Compare And Contrast Humanistic And Cognitive Psychology

The behavioral, humanistic, and cognitive perspectives each have vastly different views and theories. Each one analyzes and tackles psychological disorders in it’s own unique way. For example, there is the case of Jake. Jake is a student who has recently been diagnosed with anxiety disorder after starting harder classes for his major. Each perspective has different views on the origins of his anxiety and how to treat it. The behavioral perspective believes the source of Jake’s anxiety to originate from what he has learned form his environment, the humanistic perspective believes the source to originate from his inner feelings and self-image, and the cognitive perspective believes the source to originate from his belief system not being consistent …show more content…
As aforementioned, this perspective believes the source of Jake’s anxiety to originate from his inner feeling and self-image. It believes that his anxiety has arisen due to him no longer looking at himself in an honest and accepting manner. One explanation, given by Carl Rogers, is that the lack of ‘unconditional positive regard’ in childhood can result in the development of harsh self-standards. It is these self-standards that cause the anxiety. In order to treat Jake’s anxiety, humanistic therapy would be used. Humanistic therapy revolves around the idea of people having free will and being able to change their own behavior. Part of humanistic therapy is helping the subject to be able to change their behavior through their own free will. There are two main types of humanistic therapy.Gestalt therapy, which focuses on how the subject is feeling, rather than why they are feeling that way. Client-centered therapy focuses on reestablishing the subject’s true identity through the use of empathy and positive regard in a supportive …show more content…
An example of these sort of thoughts would be “It is best to always assume for the worst to happen and prepare for it.” People with these sort of thoughts attempt to predict possible events to protect themselves form danger, but, in return, see danger, even unrealistic danger, everywhere. To treat Jake’s anxiety, cognitive therapy would be used. Cognitive therapy focuses on teaching the subject how to cope. One method used by this therapy is Meichenbaum’s self-instruction, which had four stages. First, there is preparing for the stressor. Next, there is confronting and handling the stressor. Then, there is coping with feeling overwhelmed. Last, there is reinforcing with