Humanistic approach talks about human potential which can only be harnessed by an individual by focussing on internalization and subjective knowledge for this world for the attainment of self-actualization or true potential by fulfilling the needs as per the hierarchy of importance.

1. Humanistic Approach
Person Centered, Gestalt & Existential
By
Abhijit Pathak
R2014SWMH004

2. Humanistic Approach
Abraham Maslow (1943)
proposed this theory on
human motivation.

3. Concept
• To optimize a person’s performance by making him realize his inner
instinct.
• A person should focus on inner drives which could lead to self
actualization or full capacity of a person.
• “THIRD” force in psychology stresses on achieving needs which are
hierarchical which leads to self actualization or true meaning of
existence in this world.

5. Assumptions-
• Human being best serve for themselves when all body parts work
equally together.
• Human beings have significant position in this universe.
• Human beings are conscious to themselves and to others.
• Human beings full fill their desire through their choices of work
and with responsibility.
• Human beings are farsighted, they plan for their future decides
their course of action through introspection and add values to it.

6. Carl Rogers , pioneer in bringing humanistic approach in counselling.

7. Humanistic Approach in counselling
• Carl Rogers introduced this approach to counseling in 1940.
• He coined the term creativity and self capability which lead to self
development.
• Holistic concept, helps the individual to realize his potential and
capability by connecting him with inner conscience.
• Philosophical in nature.
• Phenomenological approach , focuses on individual subjectivity of
perceiving objective world.
• Counselor takes a passive role guides him to find solution to his
problem.

8. Continued..
• Unleashes the potential of human by eliminating attitudes,
behaviour and beliefs which promotes negative feelings.
• Developed from the ideas of Buddhism, Socrates Teaching and
Renaissances.
• Effective in dealing with family issues, social issues, depression,
anxiety, and substance abuse.

9. Criticism
• Lack Scientific Rationalization and it is more philosophy
oriented.
• Holistic concept lack intense study on numerous variable
thus, lack empirical evidence.
• It may not be applicable across different cultures.
• Sidelined the society role in shaping the personality of the
person.

10. Client or Person Centered
Approach
• The man is the maker of his own destiny by resolving the
issue by help of inner sources to live in this objective
world.
• Counselor passive role reflect the thoughts which gives
clue to the inner sources.
• Person’s subjective understanding of the event.
• No standardized therapeutic process.

11. Principle followed by client
centered approach
• Relationship between the client and the patient should rest
on high degree of respect, equality and authenticity.
• An approach in which a person observe each passing
events and the factors causing troubles so that he could
mold or change to have desired results.

12. The emergence of Client
Centered
• The new concept in psychotherapy was introduced by Carl Rogers
in the 1940 for the first time and in front of the pupils of the
University of Minnesota. (Barrett- Lennard 1979).
• Rogers was the first person who tried to do the research on the
efficacy of directive and non directive approach of therapist by
inclusion of transcriptions and recordings of the therapy sessions.
• World War 2 put immense pressure on psychoanalysis and
behavioral therapies thus person centered took the leading role.

13. Continued…
• The naming of Client-centered therapy was coined due to shift in
focus from therapist behaviour to the experiencing of the clients.
The internalization process of helping the client to frame self
concept of them push the naming of this therapy to client centered.
• Focuses on therapeutic relationship and rise of “core condition
model”.
• Project of Wisconsin helped in proving core condition model to
effective augmented therapy for schizophrenia.

14. Key Issues
• In congruency.
• Condition of worth.
• Concept of full functioning person- “he is able to experience all
of his feelings, and is afraid of none of his feelings. He is own sitter of
evidence, but is open to evidence from all sources, he is completely
engaged in the process of being and becoming himself, and thus
discovers that he is soundly and realistically social; he lives
completely in this moment, but learns that this is the soundest living
for all time. He is fully functioning organism, and because of the
awareness of himself which flows freely in and through his
experiences, he is fully functioning person”. (Carl Roger,1963:22)

15. Over ruling Psychodynamic
and Behavioral Therapy
• There is no hierarchy of doctor and patient.
• Attributes like equality, respect, empathy and authenticity play a
key role.
• Patient word is replaced as “client”.
• Focus on attitudinal change rather than behavioral change.
• Quality of therapeutic relationship matters the most.
• Techniques used listening, accepting, understanding and sharing.
• Client comes with in congruency goes with congruency realizes
the objective world with his subjective knowledge.

16. The Core Condition Model
• Unconditional Positive Regard- Accept the client as it is.
Gives affection and care. Show Positive attitude towards
client.
• Empathy- counselor should remain sensitive to the
emotion of the client and understand it.

17. Empathy Cycle Model
Empathetic
set by the
counselor
Empathetic
Resonation
Expressed
Empathy
Received
Empathy
Cycle
Continues
Barrett and
Lennard , 1981

18. Congruence
• Authenticity, Real Person.
• Significance lies in the fact that –
• It helps to build Rapport.
• When counselor admits his own vulnerability and
uncertainty, clients opens up and put up his misery.
• Congruent person has natural tone, speech and gesture
which increases the efficacy of therapy.
• Leads to healthy therapeutic relationship.

19. Experimental Focusing

20. Experimental Focusing
• Concept of “felt sense” an unsolved puzzle.
• Emotions are pieces.
• When this pieces fits appropriately person is able to
realize and relate meaning to that event in which he felt
such emotion thus he gets clear for those felt emotions.

21. Further development
• Pluralistic Self – there are two self “ideal self” and “real
self” which has different facets, equilibrium is required
between the two . These two aspects shapes personality of
a person. Disequilibrium may lead to barrier in growth.
Real
Self

22. Continued…
• Relational Depth – Unsolved answer , what would be the quality
of therapeutic relationship.
• Peter Schmid (2001, 2007a & 20007b) brings the concept of “We”
which is still under consideration.
• Concept of Difficult Process-
A. Fragile Process- A person will unable to remember the
problematic thoughts.
B. Dissociated Process- Shifting the conversation from one topic to
another thus, making it meaningless. Strategy to skip those
emotions which are painful.

23. Can the Client Centered Be Merged
• Few therapist reject the idea like Mearns and Thorne
reject the idea of mergence. Rogers et al advocates the
person centered with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
(CBT).
• Various Therapist have merged this approach with Play
Therapy, Psychodrama etc. But core idea of humanistic
approach get undermined by other approaches.

24. Gestalt Therapy
Founder- Fritz Pearls
Established Therapy in 1950.
The idea comprises of behavioral
and psychoanalysis, the
Philosophical views of humanistic
approach , the instincts of
Experimental and Existential
Therapy.

25. Gestalt Therapy
Laura Pearls is the co
founder of Gestalt
Therapy amalgamated
dance and drama in
this therapeutically
approach.

26. The Evolution of Gestalt
Therapy
• Both Couple were psychoanalyst they laid attention that people
concept of self is truly unconscious and should be bought under
the consciousness or awareness. They differ from psychoanalytic
concept of unconscious from the fact that they widely concerned
about unnoticed current events that people experience without
noticing but psychoanalysis deal with the complexities that
unconscious have made in any of the developmental stages
through which a person goes.
• Gestalt means “pattern” in German and therapy has been
developed from Gestalt psychology.

27. Continued…
• It based on ‘Zeigarnik effect’ means to have better memories of
unfinished business rather than finished or completed tasks.
• Gestalt therapy emphasis the inter relation among all the things,
the concept that human mind constructs meaning from any
information available and sensitivity to the significance of
boundaries, edges and points of contact between regions of
experience.

28. The Theoretical Framework
• The core idea talks about bring the client back to experience the
current happening or awareness of the surroundings by removing
the blockades caused by unfinished business.
• The Fritz concern was to explore current awareness and facilitates
the client to express those hidden feelings rather than coming up
with new theoretical model.
• They are more focusing on the Dialogical approach which aware
the client about how they are doing and what they are doing.

29. Techniques used
Two Chair Work
Two chair work means there
will be an empty chair in
front of the person he will
assume that he is sitting on
the other and try to explore
all turbulent thoughts he will
verbalize those thoughts ,
therapist will be observing
the expression thus, person
will be able to know about
his present feelings,
emotions and experience.

30. Strategies for facilitating
awareness and change
• Self Concept – Varied emotional experiences with the other when they
meet at the boundaries they are-
 Concept of confluence which makes the boundary dusky where the person
doesn’t identify the separation or distinction between self and other.
 Isolation makes the boundary impermeable leading to loss of contact.
 Retroflection means creating an internal boundaries by a person who want to
do to other is now doing to self , what he was expecting others to do for him
he is doing for self (Yontef 1995).
 Introjections means a process where the thoughts, emotions of action from
another person are grasped totally by the person.
 Projection means thoughts; emotions of self are transferred to others.
 Deflection means avoiding the other person.

31. Continued…
• Embodiment where the client express of his current state by his
body movement, through voice, movement of body parts etc.
• The notion of Polarities, in this comes the famous technique of two
chair work where the person is made aware of his self with other
part of the self by asking the client to change the chair position and
engage in dialogue kind of process.
• The promotion of authentic feeling which a person has denied
early by asking them to express themselves in the first person. This
promotes the sense of owning such experience.

32. Research on Gestalt Therapy
• There is no clear evidence on the efficacy of gestalt therapy as a
whole package.
• Gestalt is effective with other therapies like (Beutler et al. 1991)
has tried to find out the effectiveness of differing therapies with
people having different coping styles and he found that Gestalt and
Experimental therapy were quite competent for clients who have
different coping style.

33. Existential Therapy
Soren Keirkegard Jean Paul Sartre Martin Heidegger

34. Existential Therapy
• It is method of introspection and identifying the emotional
themes and then clustering it accordingly.
• The daily problems are centered to human life and are
existential in nature and basically hurdles the personality
growth of the individual.

35. Existential Theme
• Developed by Soren Kierkegaard , Jean Paul Sartre ,
Martin Heidegger. They have observed the kinship,
marriage and other societal elements and how this
elements went superficial in the 21st century and why
society lacks introspection and awareness of those
feelings and how these feelings are necessary to be put
under themes.

36. Continued…
• Being alone/Being with others: autonomy and relatedness.
• Living in time
• Agency.
• Bodily Experience.
• Truth and authenticity.

37. Ontological Insecurity
• Developed by R.D. Laing.
• an ontological person is that person who will dare to face all the
hazards of life related physical, social psychological, biological,
emotional etc. In other words he will make his own identity and
able to construct his sense of reality whereas the insecure will fail
to establish sense of reality and identity.

38. The three ways of
expressing insecurity
• Engulfment- In this person fears to enter into any relationship due
to the fear of identity being covered by the relationship’s
dominance.
• Implosion- A sense of complete emptiness.
• Petrification & Depersonalization- Here the person loses his
instinct of right and wrong obeys as robot or turned into a living
stone.

39. Core Idea
• The core idea behind this theory is that a person lies in the time
frame and he should be able to live more freely when he accepts
the ultimate reality i.e. death which could help in experiencing
every moment in the timeline.
• The second most important idea of expression of emotion through
body sign such as expression through face, gesture, body
movements etc.
• The third idea which says that anxiety is not a psychiatric disorder
or discomfort but the intense concern for the significant other and
the world.

40. Goal of the Therapy
According to Van Deurzen(1990:157)
• To enable people to accept truth about themselves.
• To expand their perception on themselves and the world
around them.
• To make him live with the present, settle with the past and
make him optimistic about the future.

41. Method of exploration of
situation
Spinelli (1989,1994) she says that method as three basic
rules –
• The rule of bracketing- where it has been asked to keep aside
the preoccupation on any event and should be put ears on the
verbal of person who experienced.
• The rule of description- It is better to elaborate heard
experiencing than relating it to a theory.
• The rule of horizontalization- Here it is being asked to the
therapist to listen all the things and should avoid judging
those experience and should state significance to any part in
the end.

42. Yalom Missing Ingrediants
• A therapist needs compassion, caring,
extending oneself and wisdom to deal with-
• To accept the universal truth called Death.
• The boundaries of freedom until and unless hampers others by our
own action.
• The idea of accepting loneliness that a person has came alone and
will go alone.
• What is the meaning of life despite having the pre concepts and
truth about the world?

43. Conclusion
Humanistic approaches whether it is a “person centered approach”, “gestalt
therapy” or existential therapy” they all have one thing in common that is to
work on inner sense or to make a person more aware of his self either by
realizing him with the existential theme or by asking him to act in the
presence or guiding him in becoming the “complete person” through self
actualization, thus it has helped the client to be more practical and close to the
person for fully scanning of the turbulent agendas which has obstructed him
to realize his full functioning counselor avoids the objective knowledge,
hierarchical structure and discloses his true self which concretes the
counselling process and realizes the client to accept the counselor as true
friend.