The
Humanistic Movement (the Third Force in psychology), began in the late 50s with Rogers and
Maslow, Rollo May, and others interested in founding a professional association
dedicated to a more meaningful, more humanistic vision. They believed that central concerns for
psychology should be
Self-actualization
Self-esteem
Health
Creativity
Being
Becoming
Individuality
Meaning
Values
Love
Personal freedom
Body/mind/spirit holism
ecology
peace
If
you became a member of the Association of Humanistic Psychology (AHP) you would
join a group of people linked together by a shared set of values:
a belief in the worth of persons and dedication to
the development of human potential
an understanding of life as a process; change in
inevitable
an appreciation of the spiritual and the intuitive
a commitment to ecological integrity
a recognition of the profound problems affecting our
world and a responsibility to hope and constructive change
Abraham
Maslow (1908-1970)
“Anyone who had a baby
couldn’t be a behaviorist.”
Maslow
took an intelligence test given by Edward Thorndike, on which he scored 195,
the second highest ever recorded.
Maslow
conducted the first American studies on human sexuality, several years before
Alfred Kinsey. He interviewed women
whom he labeled high dominance and low dominance in sexual preferences.
|
High
Dominance Women
|
Low
Dominance Women
|
Findings: High dominance women were attracted to high
dominance men—aggressive, self-confident, highly masculine, self-assured. Low dominance women were attracted to men
who were kind, friendly, gentle, faithful and showed a love for children.
Maslow
was the most popular professor on campus, the Frank Sinatra of Brooklyn
College. During his leave, following a
heart attack, he had a “peak experience” while watching a parade one day after
Pearl Harbor in 1941. He decided that
he would spend his professional career discovering “a psychology for the peace
table.” During the time in New York, he
met and learned from Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Max
Wertheimer (founder of Gestalt therapy)
and Ruth Benedict, the American
anthropologist. The last two people he
referred to as “the most remarkable human beings.”
Dedicated
to the study of healthy human beings, he emerged as a leader of the Third Force
in Psychology—Humanism.
During
the sixties, Maslow took a stand against the counterculture and against the
university system for not contributing to the solution for world problems. He criticized students for being
self-indulgent and intellectually undisciplined. He left the university setting, tired of the chaos, and took a
fellowship at Stanford, which allowed him to think and write. He died two years later of a heart attack.
If
Carl Rogers is considered the founder of the Humanistic movement in psychology,
Maslow is considered the leader of the Third Force.
The
Third Force: the holistic approach to studying people as thinking, feeling
totality. He denounced the traditions
of scientific research as mechanistic and reductionistic and believed that
these scientists “desacralize people by making them less marvelous, beautiful,
and awesome than they really are.”
Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs and information: a theory of motivation
Maslow
suggested that humans possess “instinctoids”, instinct remnants that are weak,
subtle, delicate, easily drowned out by learning, by fear, by cultural
expectations. His hierarchy began by
stronger needs; more powerful needs are on the bottom of the hierarchy; the
higher the need, the more human it becomes.
PHYSIOLOGICAL
NEEDS: food, water, sex, sleep, elimination dominate life until met; easily
satisfied for some by our prosperous modern society. Then what?
SAFETY
NEEDS: need for structure, order, security, predictability; primary goal: to
reduce uncertainty; seen in children most readily who show great fear at new
events; goal is an environment free from danger. Then what?
BELONGINGNESS
AND LOVE NEEDS: need for affiliation, friends, companions, a supportive family,
identification with the group, an intimate relationship. Erikson’s need for
intimacy; if not met, then isolation and alienation. Maslow considered this a major social problem in this culture,
accounting for the prevalence of therapy and support groups. Then what?
ESTEEM:
need for recognition from others that results from feelings of inadequacy,
competence and confidence; engaging in socially useful activities; Erikson’s
need for generativity. Then what?
SELF-ACTUALIZATION:
ongoing actualization of potentials, capacities, talents, as fulfillment of
mission or call, fate, destiny or vocation
Regarding
the hierarchy of needs:
We move through these levels a bit like stages
As development progresses, so does the recognition
of higher needs
One can become fixated at one level and progress stops
(fixation=neurosis)
There are degrees of satisfaction, measured only by
the individual
There is a dynamic movement from one to other levels
Digression is possible if a lower level is
threatened or taken away
Things can occur on a society-wide basis as well,
e.g. 9/11 tragedy
Pervasive need to know and understand makes other
levels more attainable
The Aesthetic Needs are given their fullest
expression in self-actualizing people: order, symmetry, closure, structure
The people at each level in the hierarchy
of needs seeks information on dealing with what is important to them.
- Coping -seeking
information when lost, out of food, or sick
- Helping -seeking
information on how to be safe such as food, shelter, emergency supplies
- Enlightening -seeking
information on how to have a happier marriage, more friends
- Empowering -seeking
information to help the ego
- Edifying -seeking moral
and spiritual uplifting such is found with the word of God, spiritual
music, and paintings
How
do we know where people are on the hierarchy?
Maslow suggested that we ask people for their “philosophy of the
future”—what would their ideal life or world be like—and get significant
information as to what needs they do or do not have covered.
Being
Values vs. Deficiency Values: illustrated by B-love and D-love, and the 15 B
values that constitute the self-actualizing person
CHARACTERISTICS
OF THE SELF-ACTUALIZING PERSON
Perceptions are reality based
Acceptance of self, others, nature
Resistant to acculturation
Spontaneous, simplicity, naturalness
Problem-centered rather than self-centered
Need for privacy and “down time”
Autonomous of environment and culture
Freshness of appreciation of life
Periodic peak experiences
Identification with all humankind
Deep friendships with a few
Acceptance of democratic values
Strong ethical sense
Unhostile sense of humor
Creative
Why
people fail to become self-actualizers
Too busy meeting the basic needs (the D-needs)
Too entrenched in cultural expectations. Culture stifles SA
Too concerned with safety. SAs choose growth over security.
The most important reason: the Jonah Complex: people
are afraid of their own destiny and fear that maximizing their potentialities
will lead to situations where they will be unable to cope. “Fear of Success=Fear of Failure”
Self-indulgence and self-absorption masquerade as
self-actualizing
Formula
for becoming self-actualizing
Pay attention to the world around you. Be more aware of your surroundings
Trust your own abilities more. Improve your
perceptions of efficacy. Trust your gut
(what Rogers called organismic valuing)
When in doubt, tell the truth. This will simplify your life because you
don’t have to remember what lies you told to whom.
Recognize the need for self-discipline and
behavioral self-regulation. Delay
gratification.
Cultivate peak experiences (in non-chemical ways).
Give up your highly-valued pathologies
(neuroses). Get rid of the
psychological baggage that you’re carrying around. Being depressed and anxious are major signals that changes need
to be made—in beliefs, in emotions, in actions.
Be willing to do hard things to get to authenticity
Self-actualizers
may be ruthless, decisive, stoic, ill-tempered, moody
Only
one percent of the human population is self-actualized, because many are
concerned with the lower levels full time; knowledge of self is threatening to
safety; culture stifles self-actualization with its emphasis on conformity and
roles, and parental units did not reinforce these characteristics often;
parenting should be “freedom within limits”, strict but warm
Eupsychia
works on synergy. Eupsychian Management
sounds very similat to the Theory Y Management Style: cooperative, moral,
shared management, democratic
The
Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California: a growth center for personal
exploration, for radical honesty