The Humanistic Personality Theory
The Humanistic Theory of Personality is a holistic psychological perspective that attributes human characteristics and actions to free will and an innate drive for self-actualization. This approach focuses on maximizing each person's potential and achievement, rather than a person's psychoses and disorders. It emphasizes that people are inherently good and pays special attention to personal experiences and creativity. Humanistic psychology has its roots in existentialism, behaviorism, and phenomenology. There have been advances made in positive, educational, and industrial psychology thanks to the humanistic perspective. Despite its great influence, humanistic psychology has also been criticized for its subjectivity and lack of evidence (Boundless).
Advantages
Humanistic psychology is holistic in nature: it takes whole persons into account rather than their separate traits or processes. In this way, people are appreciated as complex beings, instead of being reduced to a set of characteristics. Humanistic psychology focuses on subjective experiences as opposed to fixed, forced, definitive factors that determine behavior. This allows for a personality concept that is dynamic and fluid and accounts for much of the change a person experiences over a lifetime. Personality development is thought to be based on interactions in the phenomenal field or social and physical environment. Humanistic psychology stresses the importance of free will and thus, personal responsibility for decision-making. This view gives the conscious human being some necessary autonomy and frees him/her from deterministic principles. Lastly, and most importantly, the humanistic perspective emphasizes the need to strive for positive goals such as competence and influence. It explains human potential in a way that other theories cannot. Human self-actualization becomes the most meaningful drive a life can acquire. Disadvantages
Even though the Humanistic Perspective seems to have many advantages, critics still find a few main weighty disadvantages. These disadvantages include a lack of; empirical evidence, accounted continuity, society's impact, and explanations for the presence of evil in a society on our personality. The Humanistic perspective holds a subjective nature, therefore psychologists worry about falsifiability. The holistic approach allows for much variation but does not identify enough constant variables in order to be researched with true accuracy. Psychologists also worry that such an extreme focus on the subjective experience of the individual does little to explain or appreciate the impact of society on personality development. Some psychologists argue that focusing on the self to such an extent leads to a lack of social functioning. This personality perspective also does not seem to take into consideration the continuity of personality- how it develops over time. One last criticism of the Humanistic perspective is, because it is rooted in the beliefs that people are innately good and intuitively seek positive goals, it doesn't explain how the evil of the world effects people (and their personalities). Evaluation Techniques
There is one main test that was used to assess a person's personality through the Humanistic perspective. This test is known as the Q-sort. The Q-sort assessment test consists of a 100 card deck, with each card containing a specific personality quality. Examples might be "very outgoing and social", "organized and detail oriented", or "high self-esteem". The client is instructed to read each card and place them on a scale from one to nine (known as the nine-point continuum), with one being "very much not like me" to nine being "very much like me". The client is permitted to place the most cards in the middle and less on each point towards the extremes, that way the cards end up forming a normal curve. The goal of the assessment is to determine where a person is at relative to these qualities at the beginning of treatment and then to re-assess at various intervals to determine progress of growth. |
KEY WORDS:
holistic - characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole self-actualization - according to Maslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are net and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one's potential potential - having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future achievement - an accomplishment, or something accomplished by a successful performance or act psychoses - an abnormal condition of the mind inherently - existing in someone or something as a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute creativity - the quality or ability to create or invent something existentialism - a twentieth-century philosophical movement emphasizing the uniqueness of each human existence in freely making its self-defining choices behaviorism - an approach to psychology focusing on behavior, denying any independent significance for mind and assuming that behavior is determined by the environment phenomenology - a philosophy based on the intuitive experience of phenomena, and on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as consciously perceived by conscious beings humanistic perspective - a more optimistic holistic approach to human psychology focused on uniquely human issues, such as the self, self-actualization, health, hope, love, creativity, nature, being, becoming, individuality and meaning—that is, a concrete understanding of human existence subjectivity - existing only within the experiencer's mind trait - an identifying characteristic, habit or trend behavior - the way a living creature behaves or acts concept - an understanding retained in the mind, from experience, reasoning and/or imagination; a generalization, or abstraction (mental impression), of a particular set of instances or occurrences conscious - autonomy - self-government; freedom to act or function independently competence - the quality or state of being able or suitable for a particular task; the quality or state of being competent for a particular task falsifiability - the logical possibility that an assertion could be shown false by a particular observation or physical experiment empirical evidence - a source of knowledge acquired by means of observation or experimentation self - in contemporary psychology assumed to be the center of personality, the organizer of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Q-sort Test - The Q-Sort assessment was developed by Stephenson (1953) and it was quickly adopted into Client Centered Therapy by Carl Rogers. The Q-Sort consists of a deck of 100 cards, each containing a fairly specific quality within an individual's personality. |
Who Are They?
Please click on the following links to access further information into the two main founders of the Humanistic Personality Theory.
Abraham Maslow (1908 - 1970)
Carl Rogers (1902 - 1987)