Quiz prep

The humanistic perspective

• Sees human behavior as complex and unique.
• Has an optimistic view of people being innately good and wanting to achieve their full
potential.
• Looks at people and their individual differences (i.e., aspirations, hopes, free will,
autonomy, positive qualities, strengths, and growth) as a whole.
• Rejects scientific approaches to personality and human behavior for being too limited
and dehumanizing.
One core belief of the humanistic perspective?

Abraham Maslow

What did Maslow believe about motivation?

• The whole person is motivated (rather than parts of them).
• Motivation can normally be complex.
• People are continually motivated by a need or another.
• The basic needs for motivation are universal.
• Needs can be arranged on a hierarchy (by their importance in being satisfied).

What are the two types of motives behind our needs (and, thus, our behavior)?
Deficiency motives/Deficiency (D) Needs
• Basic/lower-level needs that everyone experiences
• These aim to lessen or avoid a deficit. e.g., eating to satiate hunger.
Growth motives/Being (B) Needs/Meta-needs.
• Higher level needs unique to each person.
• Needs for personal happiness, contentment, and growth.
• Once the deficiency needs are satisfied, the individual experiences these e.g., a desire
for recognition for one’s successes.

Pyramid/hierarchy of needs
Initial 5 Conative Needs
Physiological needs > safety needs > love and belongingness > self-esteem > self-
actualization.

§ Once the lowest level of needs was satisfied, we would go on to the next one (linear)
§ The higher the needs, the later in life those would appear e.g., the basic physiological
needs for survival were present from birth.
What are deficiency needs?
Physiological needs > safety needs > love and belongingness > self-esteem.

What is the only need that can be fully satisfied?

Physiological
What need is present since birth?
Physiological
What need is recurring?
Physiological

How can self-esteem needs manifest?

Respect, power, recognition, self-confidence.

What happens when self-esteem needs are not met?

It leads to feelings of inferiority and inadequacy.

Define self-actualization.
The need to reach your full potential. Final need in Maslow’s hierarchy.

What are the characteristics of self-actualized people?

Clear sense of reality, dedication to a cause, tolerance, and acceptance of others.

What is the Jonah Complex?

• The inability to achieve self-actualization due to fears of fulfilling our potential.
• Having doubts about our abilities and being able to cope.

What is meta-motivation?
This is the basic motivation for people who become self-actualizers.
• Not everyone is motivated towards self-actualization.

What are Meta-needs (i.e., the B-needs)?

• The needs that self-actualizers have e.g., for creativity, spontaneity, perfection,
uniqueness etc.
• Not being able to satisfy meta-needs leads to meta-pathology.

What other needs are there?

Cognitive needs
• Curiosity for knowledge and information and desire to learn and explore.
• Lack of curiosity being satisfied can lead to feelings of cynicism.
Aesthetic needs
• Desire for beauty and organization in oneself and the surroundings.
• Having to live in aesthetically displeasing or untidy surroundings could make them ill.

Transcendence
• The highest level of human consciousness; for yourself rather than others.
• Going beyond set limits, boundaries, roles etc.

What are growth needs? In order

Cognitive > aesthetic > self-actualization > transcendence.
Carl Rogers

What is formative tendency?

Potential to grow from a simple to complex form.

What is the actualizing tendency?

An innate tendency to maintain and enhance the self.
The main (and only) motivation for people; other needs (e.g., hunger, for creativity) would
come under the need for self-growth.

What is the organismic valuing process?

The internal process by which we evaluate what will help or hinder our growth.

What is Roger’s belief about why people do bad things (e.g., cruelty)?
Due to external forces e.g., the person following societal norms or rules instead of the
organismic valuing process.

The self has two parts.

Ideal and self-concept.

What is the real/organismic self? It is who we really are.

What is a fully functioning person?

Also known as the person of tomorrow, a person who is self-actualizing, ideal of
psychological health.

What should a fully functioning person be like? Write characteristics of a fully

functioning person.
Openness to experiences,
Existential living,
Experiential freedom,
Organismic valuing process,
Creativity.

What are barriers to psychological health?

§ Conditions of worth- conditions which someone must satisfy to gain positive regard.
 § Incongruence- discrepancy between our ideal and real self, may cause vulnerability
and anxiety.

§ Defensiveness- way of coping with incongruence. Can be done by:

Distortion- misinterpreting an experience. Attempt to adjust it into our current self-concept
or Denial- Refusing to accept a threatening experience. Blocking it from awareness.

§ Disorganization- is when the defenses fail, and people behave inconsistently with
their real self.

§ Rogers believed that you could not fix people.

§ However, you could guide them towards their self-actualization.

What is necessary for the therapist to have/provide in client-centered therapy?

• Congruence and genuineness
• Unconditional positive regard
• Empathic understanding/listening

What is positive self-regard? It is the love and acceptance one has of themselves.

What is existentialism?
Existence precedes essence.
• Essence is your basic nature i.e., who you are.
• Existence is your state of being i.e., you are alive and exist.
Thus, what we inherently are is less important than what we can or choose to be.
• Our actions decide who we are, not vice versa.
• Everyone has the free will to control their actions.
• People would want to search for meaning in their lives.
We are responsible for who we are/become.

What is an ‘existential crisis?

• Feelings of dread over the meaning of life and death.
• Confusion over identity.
• It could happen after negative experiences.

What has been the most common counter against existential feelings?
• Religion

What is Dasien (being-in-the-world)?

Heidegger called it our desire to exist and achieve our potentials.

What are the three modes of being?

• Umwelt – the relationship with the physical/physiological environment e.g., nature,
hunger, sleep, birth, death.
• Mitwelt – the relationship with the social/cultural environment e.g., isolation,
interaction, communication, romantic relationships.
• Eigenwelt – the relationship with ourselves e.g., self-awareness, perception, feeling.

What is the result of rejecting or sacrificing a part of the Dasein?

It may lead to psychopathology.
What is non-being?
The person is aware that they exist and knows that they can also cease to exist.

How would nonbeing manifest?

• Death
• Addiction
• Promiscuity
• Conformity to others’ expectations
• Hostility to others

What leads to people living defensively?

Fear of death and the knowledge of a temporal life.

What are basic tenets of existentialism?

§ You need to find your own answers to your problems.
§ You should not have an answer for every problem.
§ You are responsible for what you do and who you become.
§ Belief in a deity would mean you are trying to avoid responsibility and freedom.
§ You should accept the temporary nature of life.

Rollo May

What is the basic belief of existentialist psychology?

People experienced anxiety because of uncertainty about this temporary existence and
eventual death.

Why do people feel anxiety?

When they realize their eventual nonbeing- that they or what they value can become
‘nothing’.

What are the two types of anxiety?

Normal anxiety
§ Proportionate to the threat.
§ Experienced by everyone.
§ Can be constructive.
Neurotic anxiety
§ An irrational response to a threat to our values/being.
§ Can involve repressing the anxiety-provoking threat.

What is freedom?
Being able to harbor different possibilities in one’s mind even though it is not clear at the
moment which way one must act.
Freedom and anxiety would be co-existing.

What are two types of freedom?

Existential Freedom
§ Freedom of Doing
§ Being able to make decisions and choices.
§ This type of freedom is experienced every day.
Essential Freedom
§ Freedom of being who you are e.g., prisoners who do not have existential freedom.

What is guilt?
It is ontological i.e., related to our sense of being, not our actions.
Corresponds to either:
§ Umwelt- e.g., feeling removed from nature (‘separation guilt’).
§ Mitwelt- e.g., being unable to perceive the world from anyone else’s eyes.
§ Eigenwelt- e.g., denying or being unable fulfil our potential.

What is intentionality?
The will to make and act on our choices. It can be unconscious.

What are the 5 stages of human development?

§ Innocence
§ Rebellion
§ Decision – a transition stage
§ Ordinary
§ Creative

What is Love?
Delight in the presence of the other person and an affirming of (that person’s) value and
development as much as one’s own + care.

What are 4 types of love?

Sex (lust, libido), Eros (procreation, marriage), Philia (friendship, siblings), Agape (altruism,
charity).

What is Will?
The capacity to organize one’s self so that movement in a certain direction or toward a certain
goal may take place.

What is the diamonic?

The daimonic is any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person. e.g.
sex, eros, anger, rage.
It can be creative, destructive or both; makes one ‘nature’s tool’.

What is Daimonic possession?

When the diamonic takes over.