Exam (elaborations)
Outline and evaluate the Humanistic Approach. Compare with one other approach. (16mark).
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- Approaches
- Institution
- AQA
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Outline and evaluate the Humanistic Approach. Compare with one other approach.(16mark).
The humanistic approach, developed by Rogers and Maslow in the 1950s, is known as the ‘third
force’ in psychology along with behaviourism and the psychodynamic approach. It focuses on
humans as total individuals and their healthy development.
One of the assumptions of the humanistic approach is that all humans have free will. Free will is the
idea that all humans have total control over their decisions that aren't decided by any external
forces. Humanistic psychologists believe that we are active agents who can determine our own
development. For this reason, scientific models that establish general principles are rejected, as
these are reductionist. This is known as the person-centred approach.
Another approach of the humanistic approach is that all humans have an innate tendency to achieve
their full potential. This is known as self-actualisation. Maslow's hierarchy of needs state that self-
actualisation is the highest level, and that the former four levels (physiological, safety, love, and self-
esteem) must be met before reaching it. However, Maslow also suggested that there are many
important psychological barriers that may prevent someone from reaching their full potential,
meaning that not everyone will reach self-actualisation.
The final main assumption of this approach is that for personal growth to be achieved, an
individual's concept of self must be congruent to their ideal self. If the gap between the two
becomes too large, it is impossible for self-actualisation to be achieved and a state of incongruence
will be experienced. This gap may be formed by a person experiencing conditions of worth in their
childhood, in which they are faced with conditional love from their parents. In order to limit this gap,
Rogers developed client centred therapy, a therapy type in which the therapist's role would be to
provide unconditional positive regard that the patient failed to receive as a child.
A strength of this approach is that it is not reductionist and considers the human as whole.
Humanists reject attempts to break behaviour up into smaller components, and advocate holism.
Holism is the idea that subjective experience can be understood by considering the whole person.
The humanistic approach is one of the only approaches that takes a completely holist approach, as
many others attempt to split human behaviour up into different segments. This approach has more
validity as it considers meaningful behaviour in its real-life context.
A weakness of this approach is that it has limited application to real life circumstances. Whilst
Roger’s therapy has revolutionised counselling techniques, and Maslow’s hierarchy can explain
motivation, this approach has had a limited impact within the discipline of psychology itself. A
possible explanation for this is that it’s main concepts, such as self-actualisation, lacks evidence and
that it holds a rather loose set of abstract concepts. This gives it a lack of application to our real
world, so cannot be used as a pillar of psychology.
The humanistic and psychodynamic approaches have few similarities. One concept that they share is
that a person’s childhood events can affect their development in later adulthood. In the humanistic
approach, Rogers suggested that conditions of worth in childhood can lead to a state of
incongruence in adult life. Conditions of worth are boundaries or limits of love that parents set their
children. These conditions of worth are likely to increase the child's gap between their concept of
self and their ideal self, causing issues in adult life. This is similar to Freud’s psychodynamic
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