Humanistic Existential Personality

Front 1

Psychoanalysis

Back 1

-pessimistic view of personality
-downplays role of consciousness
-focus on unconsciousness
-deterministic

Front 2

Behaviourism

Back 2

-Simplistic, reductionistic
-Mechanistic
-Ignores subjective experience
-Ignores the existence/role of conciousness

Front 3

Humanistic existentialism influences

Back 3

-Civil rights movement
-Feminism
-Holocaust
-Eastern philosophies
-Postmodernism
-Hippies
-Drugs

Front 4

Assumptions in H E I

Back 4

-Focus on creative potentials inherent in humans
-Seeks to help individual realise growth and psychological health
-Emphasis on the dignity and worth of humans and the conscious capacity to develop competence and self repsect

Front 5

Focuses on

Back 5

-Good side of human nature
-Existence (dasein = being in the world)
Now and here
-Love, affiliation, spontaneity, joy, independence, personal growth

Front 6

H E I is an idiographic approach

Back 6

-Each human is a unique individual
-Humans are good and should always strive to be happy (optimistic view)
-Believes in a freedom to choose and control ones behaviour

Front 7

HEI

Back 7

-Personality is a unified whole and inseparable from the psychological and social environment
-The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Front 8

The growth process is the drive towards

Back 8

-Self actualisation
-Self realisation
-Self hood
-Total personality development is achieved when we realise and utilise our full abilities and potentials

Front 9

HEI

Back 9

-Society restricts personal growth through rules and laws
-Obedience to social rules leads to dull, conventional, mediocre and submissive individuals

Front 10

Illness in HEI

Back 10

-Rejects medical mode of mental illness

Front 11

How does one become ill?

Back 11

-Incongruence
-D-Needs
-Terror management

Front 12

Incongruence

Back 12

-Disharmony with cognitive elements of experience
-Discrepancy between one's experiences and their self-concept
-Leads to anxiety
-Can cause low self-esteem
-(Rational) distortion of experience

Front 13

D-Needs

Back 13

Deficiency needs
-Failure to satisfy physiological, safety, love and esteem can lead to mental health problems

Front 14

Terror Management

Back 14

-Awareness of and response to death
-Being vs Nothingness
-Existential guilt and angst

Front 15

Contribution

Back 15

-First Holistic personality theories
-First theories to capitalise on subjective free will, personal responsibility and conscious choice
-Non-deterministic
-Gave rise to positive psych, transpersonal psych and holistic medicine

Front 16

Major contributions to social care systems, humanitarian interventions and treatment of primarily substance abuse and relational problems

Back 16

E.G - Person centred therapy
-Gestalt therapy
-Logotherapy
-Conjoint family therapy

Front 17

Criticism

Back 17

-Society is bad, individuals are good
-What is conventional is mediocre
-Too much reliance on the individual self-reported conscious experience
-Methodology is often too vague, unscientific, and untestable
-Theories lack falsifiability