the humanistic approach AO3

Question 1

It is anti-reductionist

Answer 1

• Humanistic psychologists reject any attempt to break up behaviour and experience into smaller components
• They advocate holism - the idea that subjective experience can only be understood by considering the whole person (their
  relationships, past, present, and future etc)
• This approach may have more validity than other approaches by considering meaningful human behaviour within a real-life context

Question 2

It is a positive approach

Answer 2

• It promotes a positive image of the human condition - seeing people as in control of their lives and having the freedom to change
• Freud saw humans as slaves to their past and claimed that all of us existed somewhere between ‘common unhappiness and absolute despair’
• Humanistic psychology offers a refreshing and optimistic alternative

Question 3

Client-centred therapy is widely used in health, social work and industry and has helped many people overcome difficulties they face in life

Answer 3

Client-centred therapy is widely used in health, social work and industry and has helped many people overcome difficulties they face in life → this is a significant contribution to improving people’s quality of life

Question 4

The approach has limited application to the real world

Answer 4

• Humanistic psychology has had a limited impact within psychology as a whole
• perhaps because it lacks a sound evidence base
• As a result, the approach has been described not as a
  comprehensive theory but as a loose set of abstract concepts

Question 5

The approach has untestable concepts

Answer 5

• Rogers did not attempt to introduce more scientific rigour into his work by developing an objective measure of progress in therapy → The ideas of ‘self-actualisation’ and ‘congruence’ are difficult to test
• Humanistic psychology is short of empirical evidence

Question 6

It may have a Western cultural bias

Answer 6

• Many of the ideas central to the humanistic approach, such as freedom and personal growth, would be more associated with individualistic cultures in the Western world such as the US
• Collectivist cultures such as India, which emphasise the needs of the group and interdependence, may not identify so easily with the ideals and values of humanistic psychology

Question 7

free will

Answer 7

• free will is central to humanistic thinking.
• Advocates of this approach believe that behaviour is a choice, rather than determined by outside forces, and an individual can directly control and influence their own destiny.

Question 8

holism

Answer 8

• the concept of holism is of crucial importance to the humanistic approach which attempts to answer the question of what it truly means to be fully human.
• Since this approach focuses in subjective human experience whilst making no attempts to generate universal laws, it favours the idiographic
  approach.