Humanistic and existential approaches to Personality

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Humanistic and existential approaches to
Personality

• Christine Simmonds

• Learning outcomes
• Understanding the tenets of the humanistic and
  existential approaches
• Examples of existentialist theorists
• Rollo May
• Victor Frankl
• Examples of humanistic theorists
• Abraham Maslow
• Carl Rogers
• Cognitive/humanist theory
• George Kellys personal construct theory

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What is existentialism?

• E.g., Sartres La Nausée
• Area of philosophy that is concerned with the
  meaning of human existence
• Ethical and spiritual matters are studied as part
  of being human
• Phenomenology
• Peoples perceptions and subjective realities are
  valid data for investigation
• Existentialist approaches represent the root of
  humanistic approaches to personality

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The Humanistic Approach

• Limitations to how a natural science approach can
  fully deal with reality of human experience
• 3 considerations of this approach
• 1. significance of conscious experience
• 2. Human capacity for personal agency
• Personal growth
• 3. Holistic consideration of the many aspects of
  the self
• More emphasis on personal growth and spirituality
  than scientific investigation

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Rollo May

• Introduced existential approach to USA
• Anxiety, dread and despair as core elements of
  the human experience
• Mays personal experiences ? consideration of
  personality from existential/humanist perspective
• Motives
• Daimons e.g., eros
• Balance
• Will
• creativity
• Threats ? opportunity

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Viktor Frankl
The meaning of our existence is not invented by
ourselves, but rather detected
"Live as if you were living already for the
second time and as if you had acted the first
time as wrongly as you are about to act now!"
"What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of
life in general, but rather the specific meaning
of a person's life at a given moment."

• Logotherapy
• Meaning seeking will to meaning
• Noös mind or spirit
• Noögenic neurosis
• Existential vacuum ? triumph of the spirit
• Self transcendence

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Abraham Maslow
Humanistic psychology as the third Force

• Suggests that motivation is one of the central
  concepts of personality
• Motivation is organised according to a hierarchy
  of needs
• Two types of needs of the organism
• D needs
• B needs
• Until lower needs are satisfied we cannot be
  motivated by higher needs
• The most important motive is self actualisation

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Types of love

• Maslow differentiates between B love and D love
• B love being love
• A richer, more therapeutic, positive form of love
  
• D love deficiency love

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Self actualisation

• Innate drive for self actualisation
• Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry David
  Thoreau, Abraham Lincoln
• Self acceptance
• Focused on finding solutions to important
  cultural problems
• Open to others ideas
• Strong sense of privacy
• Few intimate friendships

• man has a higher and transcendent nature,
• and this is part of his essence,
• his biological nature as a member of a species
  which
• has evolved

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Healthy properties of self actualisation

• Deeper more profound interpersonal relations
• Democratic character
• Good and evil discrimination
• Philosophical
• Creativeness
• Transcendence of culture

• More efficient perception of reality
• Acceptance, self, others, nature
• Spontaneity
• Problem centring
• Need for privacy
• Autonomy
• Mystic/peak experience

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyis Flow

• "being completely involved in an activity for its
  own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every
  action, movement, and thought follows inevitably
  from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your
  whole being is involved, and you're using your
  skills to the utmost."

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Evaluation of Maslow

• Support for effects at lower levels, Sanford 1937
• Harder to prove at higher levels
• Individual differences in perceived importance of
  love and self esteem
• Maslow admits 3 and 4 can swap around
• Rowan (1988) D needs can be experienced as B
  needs and vice versa
• Cannot explain starving poet, anorexic
• Concept of self actualisation is
• Subjective
• Circular

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Carl Rogers self theory

• Clinical approach
• Personality development based on self concept
• The person may be considered as
• 1. Self how one sees oneself
• 2 sources
• Childs experiences
• Evaluations of self by others
• Phenomenal field sum of all experiences
• 2. Organism the real world

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Human needs and potentials

• All humans have 2 fundamental needs
• 1. Importance of the actualising tendency
  actualisation of potentials
• 2. Need for positive regard
• Conditional regard
• Conditions of worth
• Unconditional regard

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Different selves

• Ideal self
• Actual self
• Discrepancies lead to anxiety..
• Congruity and incongruity
• Neurosis
• Anxiety
• Defence mechanisms
• Denial
• Perceptual distortion
• psychosis

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Anxiety formation
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The fully functioning person

• Rogers described 2 broad personality types
• Functioning
• Non functioning
• Openness to experience
• Existential living
• Organismic trusting
• Experiential freedom
• Creativity

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The Q sort methodology

• Developed by Stephenson (1953)
• The participant sorts a number of statements into
  categories ranging form most characteristic to
  least characteristic of the self
• Possible to address statements regarding to self
  and ideal self, discrepancies changes over time

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Criticisms of Rogers

• Little about course of growth and development
• Little specificity about innate potential for
  self actualization
• Emphasis on subjective conscious experiences
• Exclusion of unconscious factors
• Exclusion of sex and aggression
• Little recognition of variation in symptoms
• Not all research supports client centered therapy

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George Kellys personal construct theory

• Considers people as scientists
• Hypothesis construction and testing
• Individual theories about the world Personal
  constructs
• Framework construct system
• Constructive alternativism
• A personality theory should account for every
  human behaviour

If you dont know what is wrong with a patient
ask him, he may tell you Kelly 1955
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Kellys Role Construct Repertory Grid

• The range of individuals of interest

For example Like me-Not like me
Circles are the triad comparisons
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Impact of humanistic/existential approach in the
modern era

• Continuing impact of therapeutic approaches
• Positive psychology
• Health and illness
• Transpersonal psychology-
• E.g., see Liverpool John Moores University,
  Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, etc.
• Spirituality is a valid area for research study

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General Criticisms of Humanist theories

• Uninformative?
• Unavailable data
• Subjectivity
• origins of personality
• Nature of self actualisation
• No room for emotion or biology e.g. Kelly,
  anxiety, fear, guilt hosility redefined as
  features of the construct system
• Social context?
• Too much faith in personal agency?
• Insufficient evaluation of methods