Humanistic psychology
School · 1950s-1970s, United States · Psychology, stage 2: Map the schools
Humanistic psychology called itself the third force, positioned against behaviourism, which it accused of treating people as machines, and against psychoanalysis, which it accused of treating them as damaged. Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers argued that psychology had built its picture of human nature from rats and from patients, and that it should also study healthy people functioning well. The shared commitments were that people have an inbuilt tendency toward growth, that subjective experience is legitimate data, and that the therapist's job is to provide conditions in which growth resumes rather than to interpret or to condition. Its empirical record is uneven: Maslow's hierarchy of needs is famous far beyond its evidence and the ordering has not held up well under testing, while Rogers was unusual among clinicians of his generation in recording sessions and submitting therapy outcomes to measurement.
What it claims
- People have an inherent tendency toward growth, given the right conditions.
- Subjective experience is legitimate psychological data, not an obstacle.
- Psychology built on the study of damaged or captive subjects gives a distorted picture of human nature.
- The conditions for change are relational, not technical.
Key ideas
People
Sources
- Humanistic psychology Wikipedia
- A Theory of Human Motivation Classics in the History of Psychology, York UniversityMaslow's 1943 paper, which is more tentative about the hierarchy than its later popular versions.
- Person-centered therapy Wikipedia
