Humanistic Theory of Self

The founders of humanistic psychology are Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. Humanistic psychology takes a holistic viewpoint, viewing a person as a 'whole'. It came about as an opposite stance to prevailing branches of the time, behaviourism and psychodynamic theory.

Behaviourism reduces people's behaviour as only being a conditioned response. Psychodynamic psychology views behaviour as mainly due to unconscious thoughts. In addition, these branches of psychology tend to only focus on the negatives of human behaviour. Humanistic psychology celebrates the positive.

Let us now give an overview of the humanistic theory of self.

• According to the humanistic viewpoint, we are all unique – there is no one else like you in this world. We all grew up with different experiences and surroundings, which shaped us individually.
• Central to the humanistic theory of self is the idea of free will. Humanistic psychology believes that we all have the power to make our own decisions, choose what we will do with our lives, and shape our future. This is in contrast to theories such as behaviourism which have a determinism viewpoint, i.e. external forces shape our behaviour such as through conditioning.
• Humanistic psychologists also believe people are inherently good and assume an idiographic approach.

Humanistic psychologists view a person as a whole, unique being, driven to achieve their full potential, freepik.com/pch.vector

Humanistic theory of self – Definiton

The humanistic theory of self focuses on the aspects of personality that come together to make who you are, with particular attention paid to the theories exploring the concept of the self. Let us now show what the humanistic theory of self consists of.

Humanistic theory of self concept

The humanistic theory of self-concept was developed by Carl Rogers and had three components.

Carl Rogers thought that self-concept was made up of three components: ideal self, self-concept, and self-esteem. The ideal self is who we would like to be, and our self-concept is how we view ourselves at the present moment. The relationship between our self-concept and ideal self affects our self-esteem.

Our self-esteem will be high if our self-concept is close to our ideal self (who we would like to be). However, if our self-concept is drastically different from our ideal self, our self-esteem would be low, resulting in incongruence.

Self-concept is the view we have of ourselves, freepik - created by vectorjuice

An important part of the idea of self-concept is unconditional positive regard.

Rogers believed that for a person to develop healthily, they need to be shown unconditional positive regard. When a child is shown unconditional positive regard, they feel safe and open to explore who they really are as a person, even if they sometimes make mistakes, which is crucial to the healthy development of the self.

People who are shown unconditional positive regard have a very close self-concept and ideal self. However, if a child is shown conditional positive regard (they only receive love and acceptance if they have behaved in a way their parents approve of) this can lead to incongruence between self-concept and ideal self. The child is not free to be who they wish to be and learns to only act in a way that pleases others. Their self-concept and ideal self are very far apart as they cannot be their ideal self, and their current self is shaped by approval from others.

Humanistic theory – Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Abraham Maslow developed a hierarchy of needs to explain human needs and motivation. The hierarchy starts with basic physiological needs such as food and shelter, and once we have these needs, we can move up the hierarchy until we reach the last stage of self-actualisation.

According to Maslow, the five stages of needs are:

• Physiological needs

• Security and safety needs

• Love and social needs

• Esteem needs

• Self-actualisation

Let us take a closer look at each of these stages.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs – Physiological needs

These are the basic needs required for survival, such as food, water, and shelter.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs – Security and safety needs

Needs in this stage include things such as financial security and good health. Thus, some examples of things we do to satisfy this stage are finding a job and putting money away in savings.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs – Social needs

At this stage, the needs become emotional and include love, acceptance, and belonging. Thus, we may form romantic relationships and friendships, develop close bonds with family, join community groups, etc. Acceptance and belonging are core concepts at this stage.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs – Esteem needs

At this stage, people find it essential to be respected and appreciated by others. We want to accomplish goals and be recognised for our efforts. This stage also includes self-esteem and personal worth. We might achieve esteem needs by focusing on academic achievements, sports teams, and hobbies.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs – Self-actualisation needs

Self-actualisation refers to reaching our fullest potential and being the best that we can be, seen through being creative, self-aware, fully accepting, and dealing with change and the unknown. Maslow said about self-actualisation:

Maslow's hierarchy of needs, commons.wikimedia.org, by Chiquo

Alternative theory: Eysenck's trait theory

Humanistic psychology emphasises that humans have free will and are unique; however, Eysenck's trait theory suggests there are several stable traits that people's personalities can be classed into. Eysenck believed that genetics determine our personality. He proposed there are three overall traits that people's personalities fall under. These traits are on a scale, so our personality differs as to where we lie on the scale regarding the traits. The three traits are:

• Extraversion: extroverted people are sociable and outgoing. This trait lies on a scale ranging from introversion to extroversion. Introverted people need to be alone and spend time doing activities that don't involve others.

• Neuroticism: this refers to emotional stability. This trait lies on a scale ranging from neurotic to emotionally stable. A neurotic person is anxious, has a poor emotional adjustment, and intensely experiences emotions.

• Psychoticism: this personality trait was added later by Eysenck. People high on the psychoticism scale are independent thinkers, aloof, do not like to conform, spontaneous, anti-social, and hostile.

Key study: van Houtte and Jarvis (1995)

van Houtte and Jarvis (1995) conducted a study to investigate whether having a pet helps in the psychosocial development of children. The hypothesis was that owning a pet would lead to higher autonomy, self-concept, and self-esteem.

Participants

The participants were 130 American third to sixth graders. They were from various socioeconomic backgrounds and grouped into pet owners and non-pet owners. The children in the two groups were matched on parents' marital status, socioeconomic status, and number of siblings.

Procedure

Data was collected using questionnaires and interviews that measured autonomy, self-concept, self-esteem, and attachment to animals.

Results

The study found that having a pet led to higher autonomy for children of all grades. Sixth-grade pet owners had a higher self-concept. Fifth and sixth-grade pet owners had higher self-esteem.

Conclusion

Pets may have a great impact on children as they enter adolescence. Pets are a source of support and can help people suffering from low self-concept and self-esteem. This is because pets show unconditional positive regard towards their owners.

Limitations of the study

Let's evaluate the study.

• The study was only conducted on American preadolescents, so the results cannot be generalised to other cultures and age groups.
• The methodology may not have been the most suitable as quantitative data measured deep insights such as self-esteem.
• Responses may not have been accurate as the children may have been affected by social desirability, so given responses; they thought they would make themselves look better.
• The concepts measured were quite complex (e.g., autonomy, self-concept), so it may have been difficult for the children to answer.

Application of the theory – counselling

Counselling is where a client shares with the therapist the difficulties and struggles they have gone through, and the therapist listens and helps the client on how they can solve and improve their situation. The type of counselling that Rogers developed is called client-centred therapy.

This type of therapy assumes that each person is the expert in their own lives, and we have what is needed to grow and develop as a person. In client-centred therapy, the therapist shows unconditional positive regard to the client.

Client-centred therapy for depression

The therapist shows unconditional positive regard and empathy towards the client. The goal is for the client to work towards self-actualisation. The counsellor is genuine towards the client, so the client feels comfortable being who they really are.

Criticisms of the theory of self

While some famous names in psychology have proposed the theory itself, the name alone does not mean the theories are true. We need to evaluate them to understand their strengths and weaknesses.

• It is difficult to provide research evidence of the theory as the ideas, in theory, are very subjective (self-actualisation, free will, unconditional positive regard). These ideas are difficult to measure objectively.

• Not a lot of scientific evidence proves the concepts of humanistic psychology.

• People are not as unpredictable as the theory suggests.

• The theory focuses too much on individuals. This idea may be culture-specific as collectivist cultures such as in Asian countries focus more on working together for the benefit of the group and everyone in the group.

• The theory does not consider genetics; 20-60% of a person's development is from genetics; thus, some aspects of our personality are determined at birth and cannot be changed through self-actualisation.

• There are other explanations for personality traits, such as Eysenck's trait theory.