Today more than ever the humanistic approach within psychological science, in particular, and in all the knowledge concerned with helping man in his personal and spiritual growth. The current conceptions of science and technology tell us about the urgency of applying radical solutions to the interrelation of man with his environment, both social and natural.
To ensure that this interrelation is healthy and productive, for the good of all, it is necessary find the right balance between all forms of existence, based on respect and acceptance of others. For this balance to occur, it is necessary for man, generically speaking, to be healthy. That is why the concept of health, under the humanistic approach, advocates the acceptance and integration of who we are, our feelings, thoughts and behaviors.
In Online Psychology we are going to analyze the concept of humanistic approach in psychology to understand it better.
Origin of the humanistic approach
During this article, we wish to present some considerations that will allow us to assess the convenience of applying the humanistic approach in medical sciences, particularly in health psychology and medical education. To do this, we will refer to the historical context in which this approach emerged, in the mid-20th century, to its main representatives, as well as to the most used techniques in therapy, research and education.
The humanistic approach in Psychology emerged in the second half of the last century, after the Second World War. It gains strength as a tendency until it is at the level of the two previous approaches already present within this science, namely Behaviorism and Psychoanalysis. For this reason, Humanism is considered the third force of Psychology, aimed at overcoming the errors and deficiencies of the two forces that preceded it by achieving the rescue of the existential subject. The central category is not the phenomenon, but existence, recovering, in a certain way, the ideas of the irrationalists of the previous century.
It is not possible to consider man as an entity, thing, object; man is and always will be “a being”, whose existence in the world must be respected, like other forms of existence. In this way, the humanistic approach attaches great importance to the study of man and his feelings, desires, hopes, aspirations; concepts considered subjective by other psychological approaches, as is the case of behaviorist theories, based only on the study of the manifestations of the subjects’ behavior.
The anguish generated by the phenomenon of wars placed the man faced with the need to understand himself, to explain his own nature. The experience of loss, emptiness, and deep disappointment generated distrust in technological advance and the positivism of science. The existentialist philosophical current, predominant in the post-war period, demanded a Psychology that offered answers to questions about the meaning of life, the highest needs, the process of inner discovery, without which contemporary man would not achieve his healing. .
Existentialism as a current in philosophy
Existentialism as a philosophical current provided humanistic psychology with the concept of responsibility and the primacy of concrete experience, as well as the uniqueness of each existence. On the other hand, this psychological tendency takes from Phenomenology the concept of “phenomenon” as that which is given to our consciousness in the here and now; since there is no single explanation for the same facts or phenomena. Emphasis is placed on the need to consider the multivariate vision of the phenomena. That is why it privileges the need to describe reality, rather than explain it, according to a single point of view.
Taking into account that the philosophy that characterizes Eastern cultures focuses on the interior of man, unlike Western cultures, it is one of the important sources from which Humanistic Psychology draws. From this he captures the importance of not overestimating thinking and give more space to emotions. The excess of positivist rationalism had led people to an emotional distance from their surroundings, in order to achieve their objectives. That is why this attitude justified any procedure to achieve an end, regardless of the ethical considerations involved.
Many of the psychoanalysts who departed from orthodox Psychoanalysis proposed novel approaches, which were taken up by Humanistic Psychology. In this way, the cultural current represented by Erich Fromm is taken up and incorporates the concept of polarities of Carl G. Jung. The German psychologist Wilhem Reich serves as a reference to become aware of the need to worry and take care of the body, as a sounding board for emotions. From Moreno’s Psychodrama, the idea is taken up that it is better to participate in the experience than to talk about it.
Main managers
The main representatives of this approach were Gordon Allport (1897-1967), Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), Carl Rogers (1902-1987), Victor Frankl (1905-1997), Levi Moreno (1889-1974), Fritz Perls (1893-1970), among others. Most of these authors had in common the fact that they were Jews and, therefore, victims of Nazi persecution.
This made them advocate respect for human dignity. In this regard, the humanistic psychologist V. Frankl, father of logotherapy, wrote: “Who, then, is man? He is a being who always decides what he is. “Man is that being who has invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz, but he is also the being who has entered those chambers with his head upright and the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.” (1)
Psychological conception of the human being: main ideas
We could summarize the psychological conception of the human being of this approach in the following ideas:
- Man is a totality organized (body, emotions, thoughts and action).
- Has a natural tendency to update self-realization (which allows you to reach increasingly more evolved levels of consciousness).
- The experience you live is your reality, and from this interpret the world.
- Make an intentional effort to to satisfy the needs experienced and maintain balance.
- You need to reach a rebalance between polarities that coexist in oneself (become aware of the denied or underestimated aspects).
- Has to revalue the emotional, because even negative emotions allow us to grow.
From these ideas, humanistic psychology responded to the place that man must occupy in his relationship with the environment. The center of attention was the man himself, as a unique and unrepeatable person, seeing all the mechanisms of adjustment to the environment as a way to encourage his creativity and learning. Many times society, represented by the family, teachers, and other institutions, try to impose demands that have nothing to do with the nature of the subject, with their needs, forcing them to divide themselves between what they think, feel, and what is expected of them. behavior.
This lack of integration It makes man begin to get sick, because he begins to deny within himself everything that is not socially accepted. The personality is structured on the basis of these adaptive mechanisms, which once they fulfill their function, are established as distinctive characteristics that oversize one of the poles, denying the other. We reject what we deny in ourselves. The fundamental principle of the application of humanism to psychotherapy is the awareness of the denied aspects of behavior.
Healing starts from the coherence of the human being
A person will be healthy as long as accept and integrate what really is, That is, there is coherence between what you feel, what you think and what you do. Health means expanding our resources instead of repeating obsolete behaviors that we learned in childhood and that were useful to us then and there. Health is not only the absence of disease but the possibility of achieving a functioning that gives us a reasonable degree of happiness.
The therapist accompanies the person in the process of personal discovery. It does not give advice or slogans, but rather tools to explore and find one’s own solutions. The ideas related to humanistic therapy could be summarized in the following aspects:
- Therapy is not limited only to the sick. Every person must participate in an awareness process, guided by a therapist.
- The therapist must prevent the person from “talking about”, that is, referring to the experiences in the form of conscious stories from the past, but must lead the person to live it, experience it, re-edit the emotion in the here and now. .
- Have trust in the person so that they feel that the power of change is in the present. Change is always possible, at any stage of life, it only depends on the person being convinced of their possibilities to achieve it.
- Taking into account that the person is a holistic whole, not only the verbal story will be taken into account, but also the non-verbal information (gestures, postures, tone of voice). This is the most relevant information, as it is not conscious.
- The therapist must refrain from interpreting. Unlike Psychoanalysis, this type of approach focuses on the description of the experience and its experience, not on the conscious interpretation of it. Each person is unique and unrepeatable, therefore interpretations that generalize and abstract important details create an obstacle.
- The therapist must ensure that personal language is always used, that is, in the first person singular. The tendency to use impersonal or plural forms is a way of avoiding the responsibility part of the problem.
As might be expected, this approach has wide applications in Education. The predominance of authoritarian forms and imposed models have nothing to do with the way of conceiving man in complete responsibility and freedom, according to the postulates of humanism.
Other expert opinions
The renowned American Gestalt therapist, Paul Goodmanwho wrote on topics such as education, urban planning, the rights of minors, politics, literary criticism, among other important topics, stated: “It is necessary that we start talking more about the structure of the learner and their learning and less about the structure of the subject” (2).
Own Carl Rogers, also an important therapist of humanism, raised the need for apply the basic principles of Focused Therapy in the client (patient), to education in school institutions. It was necessary to review the way of teaching and learning, since the predominant figure could not be the teacher, but the student. Respect and acceptance of the individuality of each learner should predominate, taking into account that the teacher is not the only one who teaches, but that the student must participate in his or her training, and…