Humanist and Existential Psychology

Humanistic, Existential,
and Positive Aspects of
Personality

Existentialism
•  Existentialism – An Area of philosophy
concerned with the meaning of human
existence.
•  Being-in-the-World – The existential idea that
the self cannot exists without a world and the
world cannot exist without a person of being to
perceive it.

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is
around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Nondeterministic
The existential
approach is also
nondeterministic
because it argues
against viewing
people as controlled
by fixed physical
laws.

The Phenomenological View
The concept that
people’s
perceptions or
subjective realities
are considered
valid data for
investigation.

Humanism
A philosophical movement
that emphasizes the
personal worth of the
individual and the
importance of human
values.

Giving a Role to the Human Spirit
•  Humanistic approaches are freer to give credit
to the human spirit. Abraham Maslow thus
called humanistic psychology the “third force.”

The ﬁrst two forces being behaviorism and
psychoanalysis.

Relations with Other People Define
Our Humanness
•  I-Thou Dialogue – A phrase used by
philosopher Martin Buber to describe direct,
mutual relationship in which each individual
conﬁrms the other person as being of unique
value.
•  I-It Monologue – A phrase used by
philosopher Martin Buber to describe a
utilitarian relationship in which a person uses
others but does not value them for themselves.

The Human Potential Movement
Movement in which people are encouraged to
realize their inner potentials through small group
meetings, self-disclosure, and introspection.

•  Dialectical Tension – Concept used by Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi for the idea that creative people
tend to have traits that are seemingly
contradictory but that play a role in their
creativity.

Love as a Central Focus of
Life: Erich Fromm
Loving is an Art
“Love requires knowledge, effort, and
experience. The capacity to love must be
developed with humility and discipline.
According to Fromm, love is the answer
to the avoidable question—the problem of
human existence.”
“Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.'

Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.’ ”

Erich Fromm

Dialectical Humanism:
Transcending Conflict
Erich Fromm’s approach to personality, which tries to
reconcile the biological, driven side of human beings
and the pressures of societal structure by focusing on
the belief that people can rise above or transcend
these forces and become spontaneous, creative, and
loving.

Evidence Supporting Fromm’s Approach?
The Age of Anxiety?
Society has become more individualistic and consumerist,
the rate of major psychological depression and other serious
mental health problems in Western countries has risen
steadily.

The American Paradox
The contemporary situation where we have
material abundance co-occurring with social
recession and psychological depression.

Responsibility: Carl Rogers
•  A key postulate of existential-humanistic
approaches is that each person is responsible
for his or her own life and maturity. Rogers
believed that people have an inherent
tendency toward growth and maturation.
•  Responsibility, like love, is a term often
heard in humanistic analyses of personality
but rarely heard elsewhere.

Growth, Inner Control, and the
Experiencing Person
•  Growth – Roger’s perspective that people tend to
develop in a positive direction unless thwarted.
•  Inner Control – Inner self-control is healthier than
forced, external control.
•  Experiencing Person – In Carl Roger’s
phenomenological view, important issues are
deﬁned by each person for himself or herself in
the context of the total range of things the person
experiences.

Rogerian Therapy
The client-oriented psychotherapy developed by
Carl Rogers in which the therapist tends to be
supportive, nondirective, and empathetic, and
gives unconditional positive regard.

Becoming One’s Self
•  We all have ideas of what we should be like, however,
Rogers says that a person should “become one’s self.”
A healthy personality can trust his or her own
experience and accept the fact that other people are
different.
•  Existential anxiety and inner conﬂict often arise when
put a façade and try to conform to the expectations of
others.

“The only person who cannot be helped is that person
who blames others.”
Carl Rogers

Anxiety, Threat, and Powerlessness:
Rollo May
Anxiety was a particular focus of the existential
psychologist Rollo May, who saw anxiety as a
triggered by a threat to one’s core values of
existence. A sense of powerlessness if often the
key.

“One does not become fully human painlessly.”
Rollo May

Personal Choice:
Victor Frankl
•  Existential-humanistic theorists like Victor
Frankl emphasize the benefits of personal
choice. If people choose to grow and develop,
the challenge of the unknown produces anxiety;
but this anxiety can lead to triumph and self-
fulfillment.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation –

we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Viktor Frankl

Self-Actualization:
Abraham Maslow
Being deprived of
companionship or being
deprived of meaning in
one’s life can be just as
terrifying, and deadly as
being deprived of food.

Early
Ideas
about
Self-‐Actualization

in
Jung’s
Work

•  Self-Actualization – The innate process
by which one tends to grow spiritually
and realize one’s potential.
•  Teleology – The idea that there is a grand
design or purpose to one’s life.
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
Carl Jung

Peak Experiences
According to Abraham Maslow, powerful,
meaningful experiences in which people seem
to transcend the self, be at one with the world,
and feel completely self-fulfilled; Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi describes them as the “flow”
that comes with total involvement in an activity.
“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must
write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.”
Abraham Maslow

The Internal Push for
Self-Actualization
•  Organismic – A term
sometimes used to describe
theories that focus on the
development that comes
from inside the growing
organism and that assume a
natural unfolding, or life
course, for each organism.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
•  Deﬁciency Needs – According to
Abraham Maslow, needs that are
essential for survival including
physiological, safety, belonging, love,
and esteem needs.

Humanist and Existential Psychology

Measuring Self-Actualization
•  Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) – A
self-report questionnaire that asks people
to classify themselves on a number of
dimensions for the various characteristics
of self-actualization or mental health.

“What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-
actualization.”

Abraham Maslow

Happiness and Positive Psychology
Subjective Well-Being

What individuals
think of their
own level of
happiness or
their quality
of life.

Positive Psychology

The movement in modern psychology to
focus on positive attributes rather than on
pathology.

Humanist and Existential Psychology

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