Download PSY 370 - Chapter 13

PSY 370 - Personality
Experience, Existence,
and the Meaning of Life:
Humanistic Psychology
Chapter 13
Humanistic Psychology
is based on the premise that, to
understand a person, you must
understand his or her unique view of
reality.
Phenomenology
comprises everything a person hears, feels,
and thinks, and which is at the center of his
or her humanity and may even be the basis
of free will.
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PSY 370 - Personality
Foundations of Humanism
 
The mind is aware, and it knows it is being studied,
consequently:
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Psychology needs to address this unique phenomenon of
awareness rather than brushing it under the rug.
Self-awareness brings to the fore many uniquely human
phenomena that do not arise when the object of study is a rock,
a molecule, or even another animal.
Awareness includes phenomena such as: willpower, conceptual
thinking, imagination, introspection, self-criticism, aspirations,
creativity, and above all, free will.
The job of humanistic psychology is to seek to
understand awareness, free will, and the many related
aspects of the mind that are uniquely human and that
give life meaning. But what is self-awareness? What is
free will? And, most difficult of all, what is the meaning of
life?
Phenomenology: Awareness Is
Everything
. . . the realization that only your present experience
matters is the basis of free will.
The past is gone and the future is not here yet.
You are here now and can choose
what to think, feel, and do.
Interpretations of reality
Construal
Your particular experience
of the world
Freely chosen
By choosing your construals,
by deciding how to
interpret your experience,
you can achieve free will.
Yours are unique to you
The Chemistry of Experience
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Wundt
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Credited with constructing the first psychological laboratory (1879).
Some credit him with the emergence of psychology as an independent
discipline with its own distinct methods, programs, and institutions.
He conceived of psychology as the field that would examine conscious
experience as an important phenomenon in its own right, beyond the
physical stimuli that affect it.
Advocated the study of human perceptions of and interactions with the
physical world.
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The Chemistry of Experience
(cont.)
Introspection:
Observing your own inner experience
  Wundt
used introspection as a method to
  study
and record an individual’s pure mental
experience (pure sensation & perception).
  train researchers to ignore learned meanings
and associations, reporting perception without
interpretation.
The Chemistry of Experience
(cont.)
Introspection
Describe this object.
The Chemistry of Experience
(cont.)
 
Wundt used introspection as a method to
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Through introspection Wundt hoped to formulate something
like a chemistry of mental life
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to identify the elements of perception and thought that comprise more
complex inner experiences.
to analyze any experience, feeling, or thought into its basic irreducible parts.
These goals were not met.
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study and record an individual’s pure mental experience (pure sensation &
perception).
train research assistants to ignore learned meanings and associations;
report perception without interpretation.
conclude that cognition is separate from perception.
The usefulness of this enterprise was unclear.
As it turns out, some complex perceptions, feelings, and thoughts are
apparently irreducible.
Perhaps the most important difficulty with the phenomenological program
was the method of introspection itself.
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PSY 370 - Personality
Existentialism:
The Philosophical Roots of Humanistic
Psychology
 
Existentialism is a broad philosophical movement
that began in Europe in the mid-1800s.
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It arose as a reaction against European rationalism,
science, and the industrial revolution that existentialists
believed had gone too far in its attempt to account for
everything .
Existentialists thought science, technology, and rational
philosophy had lost touch with human experience.
Existentialism began to catch on among European
philosophers after World War II.
Major philosophical questions about existence—in
the moment:
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What is the nature of existence?
How does it feel?
What does it mean?
Existentialism: Experience and
Thrownness
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Three parts of experience:
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Umwelt—perception: the sensations you feel by virtue of being a
biological organism
Mitwelt—social experience: consisting of what you think and feel as
a social being
Eigenwelt—psychological experience: your inner experience,
including the experience of introspection
Thrown-ness (Geworfenheit)—an important basis of
your experience; the time, place, and circumstances
into which you happened to be born
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Being thrown into modern society is particularly difficult.
Religion does not help much; it has a small role today as compared
to the past.
Modern substitutes for religion (e.g., science, philosophy) have
failed to provide an alternate worldview.
Existentialism: Questioning the Meaning of
Life
  In
modern society, the answers can be found
nowhere; not in society itself, religion, science,
art, or philosophy.
  An
overarching purpose, indeed the meaning of
life, cannot be found.
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PSY 370 - Personality
Existentialism: Angst (existential
anxiety)
Fundamental Questions About Existence
What is the meaning of existence?
Why am I here?
What should I be doing?
 
Angst (existential anxiety):
anxiety you experience when
these fundamental questions
are still unanswered by you
You know that life is short and
you had best spend what time
you have in the “right way”.
  You will not know how to spend
your time in the “right way” if
you do not know what the “right
way” is.
 
Existentialism: Angst (existential
anxiety) cont.
Angst can be analyzed into three separate sensations
Anguish: Choice is inevitable and imperfect;
i.e., something always has to suffer for
something else to benefit.
Forlornness: There are no absolute rules and you
are alone in making your
own existential choices.
Despair: If you acknowledge the momentous and
regrettable fact that many critical life
outcomes are outside of your control, then
you also will feel despair at your inability to
change those crucial aspects of life.
Existentialism: Living in Bad Faith
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Bad faith
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Living in bad faith poses three problems:
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Leading an unexamined life
Leaving the fundamental questions about existence unaddressed
To ignore these troubling facts of existence is to live a cowardly lie; it is
immoral and amounts to selling your soul for comfort.
Even if you can temporarily avoid angst by ignoring troubling existential
issues, you still will not be happy; even the most smug and unthinking
person occasionally realizes that he or she will soon be dead without
having done anything significant or meaningful.
Choosing not to worry about the meaning of life and surrendering your
choices to external authorities is still making a choice; there is no exit
from this existential dilemma, even if you can fool yourself into thinking
that there is.
Consequently, you should hone your optimistic toughness and face
the inescapable fact that you are mortal, your life is short, and you
are master of your own destiny.
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Existentialism: Living an Authentic
Existence
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Authentic existence
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entails being honest, insightful, and morally correct.
will not relieve you from loneliness and unhappiness.
•  A courageous examination of conscious experience reveals
the awful truth that every person is alone and doomed.
•  Life has no meaning beyond what you give it.
•  Any apparent meaning it might seem to have is an illusion.
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Leads to discovering the essence of the human
experience:
•  The human being is the only animal that understands it must
die.
Existentialism: Living an Authentic
Existence (cont.)
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Living an authentic existence is not easy.
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It takes moral courage to cast aside defense
mechanisms and the veneer of culture, and peer into
the void of mortality and meaninglessness.
•  When Nietszche did this, he decided the most honorable
response was to rise above it all and become a superman.
His ideal person sought to triumph over the apparent
meaninglessness of life by coming to see fundamental ideas
in a way that provided the certainty and existential strength to
face what must be faced.
•  Sartre reached a different conclusion; Sartre found that,
through existential analysis, people can regain awareness of
their freedom. He wrote that existential theory “is the only one
which gives man dignity, the only one which does not reduce
him to an object.” He believed that the existential challenge is
to do all you can to better the human condition, even in the
face of life’s uncertainties. This is how you can regain your
dignity and freedom, and find meaning in life.
Optimistic humanism: Rogers and Maslow
  Began
with the existential
assumptions that
  phenomenology
  people
  Added
is central.
have free will.
two more assumptions:
  people
are basically good.
have an innate need to make
themselves and the world better.
  people
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Self-Actualization: Rogers
 
Carl Rogers changed the tone and much
of the message of the classic existential
and phenomenological analysis.
People have one basic tendency and striving
—to actualize, maintain, and enhance their
own experience.
  Phenomenal field: The entire panorama of
an individual’s conscious experience; a
person can be understood only from the
perspective of his or her phenomenal field.
  Self-actualization: To maintain and enhance
life; self-actualization is the meaning of
existence (a sharp departure from existential
philosophy).
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The Hierarchy of Needs: Maslow
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When the lower needs are satisfied, the individual will work to satisfy
the next set of needs until he or she reaches self-actualization.
In other words, an individual will work on self-actualizing needs
(including pondering the meaning of existence) only after all other
needs are met.
 
This idea marks another sharp departure from existentialist philosophy,
in that existentialists promote living an authentic existence at all times
(even when your physiological needs are not met).
selfactualization
status, esteem
belonging, social activity
safety, security, comfort
basic physiological needs: food, water, etc.
The Fully Functioning Person: Rogers
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The only way to accomplish this is to face the world
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Unconditional positive regard paves the way.
Conditions of worth limit your freedom to think and act.
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without fear.
without self-doubt.
without neurotic defenses that distort reality.
If you believe you are valuable only if certain things about you
are true, then you will distort your perception of reality to believe
them, even if they are not true.
If you think you are valuable only if your behavior conforms to
certain rules and expectations, you lose your ability to choose
what to do.
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PSY 370 - Personality
The Fully Functioning Person: Rogers
The Fully Functioning Person: Rogers
 
There is only one correct answer to these questions: “I am here,
at this college, in this personality class because I choose to be.”
  Yet how many times do you hear students say, “I am here
because my parents are making me go.” Or similarly, “I am
here because if I drop out of college my parents will kill me.”
Or maybe even worse, “I am here because I will never get a
job without a college degree.”
  None of these statements are true, in fact.
•  Your parents are not forcing you around campus, in
handcuffs and shackles, sitting you down in your seat,
forcing you to take this class.
•  Your parents are not going to kill you (with almost 100%
certainty).
•  And, in fact, there are many stable, high paying, and
honorable jobs that one can do without a college degree.
The Fully Functioning Person: Rogers
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So, if you are one of those students who answered those
questions incorrectly the first time, try answering them
again; this time answering them correctly: “I am here, at this
college, in this personality class because I choose to be.”
When you start taking responsibility for your decisions, and
you reject conditions of worth then you will begin taking
steps toward becoming a fully functioning person.
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You will take back your free will.
Caution: If you have free will you have complete responsibility for
your choices (you can no longer blame anyone but yourself).
You cannot have free will without also taking complete responsibility;
you cannot become a fully functioning person without being
completely responsible for your decisions and their outcomes.
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PSY 370 - Personality
The Fully Functioning Person: Rogers
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A fully functioning person
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Becoming a fully functioning person is possible if the individual
experienced unconditional positive regard from parents and other
important people in life, because those individuals will not develop
conditions of worth .(Maslow disagreed slightly; he believed that
anybody from any background could become a fully functioning person.)
A person who is free from conditions of worth leads an existence that is
free from existential anxiety, because that person is
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is happy, is leading an authentic existence, is psychologically healthy, is
striving toward self-actualization.
faces the world without fear, self-doubt, or neurotic defenses.
confident of his or her value; does not need to blindly follow rules, because a
sense of innate goodness leads to the right choices.
A fully functioning person lives a life rich in emotion and self-discovery,
and such a person is reflective, spontaneous, flexible, adaptable,
confident, trusting, creative, self-reliant, ethical, open-minded, etc.
Humanistic Psychotherapy
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Helps the client become a fully functioning person
The therapist provides unconditional positive regard.
The nature of communication between the therapist and client is
extremely important – the therapist must be a good listener
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to help the client perceive his or her own thoughts and feelings without the
therapist seeking to change them in any way.
to make the client feel appreciated no matter what he or she thinks, says, or
does.
This time-consuming process allows insight and the removal of
conditions of worth, the theory goes, and helps the client become
a fully functioning person.
Efficacy research
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Ideal self and the self are measured, using a Q-sort, before and after
therapy.
Post-therapy they are more similar than before therapy, but not as close as a
control group of people who did not need therapy.
Has been criticized because both selves (current and ideal) change, and a
closely aligned current and ideal self is not necessarily a good measure of
psychological health.
Personal Constructs: Kelly
  Personal
construct theory
  Kelly emphasized what he called personal
constructs: how one’s cognitive or thinking
system builds experience out of a unique set
of ideas about the world.
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PSY 370 - Personality
Personal Constructs: Kelly (cont.)
 
The Role Construct Repertory
Test (REP Test)
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The test taker is given a grid upon
which he or she will write down the
responses to a set of 22 questions.
Every question asks the test taker
to name an important person in his/
her life, or name a person that he/
she associates with a particular
kind of event.
Examples
•  Write down the name of “your
closest present friend of the
same sex as yourself”.
•  Write down the name of “a
person with whom you usually
feel most uncomfortable”.
After answering all of the questions,
the test taker will have recorded 22
names in all, including the test
taker’s own name on line #1.
Personal Constructs: Kelly (cont.)
 
The Role Construct Repertory Test (REP Test)
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After all 22 names are recorded, the test taker is asked to make 22
comparisons in groups of 3; “Think about these three people. Are two of
them alike in some important way that distinguishes them from the third
person? Keep thinking about them until you remember the important way in
which two of them are alike and which sets them off from the third person.”
For Sort #1 this test taker viewed 2
people as intelligent; the 3rd person was
not unintelligent, just viewed as
uneducated compared to the other 2.
Personal Constructs: Kelly (cont.)
 
The Role Construct Repertory Test (REP Test)
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The test taker believes that he or she is comparing the people
(“figures”) when taking the test.
Constructs and contrasts are both words chosen by the test
taker to describe important people in his or her life.
By asking the test taker to identify constructs and name them,
what the test is actually measuring is 22 constructs and 22
contrasts representing the unique way that the test taker views
the social world.
Since Kelly, research has shown that certain individuals more
readily bring to mind particular constructs, called chronically
accessible constructs; the REP test probably most frequently
taps into chronically accessible constructs.
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Personal Constructs: Kelly (cont.)
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Personal constructs come from past experience, but they
are not determined by past experience.
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Kelly used a “man as scientist” metaphor to explain how
personal constructs are developed.
Kelly believed that the sum of your experiences and perceptions
provides the data you use to develop an interpretation, or theory,
of what the world is like. This theory is your personal construct
system, which becomes the framework for your perceptions and
thoughts about the world now.
Personal constructs are freely chosen. No matter what has
happened to you in the past, you could have chosen to draw
different conclusions from it. In fact, you always can (now or
later).
Personal constructs are you – they are the sum total of your
personality.
Sociality corollary—understanding another person
means understanding his or her personal construct
system. You must be able to look at the world through
that person’s eyes to understand that person.
Personal Constructs: Kelly (cont.)
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Constructive alternativism, means that your personal
reality does not simply exist apart from you. You
construct it in your mind; you can always choose to
construct reality differently.
Constructive alternativism has implications for science,
and is an idea that scientists sometimes forget.
 
Working with any paradigm represents a choice, on the part of
the scientist, to focus on some aspects of human psychology
and ignore others.
•  Scientific paradigms are different frameworks for construing the
meaning of data; the choice between them is not a matter of
which is right and which is wrong, but of which one addresses
the topic that interests you.
•  Each is sensible and each is consistent with the data it regards
as important; you need all of them because each one leaves out
something important.
Csikszentmihalyi: Optimal Experience and
Flow
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Your moment-to-moment experience is what really matters in life.
Optimal experience, how to make the most of your moment-bymoment experience, is of primary interest to Csikszentmihalyi.
Autotelic activities are the best way a person can spend his or her
time; these are activities that are enjoyable for their own sake.
Flow refers to the subjective experience of an autotelic activity.
Flow is characterized by:
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tremendous concentration, total lack of distractibility, and thoughts
concerning only the activity at hand.
a mood that is elevated slightly (although not to the point of anything like
ecstasy).
time seems to pass very quickly.
a focused and ordered state of consciousness that arises when your activity
entails a balanced ratio of skills to challenges.
The secret for enhancing your quality of life is to maximize time in flow.
However, flow is a solitary experience. The drawback with flow is that
somebody experiencing it can be difficult to interact with; he or she may not
hear you, may seem distracted, and in general may be poor company.
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PSY 370 - Personality
Salvatore Maddi: Hardiness
 
Stress is not always bad.
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Without stress, a life would be boring and meaningless.
Even worse, many people seek to avoid stress by developing a conformist
lifestyle driven by the expectations of other people and of society.
•  A conformist lifestyle is likely to lead to a kind of existential psychological
pathology that resembles Sartre’s description of bad faith.
•  Vegetativeness is the most severe kind of existential pathology in which the
person feels that nothing has meaning and becomes listless and aimless.
•  Nihilism is slightly less severe, and more common; it occurs when the person’s
experience is dominated by anger, disgust, and cynicism.
•  Another potential side effect of the conformist lifestyle is an adventurousness in
which only extreme thrills manage to garner one’s full attention and distract from
deep feelings of meaninglessness. Whatever form these activities take, their
purpose is the same: to capture one’s attention enough to conceal the emptiness
at the center of life.
 
Hardiness (a cure for bad faith)
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A lifestyle that embraces rather than avoids potential sources of stress
promotes hardiness; properly approached, stressful and challenging
experiences can bring learning, growth, and wisdom, and dealing with them
successfully is an important part of what gives life meaning.
Positive Psychology
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Abraham Maslow is often quoted as having said that
health means more than simply the absence of disease.
This idea, along with humanistic psychology’s traditional
emphasis on growth, development, and the achievement
of potential, has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years
with the advent of the positive psychology movement.
Traditional psychology focuses on the development of
disease, dysfunctional behavior, treatment of problematic
symptoms, and rates of recidivism.
As an alternative, positive psychology focuses on
concerns with a humanist heritage.
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The meaning of life, life satisfaction, subjective well-being.
Positive psychologists usually argue that a satisfying and
meaningful life involves happiness, but that true happiness
comes from overcoming important challenges—a notion similar
to Maddi’s notion of hardiness or Sartre’s conception of
optimistic toughness.
Positive Psychology (cont.)
 
Despite a recent flurry of research, the rebirth of
humanism is not complete via positive
psychology.
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Positive psychology does not say much about existential
anxiety, nor does it address the difficult dilemmas that
arise from free will.
It addresses experience in the form of subjective wellbeing, which is basically the degree to which one feels
good; this alone would be a limited phenomenological
analysis compared to the earlier work of existentialists and
humanists.
However, positive psychology, by that name, is still new;
there are many unanswered questions and a great deal of
research in progress.
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The Mystery of Experience
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Though we are not quite able to describe what it
is to be aware and alive every one of us knows
what it is.
Cognitive theories claim that consciousness is a
higher-order cognitive process that organizes
thoughts and allows flexible decision making;
consciousness is just a feeling.
Of course, to say consciousness is “just a
feeling” begs the main question: What does it
mean to be able to consciously experience the
feeling?
Awareness is a human experience, and science
can neither credibly deny its existence nor
explain just what it is or where it comes from.
Understanding Others
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To understand another person, you must understand his or
her construals (Kelly).
You can only comprehend someone’s mind to the extent
that you can imagine life from his or her perspective.
Do not judge me until you have walked a mile in my shoes.
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This principle discourages judgmental attitudes about other people.
It implies that if you could see the world through their eyes, you would
realize that their actions and attitudes are the natural consequences of their
understanding of reality.
It is a mistake to assume that others interpret the world the same way you
do, or that there is only one correct perspective.
You cannot judge the actions and beliefs of other people through your own
moral code; there is no objective reality—or, if there is, there is no way for
anyone to know it.
It is generally misleading to judge the values and practices of other cultures
from the perspective of your own.
Although there may be widespread agreement about a handful of core
virtues, separate cultures still see the world very differently.
To understand other cultures, just as to understand other individuals, we
must seek to understand the world from an alternative point of view.
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