The time has come to acknowledge the ascendancy of the humanistic psychology movement. The so-called "Third Stream" emerged at mid-century, asserting itself against the opposition of a pair of mighty, long-established currents, psychoanalysis and behaviorism. The hostility between these two older schools, as well as divisiveness within each of them, probably helped enable humanistic psychology to survive its early years. But the movement flourished because of its wealth of insights into the nature of this most inexact science.
Of the three major movements in the course of 20th century psychology, psychoanalysis is the oldest and most introspective. Conceived by Sigmund Freud as a means of treating mental and emotional disorders, psychoanalysis is based on the theory that people experience unresolved emotional conflicts in infancy and early childhood. Years later, although these experiences have largely disappeared from conscious awareness, they may continue to impair a persons ability to function in daily life. The patient experiences improvement when the psychoanalyst eventually unlocks these long-repressed memories of conflict and brings them to the patients conscious awareness.
In the heyday of behaviorism, which occurred between the two world wars, the psychoanalytic movement was heavily criticized for being too concerned with inner subjective experience. Behavioral psychologists, dismissing ideas and feelings as unscientific, tried to deal only with observable and quantifiable facts. They perceived the human being merely as an organism which generated responses to stimuli produced by its body and the environment around it. Patients neuroses no longer needed analysis; they could instead by modified by behavioral conditioning. Not even babies were safe: B.F. Skinner devised a container in which infants could be raised under "ideal" conditions — if a sound-proof box can be considered the ideal environment for child-rearing.
By mid-century, a number of psychologists had grown dissatisfied with both the deterministic Freudian perspective and the mechanistic approach of behaviorism.
They questioned the idea that human personality becomes permanently fixed in the first few years of life. They wondered if the purpose of psychology was really to reduce people to laboratory specimens. Was it not instead possible that human beings are greater than the sum of their parts? That psychology should speak to their search for fulfillment and meaning in life?
It is questions like these that members of the Third Stream have sought to address. While the movement cannot be simplified down to a single theoretical position, it does spring from certain fundamental propositions. Humanistic psychologists believe that conscious experience, rather than outward behavior, is the proper subject of psychology. We recognize that each human being is unique, capable of change and personal growth. We see maturity as a process dependent on the establishment of a set of values and the development of self. And we believe that the more aspects of self which are satisfactorily developed, the more positive the individuals self-image.
Abraham Maslow, a pioneer of the Third Stream, articulated a hierarchy of basic human needs, starting with food, water and air, progressing upward through shelter and security, social acceptance and belonging, to love, esteem and self-expression. Progress toward the higher stages cannot occur until all of the more basic needs have been satisfied. Individuals atop the pyramid, having developed their potential to the highest possible extent, are said to be "self-actualized".
If this humanist theoretical perspective is aimed at empowering the individual, so too are the movements efforts in the practical realm of clinical psychology.
Believing that traditional psychotherapists tend to lead patients toward predetermined resolutions of their problems, Carl Rogers pressed for objective evaluations of both the process and outcome of psychotherapeutic treatment. Not content to function simply as a reformer, Rogers also pioneered the development of "client- centered" or nondirective therapy, which emphasizes the autonomy of the client (i.e., patient). In client-centered therapy, clients choose the subjects for discussion, and are encouraged to create their own solutions to their problems.
If the author of this passage met a Freudian psychoanalyst who felt that it was important for patients to consider themselves capable of fundamental change, he would most likely conclude that the psychoanalyst was:
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