Criticism of Humanistic Theory - Research Paper Example

? Criticism of Humanistic Theory School Table of Contents Contents Page No. 3 A brief summary of the major principles of the humanistic theory 4 Humanistic theory’s stance on differences in gender and culture 4 Humanistic theory’s explanation of personality development 5 Humanistic theory’s explanation of changes in personality over the lifespan 6 My reflection on the humanistic theory 7 Conclusion 9 References 11 Abstract The humanistic theory is one of the most prominent theories of human psychology. It is significantly different from the other theories in that it is free of the constraints in the study of human psychology and rather suggests that free will drives human behavior. The humanistic theory causes the humanist psychologists to feel like the patients to understand the underlying motivations behind their feelings and actions rather than the other way round, so the effort is essentially done by the psychologists rather than the patients. This paper explores the fundamental principles underlying the humanist psychology, its stance of the differences in gender and culture, its stance on the development of human psychology and the changes that occur in psychology over the lifespan, and finally, a reflection on the contents and validity of the humanistic theory in the present age. It is suggested that although the humanistic theory does not offer adequate and comprehensive explanations of the differences in gender and culture or the way human psychology evolves over the passage of time, yet it is one of the most frequently used theories of psychology even in the modern age. Citicism of Humanistic Theory A brief summary of the major principles of the humanistic theory The first assumption of the humanistic theory is that every individual keeps a unique lens through which he/she sees the world and what he/she does seems reasonable through the focus of that lens. As a result of this, the questions asked by the humanistic psychologists are different from the ones that the psychologists using other approaches ask. While other approaches take people’s objective view into consideration, thus trying to find what an individual is like, the priority of the humanistic psychologists is to comprehend the subjectivity of the people, thus finding answer to what it feels like to be the individual they are studying. Thus, humanistic psychologists refuse to use the objective scientific method to study human behavior. The humanistic theory is explicitly based on the assumption that people’s actions are driven by their free will whether or not they realize this. The humanistic theory fosters a belief in people’s tendency to grow and fulfill the potential they have. Humanistic theory’s stance on differences in gender and culture The humanistic theory is based on the theory of Carl Rogers that does not offer any over explanation of the process of development of gender role. Rogers’s theory mainly focuses upon conditional positive regard and attainment of ideal self (McLeod, 2007). “This ignorance is connected to the way Humanistic Psychology therapist are predominately preoccupied with the inner processes of the individual and not with the social, cultural and historical forces that operate around us” (Alfandary, 1993). Conditional positive regard in the process of development of gender role can be visualized as certain expectations associated with the roles of gender whereas the ideal self can be perceived as behaviors appropriate for a particular gender. Gender appropriate behavior serves as an individual’s ideal self in the achievement of positive regard. For example, boys are told that washing and cleaning are tasks meant for girls just like girls are raised with this perception that providing for the family financially is the responsibility of the boys. Attributes for males include but are not limited to leadership, ambitiousness, aggression, power, dominance, and independence whereas some attributes for females include compassion, love, delicacy, understanding, and submissiveness. The cultural stereotype can be portrayed as conditional positive regard for the people to achieve which they need to develop the ideal self’s concept because this concept helps them execute behaviors that are appropriate for their respective genders. Lack of direct explanation of the differences in gender and culture by the humanistic theory is the reason why no research data can be located using the humanistic approach (ZeePedia.com, n.d.). Humanistic theory’s explanation of personality development Humanistic theory offers a fair explanation of personality development. The humanistic theory explains personality development by exclusively focusing upon human behavior. Humanistic psychologists are of the view that human nature compels individuals to strive for personal growth. It assets that people have freedom of choice irrespective of the environmental influences and considers people as conscious beings that are not under the control of unconscious needs. Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers are two well-reputed humanistic theorists (ryerson.ca, n.d.). Abraham Maslow associated the development of personality with the achievement of one’s needs. Maslow created a pyramid of five basic needs that according to him every human being has including the physiological needs, the safety needs, the love and belongingness needs, the self-esteem needs, and the need to self-actualize. Maslow arranged these needs one on top of the other and asserted that one feels a higher level need only when all basic needs are satisfied. Since growth and progress is associated with self-actualization which forms the top of the pyramid, development of a person’s personality may be restrained by the lack of fulfillment of a lower level need. On the other hand, Carl Rogers considered self-esteem as the driving factor behind one’s ability to achieve and for one’s personality to develop in the right direction. Carl Rogers placed emphasis upon the concept of self as an individual’s belief and trust in his/her own abilities and qualities. According to Carl Rogers, an individual can only fulfill his/her growth potential if he/she keeps a fundamentally positive self-concept which happens only when the individual has others’ unconditional positive regard. The problem is that most people do not consider others’ positive regard as unconditional. They tend to connect their real self with the ideal self in unhelpful ways, and thus end up either blaming themselves or others. Although such explanation of personality development is adequate, yet it lacks the influence of external factors on human behavior. For the most part, the humanistic theory draws upon an individual’s self-perception and emphasis on personal needs rather than response to the external stimuli. Hence, humanistic theory’s explanation of personality development cannot be considered comprehensive. Humanistic theory’s explanation of changes in personality over the lifespan Although humanistic theory does not adequately explain changes in the personality over the lifespan giving account of the expected changes to occur in different stages of life, yet it does talk about the long-term effects of specific circumstances and experiences undergone in the past. For example, Abraham Maslow stated that while people whose all of the needs shown in the pyramid are satisfied become self-actualizers and are thus able to completely fulfill their potential (Cherry, 2013), people whose particular needs were not satisfied for prolonged periods of time in the past might lead them to a condition of fixation at a later point in time. For example, an individual who was raised in poverty and who craved for expensive meals throughout the childhood because of the inability to buy them might continue to face anxiety about food throughout the adulthood and old age even if the individual is no more poor and can afford buying anything he wants to. This explanation of human behavior implies that the duration for which an experience is undergone in life plays a decisive role in the type of personality an individual would develop later in life. Similarly, Carl Rogers’s theory does not explicitly explain the patterns of change in personality over the lifespan but does mention a strong link between an individual’s self-perception and behavior in any kind of setting at any stage in life. Throughout their lives, people continue to chase achievements that cannot really make them satisfied but they do so in an attempt to gain the conditional positive regard of others for themselves. This raises people’s level of expectations so much that they are not satisfied even if they have enough. For instance, when a student that considers himself worth the top position in class gets a grade B in exam because of any reason, the student tends to deprive himself of the sense of achievement even when he has not actually failed in the exam. Alternately, the student places blame on the teachers which is also regressive since he fails to realize what he really needs to do in order to secure an A grade in the exam next time. Circumstances, settings, and challenges change over the lifespan but people’s approach to dealing with them is governed by the fulfillment of the same old needs or their self-image and attainment of conditional positive regard. My reflection on the humanistic theory I think that humanistic theory lays a very genuine and real explanation of human behavior. Two kids raised in the same environment by the same parents and given the same attention develop as two different individuals with striking contrasts between their personalities. This essentially suggests that people’s behavior is guided by their free will and everybody has a different way of perceiving the world and responding to the agents in it. We might not be able to understand what made an individual behave in a certain way but when things are seen from his/her perspective, we can find reasons that we otherwise cannot. This is the reason why I think that humanistic psychologists adopt a very rational approach by actually trying to experience the circumstances that cause people to behave in certain ways. Only by trying to be in their positive can we best understand what is going on in their minds. To me, the humanistic theory absolutely makes sense. However, I think that there is much more to personality that is not addressed by the humanistic theory. I feel that such aspects as influence of external and environmental agents and forces on personality development is missing from the humanistic theory, whereas they do play a substantial role in depicting human behavior and psychology. “All the [humanistic] theories refer to proactive behavior as being preferable to reactive behaviors, and stress the importance of behaving according to one's perception of the situation, and not because of any social influence or neuroticism” (HubPages, 2013). Humanistic psychologists must try to explain the differences in gender and culture in more detail. A down-side of the humanistic approach is that it does not adequately explain the horrors that can be inflicted by people upon one another. The humanistic psychologists’ discussion about the growth, potential, and positive regard is stale given the theory is faced with a world where genocide, domestic violence, and warfare are commonplace. Since the humanistic approach places emphasis upon the satisfaction of human needs and fulfillment of the growth potential, it generates a self-obsessed and individualistic outlook that rather than serving as a solution, happens to be a part of the problem itself. Nevertheless, the fact that use of humanistic approaches in counseling has benefited many people to date cannot be overlooked. The approaches of counseling developed by such humanists as Rogers have proved useful for many people and have improved their quality of life (Sammons, n.d.). Likewise, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory is one of the most popular and frequently employed theory of motivation both in academia and in industry. “The “humanistic” approach is by far the most popular class of therapeutic methods, owing to its humane, unintimidating style” (Castellano, 2011). Many organizations even today believe that they should prioritize their measures to improve the workers’ motivation according to the order in which needs have been placed in Maslow’s pyramid. Conclusion The humanistic approach emphasizes on the concepts of self-image, fulfillment of needs, and attainment of conditional positive regard. Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers are the main theorists of this approach. Humanistic theory implies that human behavior is driven by free will. While the humanistic theory offers a comprehensive explanation of internal motivators of behavior, study of the effects of external influences is negligible. Likewise, the humanistic theory does not offer adequate explanation of differences in gender and culture. Differences in genders are explained by a host of social, cognitive, and biological factors. Although the humanistic approach does not offer any direct explanation of the differences of gender and culture, yet it does imply that attainment of conditional positive regard for an individual carrying a certain gender happens as a result of the individual’s display of behaviors that are deemed appropriate for that gender. The cultural stereotype serves as a conditional positive regard for the people which imparts the need for them to develop the ideal self’s concept because it is the very concept that helps them execute behaviors that are appropriate for their respective genders. A significant criticism frequently acquired by the humanistic theory is the rigor in the humanistic methods and the apparent subjectivity of the theory. Other approaches usually consider their methods vague, unscientific, and exposed to bias and do acknowledge their way of studying other people’s methods of building the perceptions of the world as misguided. On the contrary, humanistic psychologists tend to refute such criticisms since they consider the scientific objective way as unsuitable to understand the people. Critics object the human nature’s positive view that is endorsed by the humanistic approach. In spite of all its shortcomings and the criticism raised against it, humanistic theory is one of the most natural and realistic theories of psychology and behavior and is still in use in different fields today. References: Alfandary, R. (1993). Humanistic Psychology. Retrieved from http://info.smkb.ac.il/home/home.exe/2710/2911. Castellano, D. J. (2011). Critique of Humanistic Psychotherapy. Retrieved from http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/science/psychotherapy.htm. Cherry, K. (2013). Hierarchy of Needs. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/hierarchyneeds.htm. HubPages. (2013). Humanist, Existential and Dispositional Theories of Personality. Retrieved from http://kerry43.hubpages.com/hub/Humanist-Existential-and-Dispositional-Theories-of-Personality. McLeod, S. (2007). Carl Rogers. Simply Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/carl-rogers.html. ryerson.ca. (n.d.). The Humanistic Approach. Retrieved from http://www.ryerson.ca/~glassman/humanist.html. Sammons, A. (n.d.). The humanistic approach: the basics. Retrieved from http://www.psychlotron.org.uk/newResources/approaches/AS_AQB_approaches_Human isticBasics.pdf. ZeePedia.com. (n.d.). Gender Issues in Psychology. Gender Issues in Psychology (PSY-512). Retrieved from http://www.zeepedia.com/read.php?other_approaches_the_humanistic_approach_cultural_influences_gender_issues_in_psychology&b=88&c=13. Read More