Humanistic Aspects of Personality

Dr. ShwetaAsst. Professor, Psychology

NUSRL, Ranchi

Humanism: Abraham Maslow

Philosophical movement that emphasizes worth of the individual and the centrality of human values

Attends to matters of ethics & personal worth

Gives credit to the human spirit Emphasis on creative, spontaneous

& active nature of humans-optimistic

Human capacity to overcome adversity & hopelessness

‘ If you are hungry and thirsty, you will tend to try to take care of the thirst first.  After all, you can do without food for weeks, but you can only do without water for a couple of days!  Thirst is a “stronger” need than hunger.  Likewise, if you are very thirsty, but someone has put a choke hold on you and you can’t breath, which is more important? ’’

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

S u rviva l o r P hys io lo g ic a l N e e ds

S a fe ty o r S e c u rity N e e ds

L o ve o r B e lo ng ine s s N e e ds

E s te e m N e e ds

S e lf-a c tua liza tio n

The physiological needs.  oxygen, water, protein, salt, sugar,

calcium, and other minerals and vitamins.

needs to be active, to rest, to sleep, to get rid of wastes ( sweat, urine, and feces).

The safety and security needs Interested in finding safe

circumstances, stability, protection.  You might develop a need for structure, for order.

Looking at it negatively, you become concerned, not with needs like hunger and thirst, but with your fears and anxieties. 

The love and belonging needs. 

You begin to feel the need for friends, a life-partner, children, affectionate relationships in general, even a sense of community.

  Looked at negatively, you become increasing susceptible to loneliness and social anxieties.

The esteem needs.  Maslow noted two versions of esteem needs

Lower - need for the respect of others, the need for status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity, even dominance.

Higher - need for self-respect, confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, independence, and freedom. 

“higher”???

  The negative version of these needs is low self-esteem and inferiority complexes. 

Self-actualization

........if you want to be truly self-actualizing......you need to have your lower needs taken care of, at least to a considerable extent. 

Example: if you are hungry, you are scrambling to get food;  if you are unsafe, you have to be continuously on guard......... 

Self-Actualization

Innate process by which a person tends to grow spiritually and realize potential

Self-actualized People

Spiritually fulfilled Comfortable with themselves & others Loving & creative Realistic & productive People with ideal healthy lives Realistic knowledge of self & accept

self Independent, spontaneous & playful Establish deep intimate relationships Have a love for human race Non-conformists but highly ethical

CARL ROGERS

•Rogers sees people as basically good or healthy -- or at very least, not bad or ill.

• mental health as the normal progression of life, and mental illness, criminality, and other human problems, as distortions of that natural tendency.   

•positive regard: like love, affection, attention, nurturance, and so on.•positive self-regard, that is, self-esteem, self-worth, a positive self-image.  We achieve this positive self-regard by experiencing the positive regard others show us over our years of growing up.  Without this self-regard, we feel small and helpless, and again we fail to become all that we can be!

conditions of worth: As we grow up, our parents, teachers, peers, the media, and others, only give us what we need when we show we are “worthy,” rather than just because we need it.Getting positive regard on “on condition” Rogers calls conditional positive regard.  Because we do indeed need positive regard, these conditions are very powerful, and we bend ourselves into a shape determined, not by our organismic valuing or our actualizing tendency, but by a society that may or may not truly have our best interests at heart.  A “good little boy or girl” may not be a healthy or happy boy or girl!

Over time, this “conditioning” leads us to have conditional positive self-regard as well.  We begin to like ourselves only if we meet up with the standards others have applied to us, rather than if we are truly actualizing our potentials.  And since these standards were created without keeping each individual in mind, more often than not we find ourselves unable to meet them, and therefore unable to maintain any sense of self-esteem.

This gap between the real self and the ideal self, the “I am” and the “I should” is called incongruity.  The greater the gap, the more incongruity.  The more incongruity, the more suffering=neurosis

Defenses