Humanistic Therapies-Restoring Human Potential

Humanistic Therapies-Restoring Human Potential

Humanistic Therapies-Restoring Human Potential

Gateway Question 15.4: What are the major humanistic therapies? When most people picture psychotherapists at work, they imagine them talking with their clients. Let’s sample a variety of talk- oriented approaches. Humanistic therapies tend to be insight therapies intended to help clients gain deeper insight into their thoughts, emotions, and behavior. In contrast, cognitive therapies tend to be action therapies less concerned with insight than with helping people change harmful thinking patterns. Let’s start with some insight.

Better self-knowledge was the goal of traditional psychoanalysis. However, Freud claimed that his patients could expect only to change their “hysterical misery into common unhappiness”! Humanistic therapists are more optimistic, believing that humans have a natural urge to seek health and self-growth. Most assume that it is possible for people to use their potentials fully and live rich, rewarding lives. In this section, we’ll discuss three of the most common humanistic therapies: client-centered therapy, existential therapy, and Gestalt therapy.

Client-Centered Therapy What is client-centered therapy? How is it different from psychoanalysis? Whereas psychoanalysis is directive and based on insights from the unconscious, client-centered therapy (also called person- centered therapy) is nondirective and based on insights from conscious thoughts and feelings (Brodley, 2006; Wampold, 2007). The psychoanalyst tends to take a position of authority, stating what dreams, thoughts, or memories “mean.” In contrast, Carl Rogers (1902–1987), who originated client-centered therapy, believed that what is right or valuable for the therapist may be wrong for the client. (Rogers preferred the term “client” to “patient” because “patient” implies that a person is “sick” and needs to be “cured.”) Consequently, in client-centered therapy, the client determines what will be discussed during each session.

Humanistic Therapies-Restoring Human Potential

If the client runs things, what does the therapist do? The therapist cannot “fix” the client. Instead, the client must actively seek to solve his or her problems (Whitton, 2003). The therapist’s job is to create a safe “atmosphere of growth” by providing opportunities for change.

How do therapists create such an atmosphere? Rogers believed that effective therapists maintain four basic conditions. First, the therapist offers the client unconditional positive regard (unshakable personal acceptance). The therapist refuses to react with shock, dismay, or disapproval to anything the client says or feels. Total acceptance by the therapist is the first step to self-acceptance by the client.

Second, the therapist attempts to achieve genuine empathy by trying to see the world through the client’s eyes and feeling some part of what the client is feeling.

As a third essential condition, the therapist strives to be authentic (genuine and honest). The therapist must not hide behind a professional role. Rogers believed that phony fronts destroy the growth atmosphere sought in client-centered therapy.

Fourth, the therapist does not make interpretations, propose solutions, or offer advice. Instead, the therapist reflects (rephrases, summarizes, or repeats) the client’s thoughts and feelings. This enables the therapist to act as a psychological “mirror” so clients can see themselves more clearly. Rogers theorized that a person armed with a realistic self-image and greater self-acceptance will gradually discover solutions to life’s problems.

Existential Therapy According to the existentialists, “being in the world” (existence) creates deep anxiety. Each of us must deal with the realities of death. We must face the fact that we create our private world by making choices. We must overcome isolation on a vast and indifferent planet. Most of all, we must confront feelings of meaninglessness (Schneider, Galvin, & Serlin, 2009).

What do these concerns have to do with psychotherapy? Existential therapy focuses on the problems of existence, such as meaning, choice, and responsibility. Like client-centered therapy, it pro- motes self-knowledge. However, there are important differences. Client-centered therapy seeks to uncover a “true self ” hidden behind a screen of defenses. In contrast, existential therapy emphasizes free will, the human ability to make choices. Accordingly, existential therapists believe you can choose to become the person you want to be.

Existential therapists try to give clients the courage to make rewarding and socially constructive choices. Typically, therapy focuses on death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness, the “ultimate concerns” of existence (van Deurzen & Kenward, 2005). These universal human challenges include an awareness of one’s mortality, the responsibility that comes with freedom to choose, being alone in your own private world, and the need to create meaning in your life.

One example of existential therapy is Victor Frankl’s logotherapy, which emphasizes the need to find and maintain meaning in

Psychotherapist Carl Rogers, who originated client- centered therapy.

9781285519517, Introduction to Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior with Concept Maps and Reviews, Thirteenth Edition, Coon/Mitterer – © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.