanism?"

Petrarch

Confluence

The condition where an organism and environment are not differentiated from each other. The boundaries are blurred as between fetus and mother. Two individuals merge with one another's beliefs, attitudes, or feelings without recognizing the boundaries between them and the ways in which they are different.

Being-In-The-World

The hyphens indicate that without the world there is no self and without the self there is no world. My creativity is involved in my formation of my reality.

Humanistic Psychology is the ______force in contemporary psychology.

Third.

Deflection

Turn aside from direct contact with another person that becomes a way of reducing awareness of the impact of the other, the environment etc...

Authentic and Inauthentic Experience

We do things to avoid confronting the specter of non-being.

Gestalt Cycle Order

Withdrawal, Sensation, Awareness, Mobilization, Action, Final Contact, Satisfaction