Humanistic Psychotherapy: Healing and Techniques

Posted on Jan 10, 2025 in Psychology and Sociology

Humanistic Psychotherapy: A Path to Healing

Key Concepts of Humanistic Psychotherapy

  • The humanistic psychology movement is a genuinely American development, emerging outside of academic psychology during the 1960s. It arose from dissatisfaction with behaviorism and psychoanalysis.
  • The immediate background of the humanist movement is the Gestalt school.
  • The main feature is the conception of man as being endowed with inherent potential. This potential should be discovered and nurtured rather than constructed. The core belief is that “man is naturally good, and healthy conditions only require an amniotic environment necessary for growth.”

Client-Centered Psychotherapy

“It is the client who knows what hurts, what directions must be followed, what problems are crucial, what experiences have been deeply buried. It began to occur to me that unless I had a need to demonstrate my own cleverness and learning, I would do better to rely upon the client for the direction of movement.” (Carl Rogers, 1961)

Fundamentals of Client-Centered Therapy

  1. People are fundamentally good or healthy.
  2. Everyone has a natural tendency toward self-actualization, to develop their own potential.
  3. Individuals know, through evolutionary selection, what is good for them: organismic valuing.
  4. Humans value positive self-regard (self-esteem, self-worth, and a positive self-image). Personal care is developed through the positive care received from others.
  5. Society imposes conditions of worth, providing us with what we need only when we meet certain standards. This redirects our organismic valuing. We begin to seek love based on meeting the standards that others apply to us.

The world is built on personal feelings that staff provide, evidence that defines the organic reality of the person. From this and interaction with others, the subject forms a self-conscious image. When this image disagrees with the organic assessment process, psychological maladjustment occurs. The person learns to distrust their own experience as a guide for conduct.

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Therapeutic Change

  1. Two people are in a therapeutic relationship.
  2. The client is in a state of incongruence, vulnerability, or distress.
  3. The therapist is consistent and integrated within the relationship.
  4. The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client.
  5. The therapist experiences empathic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference and attempts to communicate this understanding.
  6. Empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard are effectively communicated to the client.

Experiential Psychotherapies

Experiential psychotherapies are a form of humanistic psychotherapy that emphasizes the importance of direct experience in facilitating change.

Examples of Experiential Techniques

  • Focus on the sensations felt in the current situation.
  • Client participation: The therapist expresses their own experience in the current situation.
  • Experiential focusing: Imagining a space where problems reside, then taking each problem one by one and examining it from all angles.

Other Humanistic Techniques

  • Psychodrama: A therapeutic approach that uses role-playing and dramatic techniques to explore psychological issues.
  • Body and energy techniques: Physical exercises designed to eliminate energy blockages and promote well-being.