The Humanistic approach is a fairly recent development in psychology; it emerged mainly in the US in the 1950's. It grew from the need to apply a more favourable view of humans than had been expressed in the past. Abraham Maslow, in 1968 called the approach "the third force", the other two forces being Behaviourism and Freudianism. He did not completely reject these approaches, but hoped to unify them, by integrating both the subjective and the objective, the public and the private aspects of the person, thus providing a complete and holistic psychology.
Behaviourism and the psychoanalytical approaches are both determined, they believe that our behaviour is driven by forces beyond our control, forces from within (Freud), reinforcements from without (Skinner). Humanistic psychologists believe in free will, and a person's ability to choose how they act. They believed that people where born with the desire to grow, create and to love, and had the power to direct their own lives. It's the conditions of life that a person is living within, their environment, that can either hinder or help this natural destiny.
Maslow provided the notion that humans inherit a psychological structure of needs, capacities and tendencies that are essentially good. Contrasting sharply to the theories of Freud who said we are in constant conflict, prone to neurosis and innately self-destructive. .
Maslow created a "hierarchy of needs" of which he said we must satisfy the needs at the lower end of the hierarchy before we can attend to the needs at the top. And that along the way we may encounter a "peak experience", a profound joy towards life, and themselves, through experiencing something wonderful. .
The final level of development in his hierarchy is "self actualisation"; this can be reached when a person has satisfied all the more basic needs, such as the physiological and safety needs. .
"Self actualised" people have an acceptance of who they are, despite their faults and limitations, and experience a drive to be creative in all aspects of their lives.
