Expert answer:Personality development
Solved by verified expert:What are the basic assumptions of the humanistic perspective of personality development? What did Rogers mean when he stated that people are basically good?Explain Rogers’ concept of the fully-functioning person and Maslow’s concept of self-actualization. How are these concepts similar and how are they different?How do the humanistic theories differ from the psychodynamic and learning perspectives that you studied previously in the course?400 words min. NO PLAGIARISM. References and citations required. Textbook reference: Howard S. Friedman and Miriam W. Schustack. (2012). Personality: Classic Theories and Modern Research. (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Higher Education.ONLY USE TEXTBOOK
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Humanistic, Existential, and Positive Aspects of
Personality
Existentialism
•
The Phenomenological View
Humanism
•
Giving a Role to the Human Spirit Relations with Other People Define
Our HumannessThe Human Potential Movement
Love as a Central Focus of Life: Erich Fromm
•
Loving as an Art Dialectical Humanism: Transcending
Conflict Evidence Supporting Fromm’s Approach? The Age of Anxiety?
Responsibility: Carl Rogers
•
Rogers’s Background Growth, Inner Control, and the Experiencing
Person Rogerian Therapy Becoming One’s Self
Anxiety and Dread
•
Anxiety, Threat, and Powerlessness: Rollo May Personal Choice:Victor
Frankl
Self-Actualization: Abraham Maslow
•
Early Ideas about Self-Actualization in Jung’s Work Peak
Experiences The Internal Push for Self-Actualization Maslow’s
Hierarchy of Needs Measuring Self-Actualization
Happiness and Positive Psychology
•
Positive Psychology The American Paradox
Further Evaluation of Existential–Humanistic Approaches
Lance Armstrong. What does personality psychology have to say about spirit,
courage, and peak experiences?
Confirming one of the greatest sports comebacks ever, cyclist Lance Armstrong
returned to win and dominate the Tour de France bicycle competition. But Lance had
previously faced an even greater crisis and challenge. At the age of 24, he was
diagnosed with testicular cancer, which had spread to his lungs and brain. With less
than a 40 percent chance of survival, Lance had a testicle removed and underwent
aggressive chemotherapy. His physical strength, a core of his self, was suddenly
challenged and devastated. Yet Lance not only returned to cycling triumph, he
returned to create his own cancer foundation. He then added record Tour de France
titles, was awarded virtually every sports honor possible, and became an
international symbol of motivation and inspiration.
Mohandas Gandhi, called the “Mahatma,” or “Great Soul,” led a life defined by
commitment to principle. He had the personal strength to become one of the most
influential leaders ever, pioneering nonviolent political resistance and winning
political freedom for India. Anatoly (now Natan) Sharansky was falsely convicted of
treason in the former Soviet Union; his only “crime” was being a civil rights activist
trying to emigrate to Israel. Facing more and more pressure and long-term
imprisonment, he became more and more resolute, eventually winning his freedom
and freedom for thouands of others. Martin Luther King Jr. faced down police dogs,
fire hoses, and a long-entrenched racist U.S. society to win dramatic civil rights
reforms. Aung San Suu Kyi spent over 14 years under house arrest in her home in
Myanmar (Burma), refusing to leave her country as she continued to advocate its
return to democracy and human rights.
How are we to understand such personalities, such modern-day heroes, who
represent what is spiritual and noble about human beings? What is the nature of the
human spirit? Why are we here? Why are we born and why must we die? How do we
measure human success? What is the path to happiness? At certain times these
questions become burning issues in the lives of many ordinary people. Most
adolescents agonize over their true identity, their purpose, and their future. Many
middle-aged adults face an existential midlife crisis. Many elderly people
contemplate the value and meaning of their lives. Issues of love, responsibility,
anxiety, and self-fulfillment permeate these thoughts at each stage of life.
These questions and quandaries are uniquely human. Dogs do not ponder the
meaning of their existence. Yet even young children ask about death, and why people
suffer, and what is right and wrong. Any full psychological understanding of what it
means to be a person should provide a psychological perspective for addressing
individual differences in approaching these age-old questions. These questions are
the focus of the work of humanistic and existential approaches to personality.
During the past 40 years, only about one-third of the American public has been
reporting they are very happy (Pew Research Center, 2006). This percentage of
happy people has been remarkably steady. During this same time period, the average
per capita income (adjusted for inflation) has more than doubled. So, rising incomes
have not raised happiness levels. On the other hand, the data also show that
individuals with higher incomes are more likely to report being very happy than their
poorer associates. How can we understand this seeming contradiction? The answer is
that psychological issues are paramount. It is not how much money you have that
directly influences whether you are happy or miserable, but rather how you think
about your existence, including comparing yourself to other people.
The filmmaker Woody Allen captures the existential crises that can dominate a
person’s life in his Academy Award–winning movie Annie Hall. When—in a crisis of
love—the Woody Allen character breaks up with his girlfriend, Annie Hall, they must
divide up all the belongings from their shared apartment. Annie reminds him that all
the books on death and dying are his. He is obsessed with death. But he is also
obsessed with the meaning of life. He bombards Annie with discussions of
philosophy, Nazi death camps, illness, aging, the meaning of love, and other central
issues of human existence, all in a chronic search for life’s meaning. He is appalled by
people who continue on their merry way in life, wallowing in self-deception and
oblivious to real human suffering, as symbolized by his visit to “tinsel-town”
Hollywood at Christmastime, portrayed as the height of superficiality, where even
the snow is fake. Analogously, comic Stephen Colbert satirizes the contradictions
among what we think, what we say, and what we do, as he plays the character of an
uninformed but high-status and self-important fool.
Not only in films and TV but in real life, people who are struggling for a sense of
value and direction in their lives are often overwhelmed with anxiety; they become
neurotic and otherwise psychologically impaired. On the other hand, people who are
totally self-absorbed and lead egocentric or hedonistic lives often wind up even more
unhappy than the neurotics. This chapter explains how existential and humanistic
perspectives on personality point the way toward resolution of basic human conflicts
about value, meaning and happiness, issues that are often ignored by other
approaches to personality.
Existentialism
In the most simple terms, existentialism is an area of philosophy concerned with
the meaning of human existence. Existentialists sometimes speak of being-in-theworld. This idea comes from Martin Heidegger (1962), an early-twentieth-century
German philosopher. It addresses a thorny philosophical problem that challenges
psychological science. A traditional positivist view of the world focuses on the laws
that govern the behavior of objects in the world. For example, rats who are reinforced
with food pellets for turning left in a maze soon become left-turning rats. This is
regular, lawful behavior. But would this law exist if there were no people to think
about it? To answer this question, other, nonpositivist philosophers have focused on
the subjective nature of existence, arguing that nothing would exist if people were
not here to see it.
Existentialism
An area of philosophy concerned with the meaning of human existence
Being-in-the-World
The existential idea that the self cannot exist without a world and the world cannot
exist without a person or being to perceive it
Positivism
The philosophical view of the world that focuses on the laws that govern the behavior
of objects in the world
In the extreme subjective view, the world changes as people’s ideas about it change
(see Chapter 7). In other words, the idea of a world is a distinctly human
construction. The problem with this subjective approach is that positivist science
often works—it makes valid predictions; that is, taking a positivist approach,
scientists have established that there are indeed laws or regularities that do an
excellent job of describing the world. Both the positivist, objective viewpoint and the
nonpositivist, subjective viewpoint each makes an important point. Existentialists,
therefore, address these matters by referring to “beings-in-the-world.” Simply put,
the self cannot exist without a world and the world cannot exist without a person (a
being) to perceive it.
This existential philosophical orientation is especially important for personality
psychology. A physical scientist, such as an astronomer, can usually safely ignore
these issues, at least up to a point. When tracking comets or analyzing radio waves,
the scientist’s conception of human existence is irrelevant. (However, when issues of
cosmology arise, such as the origin of the universe, even an astronomer must
consider philosophy.) But for a personality psychologist, existential puzzles have
direct and constant implications. People are active, conscious beings, always
thinking. Is true love a product of the mind of the lover, or is it an ephemeral and
unimportant product of some neurophysical state? Probably it is simply neither.
Existential theories suggest that attempts to focus exclusively on self-concepts and
cognitive structures, or exclusively on environmental contingencies, must ultimately
fail. Instead, we also must examine people striving to make sense of their worlds by
examining human beings in their worlds (Hoeller, 1990).
The existential examination is not tuned to uncovering logical inconsistencies or
rationalizations. For example, take the cases of religion, belief in the afterlife, and
anxiety about death. The existential approach does not consider why we think this
way, but that we think this way. Similarly, questions about choosing to be ethical and
moral, and guilt about being immoral, are seen as essential aspects of being human,
rather than as incidental by-products of the biological nature of human beings
(Vandenberg, 1991). Ethical and spiritual matters are neither to be ignored nor
explained away.
The Phenomenological View
The existential perspective received a strong push in the years following World War
II from French writers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Camus, concerned with
the fundamental absurdity of existence, nevertheless saw value in the individual’s
having the courage to attempt to correct injustice as he or she perceived it. Relatedly,
Sartre emphasized the responsibility of all individuals for their own decisions, and he
believed we need to see ourselves as free actors in order to achieve authentic human
existence. For example, in his powerful play No Exit (Huis Clos), Sartre shows us that
hell is being trapped in a room with people we hate. It is our own perceptions (not
fire and brimstone) that can torture us. Interestingly, both Camus and Sartre were
active in the French resistance to the Nazis, at a time when courage, responsibility,
and individual freedom were issues of the utmost importance.
Why Does It Matter?
Because existentialism argues that it is an oversimplification to view people as
controlled by fixed physical laws, the approach is nondeterministic; that is, people
cannot be correctly viewed as cogs in some vast machine. This approach, therefore,
encourages theories that consider issues of individual initiative, creativity, and selffulfillment. These are especially matters of concern for humanistic psychologists.
Humanistic approaches to personality psychology focus on the active, positive
aspects of human growth and achievement.
Aspects of existential approaches are sometimes termed phenomenological. This
means that people’s perceptions or subjective realities are considered to be valid data
for investigation. Two people can perceive the same situation very differently, and
this difference—this phenomenological discrepancy—is often a focus of attention in
existential approaches to personality. In a dispute between a husband and wife, for
example, a phenomenological approach would attend to the needs and perceptions of
the participants rather than to their psychological history or the rewards and
contingencies of the situation. However, because the situation influences the
perceptions, it would by no means be ignored.
Phenomenological
The concept that people’s perceptions or subjective realities are considered valid data
for investigation
Humanism
Humanism is a philosophical movement that emphasizes the personal worth of the
individual and the centrality of human values. A humanistic approach to personality
likewise attends to matters of ethics and personal worth. Many approaches to
personality, being deterministic, emphasize the degree to which our behavior is
controlled by unconscious forces or prior experiences. For example, we have seen
that the psychoanalyst sees humans as driven by the primitive instincts of the id, and
we have seen that the behaviorist sees people as conditioned by the contingencies of
the environment.
Humanism
A philosophical movement that emphasizes the personal worth of the individual and
the importance of human values
Giving a Role to the Human Spirit
Humanistic approaches, however, resting on the more complex philosophical
foundation of existentialism, are freer to give credit to the human spirit. Abraham
Maslow thus called humanistic psychology the “third force” (the first two forces
being behaviorism and psychoanalysis).
Humanistic approaches emphasize the creative, spontaneous, and active nature of
human beings. These approaches are usually optimistic, as when they focus on the
noble human capacity to overcome hardship and despair. Sometimes, however, these
approaches turn pessimistic, as when they contemplate the futility of one person’s
actions. Nevertheless, these approaches are willing to take on the spiritual and
philosophic aspects of human nature (Rychlak, 1997). (See the SelfUnderstanding box on creativity.)
Relations with Other People Define Our
Humanness
Building on existentialism, the humanistic approach stresses the “being” in human
beings. In other words, it emphasizes the special active and aware quality of human
beings. Life develops as people create worlds for themselves. This view also often
moves from humans “being” to humans “becoming”; that is, the healthy personality
exhibits an active movement toward self-fulfillment. In addition, the humanistic
approach adopts the existential idea that our existence comes especially from our
relations with other human beings (Buber, 1937). An important focus is on direct,
mutual relations, which philosopher Martin Buber called the I-Thou dialogue. In
this dialogue, each human confirms the other person as being of unique value. This is
distinguished from a utilitarian relationship (called the I-It monologue), in which a
person uses others but does not value them for themselves. Although Buber
proffered this argument in a religious context, many humanistic psychologists focus
on spiritual matters without religious content.
I-Thou Dialogue
A phrase used by philosopher Martin Buber to describe a direct, mutual relationship
in which each individual confirms the other person as being of unique value
I-It Monologue
A phrase used by philosopher Martin Buber to describe a utilitarian relationship in
which a person uses others but does not value them for themselves
Why Does It Matter?
The impact of the human potential movement can now be seen in mainstream
society. For example, protecting humans’ relations with an unsullied, unpolluted
natural eco-sphere is now a major political force worldwide. In the area of business,
promoting the individual worker’s self-development and concern with the feelings
and ideas of small groups of workers are now major issues in industrial psychology
and corporate culture. And in psychotherapy, concern with unconscious conflicts has
often been replaced with techniques to facilitate personal growth. The implications of
humanistic approaches for healthy personality development are being felt
throughout society.
The Human Potential Movement
The so-called human potential movement, which began in the 1960s, is one
example of the existential–humanistic approach to personality. Through small-group
meetings, self-disclosure, and introspection, people are encouraged to realize their
inner potentials. In the 1960s and ‘70s, the “human potential” milieu was more often
than not a hippie commune in the woods, where encounter groups, body massage,
meditation, consciousness-raising, organic health foods, and communing with nature
were heavily employed. Today it echoes in movements of environmentalism, grassroots democracy, civil liberties, worker dignity, and unselfish self-fulfillment.
Human Potential Movement
An existential–humanistic movement in which people are encouraged to realize their
inner potentials through small group meetings, self-disclosure, and introspection
Self-Understanding: Are You Creative?
One modern researcher working in the humanistic tradition is positive psychologist
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, known for his work on self-actualized people.
Csikszentmihalyi (1996, 2000) outlines some of the characteristics of highly
creative people. Of interest is his finding that creative people often have traits that
are seemingly contradictory. These antithetical traits seem to produce a dialectical
tension that may play a role in creativity. (Dialectic refers to the process by which
two contradictory forces or tendencies lead to a resolution or synthesis, in this case
creative production.) What exactly does this mean?
Dialectical Tension
Concept used by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi for the idea that creative people tend to
have traits that are seemingly contradictory but that play a role in their creativity
Creative individuals are usually very smart, but they may be naïve at the same time.
For example, Albert Einstein needed his wife’s help to manage his financial affairs.
Or they may be wise but childish, as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was reported to be.
Furthermore, they may value playfulness; yet creative accomplishment, such as in
the arts, usually requires incredible discipline. They take risks when necessary for
creative achievement.
Creative people usually have very high levels of energy. As Freud suggested, this is
often sexual energy, and they may have huge sexual appetites. On the other hand,
they can usually focus this energy and so may, in fact, avoid sexual involvements.
Similarly, creative people can seem quite extroverted and be the life of the party, but
they often consider themselves introverted and even shy. They can be simultaneously
humble and deeply proud of their significant accomplishments.
According to Csikszentmihalyi, creative people tend to have both masculine and
feminine characteristics. Creative men are often sensitive and nurturing, and creative
women are often assertive and dominant. They can suffer because of their extreme
sensitivity, but they can also achieve the peak experiences of self-actualization.
Note that this sort of analysis is uniquely humanistic and existential in flavor. It is
not an explanation in terms of hormones and brain structures, conditioning and
reinforcement schedules, or instincts and socialization. Rather, it often involves a
phenomenological examination of matters that are uniquely human, and it is
comfortable with notions of creativity, freedom, and self-fulfillment.
Love as a Central Focus of Life: Erich Fromm
Most parents say that love is the most important thing that they can give to their
children. Most adults say that love is the most fulfilling aspect of their lives. Yet many
approaches to personality pay little heed to love, or else they dismiss it as an
unimportant by-product of the true determinants of personality. On the contrary,
existential and humanist …
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