Humanistic psychology

The third force in the 1950s

The Association for Humanistic Psychology describes humanistic psychology as a "Third Force" that responded to behaviorism and psychoanalysis, schools it says largely left out values, intentions, meaning and conscious experience. Its own timeline places the formation of the third force in the late 1950s. In 1957 and 1958, at the invitation of Abraham Maslow and Clark Moustakas, two meetings were held in Detroit to discuss founding a professional association.

The Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology entry on the human potential movement traces the modern origins of the school mainly to the work of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow in the 1950s. It describes Rogers's client-centered therapy as developed by 1940 and most popular in the 1950s, and says humanistic psychology offered an alternative to psychoanalysis and behaviorism by stressing present-focused growth and self-fulfillment. The entry is undated and unsigned.

Associations and the first conference

According to the Association for Humanistic Psychology, the American Association for Humanistic Psychology was formally launched in 1961 with the sponsorship of Brandeis University. The same page dates the first issue of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology to December 1963, under the name "The Phoenix", and records a first invitational conference in 1964 at Old Saybrook, Connecticut, attended by Gordon Allport, Rollo May, Carl Rogers and Maslow, among others.

The Gale entry names Maslow, Rogers, May and Charlotte Buhler as the founders of the association, whereas the association's own page names Maslow and Moustakas as the inviters of the Detroit meetings and does not list founders in the passage reviewed. The sources reviewed therefore agree on the late 1950s and early 1960s but differ in how they attribute the founding.

A division within the American Psychological Association

The Society for Humanistic Psychology, Division 32 of the American Psychological Association, states that the movement was established as the Third Force in U.S. psychology during the mid-twentieth century and has since evolved through existential, transpersonal and constructivist developments. Its list of presidents begins with an acting president for 1971 to 1972. The pages reviewed do not state a founding year for the division or describe its early history.

Names and labels

"Third force" is the label the movement used for itself in relation to the two dominant schools of its time, and the Society for Humanistic Psychology still uses it in its own history. The Association for Humanistic Psychology lists recurring themes of the school as self, self-actualization, health, creativity, individuality, being, becoming and meaning, which are the terms through which the school describes its interests.

The term "humanistic" here refers to this psychological movement. It is a different usage from secular humanism as a philosophy or from the Renaissance humanist tradition, and the sources reviewed do not trace how the name was chosen. Society for Humanistic Psychology materials treat Maslowian and Rogerian orientations as only part of a wider family that also includes transpersonal, existential, phenomenological, hermeneutic, constructivist, feminist and postmodern psychologies.

Person-centered, humanistic-experiential and existential-humanistic

Rogers's approach was first called client-centered therapy and is now commonly called person-centered therapy. A 2021 research review groups person-centered, emotion-focused, gestalt and psychodrama approaches under the heading humanistic-experiential psychotherapies, so the research category is wider than any one school. A 2017 biographical essay on existential-humanistic therapy credits Rollo May's influence on James Bugental, who adopted the label "existential-humanistic" for therapy that combines the two strands.

Related terms such as the human potential movement and transpersonal psychology are not identical to humanistic psychology. The Gale entry presents the human potential movement as an extension of humanistic ideas into encounter groups, growth centers and self-improvement practices, rather than as the same thing.

Maslow and the hierarchy of needs

In a 1943 paper, Abraham Maslow described five sets of basic needs: physiological, safety, love and belongingness, esteem, and self-actualization. He arranged them by what he called prepotency, so that a lower need dominates behavior until it is largely satisfied and the next need then emerges. He credited Kurt Goldstein with the term self-actualization and used it for the desire to become everything one is capable of becoming. The paper does not draw the pyramid commonly associated with his theory.

Rogers and the core conditions

Carl Rogers's 1957 paper proposed six conditions for therapeutic personality change, as summarized in a 2010 article in The Person-Centered Journal. They include a client in a state of incongruence, a therapist who is congruent in the relationship, a therapist who experiences unconditional positive regard for the client, and a therapist who experiences empathic understanding and communicates it to a minimal degree. The article states that Rogers regarded congruence as the most essential of the conditions and presents unconditional positive regard as an attitude rather than a technique.

The Association for Humanistic Psychology describes Rogers's therapy as relying on congruence, unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding, and credits him with the view that people have a natural drive toward health. These are the school's own statements of its premises, not findings of the sources reviewed.

Existential strand and organization of the field

Rollo May brought European existential and phenomenological thought into the movement, according to the association, emphasizing human suffering, evil and creativity. A biographical essay describes his co-edited 1958 volume Existence as the formal start of the existential movement in the United States and says his concept of the daimonic reworks Jung's idea of the shadow. Practices on Machipedia associated with this school include Life Coaching and Spiritual Growth, which have their own pages.

Aims as the school states them

The Society for Humanistic Psychology states goals of contributing to theory, philosophy and research methods in psychology, to cultural diversity, to psychotherapy and education, and to social responsibility and change. It describes optimally functioning people as consciously aware and responsibly free to make choices. The Association for Humanistic Psychology says that each person is a human being first and that the subjective person has basic value regardless of how they are labeled.

Reach into education and growth practices

A 1997 conference paper reports that humanistic psychology had a significant influence on education at all levels, as an extension of progressive education with an emphasis on learner-centeredness. It notes that Maslow was among the most cited authors in adult education research from 1968 to 1977, and that a standard text sees the impact of andragogy and self-directed learning as rooted in the humanistic philosophy of Rogers and Maslow.

The Gale entry says the human potential movement drew on Rogers and Maslow, grew out of encounter groups and sensitivity training, and was centered on growth centers such as the Esalen Institute, with an estimated 150 to 200 similar centers in the United States by the early 1970s. It adds that Maslow affiliated with Esalen in 1966. Wellness, coaching and personal-growth practices that use language of growth, potential or self-actualization draw on this lineage, though the sources reviewed do not trace specific practices individually.

Outcome research on humanistic-experiential therapies

A 2021 chapter by Elliott, Watson, Timulak and Sharbanee meta-analyzed 91 studies published from 2009 to 2018 on humanistic-experiential therapies. It reported large pre-post client change (d = .86) and large gains relative to no therapy (.88). It reported statistical and clinical equivalence to other therapies in general (-.08), with an apparent equivocal advantage for cognitive behavioral therapy (-.26) that the authors caution came mostly from CBT researchers using non-bona fide versions of the humanistic therapies.

The same review found emotion-focused therapy strongest, then person-centered therapy, and generic supportive-nondirective approaches least effective. Results appeared strongest for relationship difficulties, self-damaging activities, coping with chronic medical conditions and psychosis, and more mixed for depression and anxiety. The version reviewed is an accepted author manuscript, and the findings are about specific therapies, not about humanistic psychology as a theory of human nature.

Testing the core conditions

The 2010 summary in The Person-Centered Journal evaluates Rogers's six conditions. It reports a proposal by another author that the conditions are "not necessarily necessary, but always sufficient", and notes that the first condition is hypothetical because change outside a relationship may be possible. The article is a summary and evaluation by a counselor, not a systematic review, and the pages reviewed here do not report pooled effect sizes for the individual conditions.

Maslow's ordering of needs

Tay and Diener analyzed Gallup World Poll data from 123 countries on six needs and three types of well-being. They found need fulfillment consistently associated with well-being across world regions, and the associations for specific needs were largely independent of whether other needs were fulfilled. The order in which psychosocial needs emerged was fairly consistent across countries, while the fulfillment of basic and safety needs depended on country. The study reports mixed earlier evidence for the order Maslow proposed, and it did not examine the full theory of self-actualization.

Critiques of individualism

Pearson and Podeschi's 1997 paper describes criticism of humanistic psychology that has mounted in scholarly discourse. Marxist-influenced critics argue that its emphasis on the individual is elitist, and one quoted critic asks which real individuals in real societies have any chance of becoming self-actualized. Maslow, in reply, held that culture is a necessary but not sufficient cause of human nature, and that responsibility lies in both individuals and social conditions.

The paper also sets out a postmodern critique, using the perspective of Michel Foucault, which rejects the idea of an intrinsic inner self and treats the humanistic individual as a product of practices of power. The authors present both critiques as contested positions and argue that Maslow's later journals show growing concern with social and political forces.

Limits of the sources reviewed

The sources reviewed here do not contain a controlled test of humanistic psychology as a whole, and they describe disagreement about how the category is defined. The 2021 review notes comparison problems in the wider literature, and the critical paper reviewed is a conference paper from adult education, so it does not represent the full range of criticism. A paper, search or review of the school's present size and influence was not located, and no claim about this is made here.

Training and registers for counselors and psychotherapists

In the United Kingdom, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy runs a register that it states is accredited by the Professional Standards Authority, a program covering practitioners whose work is not regulated by law. Registered members commit to the association's Ethical Framework and Professional Conduct Procedure and must have passed an accredited training course or the Certificate of Proficiency. The page does not say whether the title counselor is legally protected.

The UK Council for Psychotherapy describes a Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy College whose members see each individual as a whole person including body, feelings, mind and spirit. Colleges decide who is accepted into full membership and set their own education, training and practice standards, which must align with the council's general standards. The page reviewed does not explain how the register operates. The sources reviewed do not cover training or registration in other countries.

Care boundaries

Humanistic psychology is a school of thought and a family of therapies, and a person's use of its ideas in coaching, workshops or growth groups is different from treatment delivered by a trained and registered psychotherapist. The sources reviewed do not report harms specific to humanistic psychology or its therapies, and they do not assess growth-center or coaching formats. This page does not diagnose or recommend. Necessary medical or mental health care should not be delayed or replaced, and anyone in crisis should contact local emergency services.