Concept of humanistic approach in psychology

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 speak to us of 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 among 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.

Index

1. Origin of the humanistic approach
2. Existentialism as a current in philosophy
3. Main managers
4. Psychological conception of the human being: main ideas
5. Healing starts from the coherence of the human being
6. Other expert opinions
7. Qualitative methodology in research
8. The actual situation
9. Final thoughts

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. For this we will refer to the historical context in which this approach arises, in the middle of the 20th century, to its main representatives, as well as the techniques most used in therapy, research and education.

The Humanistic Approach in Psychology arises in the second half of the last century, after the Second World War. It acquires strength as a tendency to reach 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 in Psychology, aiming to overcome the errors and deficiencies of the two forces that preceded him in achieving the rescue of the subject existential. The central category is not the phenomenon, but the existence, recovering, in a certain way, the ideas of the irrationalists of the previous century.

It is not possible to consider man as being, thing, object; man is and will always be "a being", whose existence in the world must be respected, like the 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, such as behaviorist theories, based only on the study of the manifestations of the behavior of the subjects.

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, of emptiness, of deep disappointment, generated distrust in technological advance and the positivism of science. The existentialist philosophical current, predominant in the postwar 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 be able to heal himself.

Existentialism as a philosophical current contributed to Humanist Psychology 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 consciousness in the here and now; as there is no single explanation for the same events or phenomena. Emphasis is placed on the need to consider the multivariate view 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 is turned into the interior of the Man, unlike Westerners, is one of the important sources from which Psychology draws humanist. 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 detachment from their surroundings, in order to achieve their goals. 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 Humanist Psychology. In this way, the cultural current represented by Erich Fromm is retaken 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 care and take care of the body, as a sounding board for emotions. Moreno's Psychodrama takes up the idea that it is better to participate in the experience than to talk about it.

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 for 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 Auschwitz gas chambers, but he is also the being who has entered those chambers with his head held high and the Lord's Prayer or Shema Yisrael on his lips. " (1)

We could summarize the psychological conception of the human being of this approach in the following ideas:

• Man is a whole organized (body, emotions, thoughts and action).
• He possesses a natural tendency to update and self-realization (which allows you to reach more and more evolved levels of consciousness).
• The experience he lives is his reality, and from this interpret the world.
• Make an intentional effort to to satisfy the needs experienced and maintain balance.
• You need to achieve a rebalancing between polarities that coexist in itself (become aware of the denied or underestimated aspects).
• Should revalue the emotional, Well, even negative emotions allow us to grow.

From these ideas, humanistic psychology was responding 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 creativity and learning from him. Many times society, represented by the family, teachers, and other institutions, try to impose demands that they have nothing to do with the nature of the subject, with his needs, forcing him to divide himself between what he thinks, feels and is expected of his behavior of him.

Is lack of integration It makes man start to get sick, as 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 neglected aspects of behavior.

A person will be healthy as long as accept and integrate what it 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 there and then. 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. He does not give advice or instructions, but tools to explore and find your own solutions. The ideas referring to humanistic therapy could be summarized in the following aspects:

• Therapy is not just limited to the sick. Everyone must participate in a process of awareness, guided by a therapist.
• The therapist should prevent the person from "talking about," that is, referring to experiences in the form of conscious accounts of the past, but must lead him to live it, experience it, reissue the emotion in the here and now.
• Have confidence 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 the possibilities of it to achieve it.
• Taking into account that the person is a holistic whole, he will not only attend to the verbal story, but to non-verbal information (gestures, postures, tone of voice). This is the most relevant information, as long 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 that is made of it. Each person is unique and unrepeatable, therefore interpretations that generalize and abstract important details create an obstacle.
• The therapist must take care that personal language is always used, that is, in the first person singular. The tendency to use impersonal or plural forms is one way to avoid 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 full responsibility and freedom, according to the postulates of humanism.

The renowned American Gestalt therapist, Paul goodman, who wrote on topics such as education, urban planning, the rights of minors, politics, literary criticism, among other important issues, he stated: “We need to start talking more about the structure of the learner and learning from it and less about the structure of the learner. subject ”(2).

Own Carl Rogers, also an important therapist of humanism, he raised the need to 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, while the predominant figure could not be the teacher, but the student. Respect and acceptance of the individuality of each apprentice should prevail, taking into account that the teacher does not he is the only one who teaches, but the student must participate in the formation of him, and take responsibility for his learning.

We could summarize some of these ideas, in what follows:

• The most important thing in a teacher is not his information capacity but her potential to be a person and to establish emotionally healthy relationships with students. Asserting her authority through any form of punishment is an abuse of power and a personal inability to establish interpersonal relationships.
• The student will educate the responsibility of it as long as he participates together with the teacher in the selection and planning of the objectives, contents and methods, which reinforces their motivation, flexibility and the rate of their learning.
• You learn better what is useful immediately. Teachers often teach their subjects, ignoring the learning needs of their students.
• Punishment is not the "opposite" of reward in motivation. It acts as a reinforcer of the behavior we want to avoid. It is very common that qualification is used as a form of threat and punishment. Error is a way of learning.

As is to be expected, according to what has already been stated, the humanist approach lavishes qualitative methodology in research, as a complement to the quantitative method. The criterion for selecting the problems to be investigated is intrinsic significance, as opposed to a value inspired solely by objectivity. In other words, the important thing is not whether it is statistically significant or not, but whether it transcends even a small group of people. A single subject is significant for the humanistic approach.

This approach is characterized by the participatory nature of the research, where the subjects are participants from the selection of the problem to be investigated to the proposal of methods and solutions. Similarly, the model fits action research, that is, the notion that knowledge is linked to intervention, change and collaboration. K. Lewin, a forerunner of this approach, defends the idea of ​​making the creation of knowledge compatible scientists in the social field with direct intervention, always with the collaboration of the community involved.

Within the most used techniques by humanism, applied to different contexts, are the experiential and expressive, such as self-report and psychodrama, in addition to using techniques such as group discussion, in-depth interviews, consensus techniques, etc.

All of them have the common that they emphasize the present, the here and now and in all of them the objective is to realize it. Only in the here and now can awareness take place and the person can take responsibility for his actions.

Since the last decades of the last century, a new awakening of consciousness with respect to nature as a whole. This implies a new stance towards the problems of nature, especially human, where Man is not seen as the only one who has the right to be treated with respect and dignity, according to the codes of morality and Justice. In this way the humanistic approach takes on a new meaning when considering Man as one more element of the universe as a whole. In this sense, we begin to speak of Neo-humanism.

Before him predominance of a rationalist and pragmatic philosophy, there is a new stance towards respect and care for nature, as the only way to demonstrate our human character. Man cannot claim the right to dispose of nature at will, as he has done to our days, with the simple justification that he is the only one who has a conscience and therefore is superior to any form of lifetime. The old paradigm that he saw in the transformation of nature according to the interests of man, the source of progress, has brought the planet to a serious threat of extinction. Therefore, he has been reconsidered by the humanistic tendency, the role of nature in our human essence. More than transforming it at your convenience, it is about observing it, learning from it, just as ancient cultures did.

In this sense, the French humanist philosopher, L. Ferry, in his book "The new ecological order, the tree, the animal and the man", for which he receives the Medici Prize for essays and the prize Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in 1992, states: “It could be, in effect, that the separation of man and nature through which humanism Modernism came to attribute only to the first the quality of moral and legal person has been nothing more than a parenthesis, which is closing now ”(3).

Today there are already strong global movements that defend the rights of animals, international treaties for the protection of nature as a whole and the actions of environmental groups that seek, in concrete ways, to defend species in the process of extinction. This type of humanism is characterized by the inclusion of the Other, respect for nature, a better way of life in full harmony with nature. It is intended to save rationality, on the basis of accepting that there is also uncertainty, multidimensionality, contradiction, chaos, complexity. Ultimately, it is about a search for the correct harmony between the material and spiritual worlds.

As the important Hindu philosopher P.R. Sarkar: “Interest in the pulsating life flow in other human creatures has brought people to the realm of humanism; it has made them humanists. Now if the same human sentiment extends to include all creatures in this universe, then and only then can it be said that human existence has reached its final consummation ”(4).

The application of the humanistic approach to Psychology and the rest of the health sciences represents an ethical and moral commitment, as it implies the recognition of the human capacity to take responsibility from his performance, to his freedom of choice, as well as respect for the decisions he makes and the weighting of individual creativity and spontaneity.

To assume this commitment and apply it to therapy, education and research, one must start from the taking of awareness by the person of their own reality, based on the experiences and emotions that these generate experiences. The person must be conceived as an organized totality, where his body, his emotions, his thoughts and his actions must be coherent as the only way to be healthy.

We must place trust in the human being, supported by the possibilities that it has to update and change to improve its condition. Let us understand that the human being forms a uniqueness with his environment, not only with other human beings, but with nature in its most diverse forms of manifestation.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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• Frankl, V. (2005): "Man in search of meaning". Editorial Herder, México, 160 pages.
• Goodman, Paul (1972): "The new reform." Editorial Kairós, Barcelona, ​​Spain. 93 pp.
• Ferry, Luc. (1994): “The new ecological order. The tree, the animal and the man ”. Tusquet. Barcelona, ​​Spain. (P. 19).
• Sarkar, P. R. (1982): "Neo humanism, the liberation of intelligence", Editorial Ananda Marga, Spain, (p. 176).