A Critical Assessment of the Humanistic Model of Psychopathology - Article Example

A Critical Assessment of the Humanistic Model of Psychopathology All psychological theories seem to imply some sort of modern man, some notion of what man essentially is. Thus psychoanalytic theories suggest that man is essentially a battlefield, he is a dark cellar in which a maiden aunt and a sex-crazed monkey are locked in mortal combat, the affair being refereed by a rather nervous bank clerk. (Bannister qtd. in Davies & Bhugra 96) It used to be, under the psychoanalytic theory, that individuals are viewed as basically driven by sexual and aggressive impulses and seeks to continually satisfy these instinctive urges (Davies & Bhugra 92). In reaction to this, Davies & Bhugra relates that the humanistic model was developed and sought to emphasize human nature as essentially positive and valued choices and purpose in life (92). Its basic assumption is that what is being considered normal or abnormal is subjective to and dependent on the therapist or clinician’s own frame of reference. The therapist’s goal then is to provide opportunities for the client to achieve his optimum potential by letting him be himself on the way to self-discovery (103). This way, psychopathology is simply viewed as a breakdown in the individual’s pursuit for personal growth. There are various approaches to the humanistic model and for the purposes of this presentation, includes Carl Rogers’ person-centered therapy, George Kelly’s personal construct psychology, Eric Berne’s transactional analysis, Abraham Maslow’s transpersonal psychotherapy, and Victor Frankl’s existential approach. Rogers is considered to be the founder of contemporary counselling. His person-centered therapy espouses that individuals are capable of finding solutions to their problems by providing a counselling environment in which they are given unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding (93). It is assumed that each person has a natural tendency to better himself- to expand, to extend, to become autonomous, develop, and mature - in the process of self-actualization (94). Self-actualization is a state in which the person has a positive self-regard or self-value and in is open to continuous change. As a child, the person receives love and affection from significant persons in his life and develops a positive self-regard and this way the self-actualizing tendency is promoted. However, there are times in his development that he receives love and affection only when he pleases adults or behaves according to their notion of what is appropriate and desirable. This then, develops conditional self-regard in the person and the goal to self-actualize is being blocked or distorted. Rogers believes that psychopathology is a result of the tension between the person’s inherent desire to attain self-actualization or growth and the conditional self-regard that he received from others. Thus, the therapeutic approach to this is to provide him once again with an environment in which he is given love and affection just by being himself and this will allow him to find the motivation to help himself grow maturely. Furthermore, the therapist attempts to place himself in the client’s situation and experience his world together with him. This is made possible by maintaining conditions in which psychological contact is held together with congruence and genuineness, vulnerability or anxiousness, empathy and unconditional acceptance. Consequently, Rogers’ humanistic model of psychopathology gives more emphasis to the positive side of the person as opposed to just focusing on the negative aspect. In this way, this humanistic model diverts one’s attention and overemphasis to what is ugly about the human nature and also looks at the other side of the coin. Truly, individuals tend to get motivated when other people give them special attention and accept them despite their weaknesses. This kind of approach is beneficial to the therapist as always having the client’s positive side in mind and believing that in the end he will go back to his original positive self-regard state can help the therapist extend patience and persevere more in helping the client. This is knowing that all his efforts will not be in vain. In addition, Rogers humanistic approach doesn’t give too much attention to the individual symptoms of the psychopathological diagnosis and in this sense is holistic in its approach. Its primary objective is to know what the person is going through and to be with that person in the journey towards uncovering his real feelings. However, in the case of deep-seated psychopathological issues, maintaining an accepting relationship with the client may not be enough. This is not also a guarantee that giving the client unconditional positive regard within the counseling relationship will help the person bring this renewed self-value in his relationship with people from the outside world. The counseling relationship doesn’t seem to give the person a concrete idea about how to deal with significant others who will continue to give conditional self-regard. Furthermore, the objectivity of the counselor that should be maintained in the therapeutic session may be endangered as the relationship itself is the foundation of therapy. The client may abuse the therapist’s unconditional acceptance in this respect. Finally, this model also assumes that if the person will for it, change can happen anytime. This may not work with a client whose will is not strong enough such that the therapist may need to incorporate other strategies in that will help him deal with cognitive and behavioral concerns and not just the emotional aspect. On the other hand, the personal construct psychology by Kelly assumes that each person forms constructs based on the social interactions and experiences from the past (97). Kelly likens an individual to a scientist who would form a hypothesis about a certain event. He then tries to test or validate – confirm or disprove - the same through other experiences. Whenever warranted, these constructs are continually revised and modified. This is the process by which a person forms a constellation of constructs and influences the individual’s perception, expectations, and how he behaves. Therefore, psychopathology is viewed based on the form and content of the constructs formed (qtd. in Davies & Bhugra 97). . For example, Bannister and his colleagues explored these constructs in persons diagnosed with thought disordered schizophrenia and they discovered that these individuals have either too loose or too tight personal constructs. In the process of predicting a certain event based on a particular construct formed, a construct keeps on getting invalidated and thus uncertainty is developed in the person. He would tend to be too loose in his construing process in order to accommodate the inconsistent ways events would turn out to be. Meantime, irrelevant data that may be collected are not discarded that it will tend to overwhelm the person and eventually devoid him of an explanatory framework by which to organize experiences and guide his behavior. During the therapeutic process then, the therapist would aim to explore with the client his personal construct system to help him figure things out and adjust things a bit. Looking at the personal construct psychology, one is led to think that it refers to a belief system that a person has developed through time. This belief system however becomes psychopathological when this system is challenged and displaced that the person starts to get overwhelmed by all the new information that’s coming in. Exploring the event with the client may seem to help but it doesn’t really explain how after the exploration that the client can switch to a better organization of his belief or construct system. For example, one would ask how the therapist would intend to adjust a schizophrenics’ loose personal construing if his thought mechanism is also distorted. A simple exploration may not be adequate enough to address an unhealthy construct system. Another important approach belonging to the humanistic model of psychopathology is called transactional analysis by Berne (98). It has three assumptions. Like all humanistic approaches, human beings are viewed as being ‘OK’ at the core of their personhood. The second assumption embodies the therapist’s presupposition that the client is capable of thinking and making life decisions. Lastly, it is assumed that each person can choose to behave differently. Moreover, Berne presents a model for interpersonal communication that is composed of three ego states namely the child, the parent, and the adult saying that each one of them tends to operate in interacting with other people (98). The child ego state is described as the person thinking and feeling like the child that he was before and includes feelings such as inferiority and spontaneous happiness and joy. Also as a child, a person has experienced how his parents were prone to orthodoxy and criticism and he tends to think and feel like them in the parent ego state. Finally, in the adult ego state, the person responds with objectivity and devoid of emotional expression to the environment in the here and now. It is assumed that the individual would move in and out of these three ego states and that psychopathology is viewed as the breakdown of the barriers between these states. For example, the person becomes delusional when he tends to be childish in his view of the world due to a breakdown of the child and adult ego states. Moreover, Berne believes that psychopathology is a result of each person’s life script that was formed in childhood from ages 3 to 7 years old. The life script is like a plan that has already been decided early on in life in terms of how it will go and how it will end based on the messages that the person has often heard or received from his parents. In this sense, it could draw a scenario in which the person believes that he is OK and the other person is OK, he is not OK and the other is OK, he is OK and the other is not OK, or both he and the other is not OK (99). This script that the person has formed however may not be based on reasoned and logical thinking and is carried out into adulthood unconsciously. Some examples of these particular life scripts that Berne has given include ‘I must not grow up’, ‘I must not be important’, ‘I must not exist’, ‘ I must not feel’, and ‘I must not be me’. Then, therapy is implemented by allowing the person to recognize faulty childhood life scripts, take hold of them, and independently make more sound decisions as an adult (99). In this regard, transactional analysis is a potent approach as it doesn’t fail to reinforce the idea that indeed childhood development is important. Persons carry a lot of things that they have learned in childhood and going back to how they learned them is a big jolt for realization for the client. It presents a more clearer view of how this approach intends to bring change in the way a client thinks or feels. The fourth humanistic model is what Maslow calls as transpersonal psychotherapy or an approach which goes beyond the realms of the usual human consciousness and into the religious or spiritual experience (101). Like Rogers, Maslow views individuals as capable of the self-actualizing tendency as a result of various motivations that may either be in a form of a deficiency motivation or a growth motivation. The deficiency motivation is described as the persons need to minimize physiological tensions such as hunger and thirst. Meanwhile, growth motivation refers to the person’s need to satisfy the need to be loved and need to be esteemed (101). Altogether, Maslow has placed these needs in a hierarchy. At the bottom are the physiological needs for survival such as the need for food, drinks, and sex. When they are satisfied, next in line are the needs for safety and security both in the physical and the psychological aspect. Going up the ladder is the person’s need for love and belonging or to be affiliated and to be accepted by others. At the top is the person’s ultimate goal for self-actualization which is achieved after a process of successfully making small changes. Self-actualization is described by Maslow as a state of self-direction, creativity, independence, accurate view of self and others, understanding other person’s point of view, and openness to new experiences. Because of this, the person in the actualized state enjoys ‘peak experiences’ of the spiritual nature. In this way, psychopathology can be explained differently in the light of a spiritual peak experience. In this light, this approach is beneficial in rendering a well-organized hierarchy of the various needs that a person has. It presents the idea that a person doesn’t live to satisfy his physiological needs alone but more so to satisfy his needs for love and affection. This further can be used in therapy for persons who have too intense indulgences in acquiring material things that after all their high economic status, what will really make them feel happy and satisfied is to be loved and to love in return. Likewise, self-actualization as a goal for the ordinary person is encouraging for the client as he begins to realize that he doesn’t only live for himself but he matures and sheds his selfish ways for more altruistic reasons and caring for other people of the world. Still, this approach is lacking in explaining what will happen to a person’s development if he is unable to fully satisfy his basic needs. Will this mean that the person will not be able to strive to satisfy his psychological needs and ultimately his needs for self-actualization. People in the third world countries may lack the economic prosperity but this doesn’t make them altogether unhappy because they are surrounded by close family ties of intimacy. Conversely, this approach is not also clear about its value in the therapeutic process as it only suggests unconditional acceptance of the behavior as a result of connecting with the spiritual world. The last approach to the humanistic model of psychopathology is presented by Victor Frankl and is called existential psychotherapy. It is based on the assumption that the each person tends to focus on finding the meaning and purpose of his existence in a world which seems meaningless. It also focuses on the issues of good and evil and about life and death (100). Frankl, in the midst of his three-year agony in the Nazi concentration camp and witnessing the death of his loved ones has focused on the search for meaning in life. He proposes that logotherapy can be used to help the client “become fully aware of their own responsibilities, to develop choices over what attitudes and beliefs they hold, and to face the existential void of life” (100). The main objective is to bring all these to the person’s consciousness through achievement or suffering. With these, the existential approach describes a very self-empowering capability for the person despite his negative life experience. It is quite commendable seeing successful persons who have gone through a lot in their life more than other people had but has emerged stronger and better from life’s turmoil. Then again, the approach doesn’t seem to consider clients who may not be strong enough or empowered to deal with their problems by sheer will. A number of clients seeking therapy have done so because they feel they could not make it on their own that the existential approach may be inadequate in this respect. How the therapist intends to allow the client to see meaning in his life is not also explicitly explained and there seems to be no specific strategy on how to help him find this meaning. A number of clients may also be too depressed to just think about the positive side of life considering that they are already in a stage of hopelessness and most of the time wanting to end their life because they see no point in living it anymore. Summary Looking at all the approaches for the humanistic model of psychopathology, one may dwell on its value based on how it sincerely intends to help the client by making a one step forward to developing an empathic relationship with him. Because of this, this model will be most beneficial when it is used as a tool to establish more than rapport with the client and help him to give his trust in the counsellor and in the counselling relationship, which is most of the time hard to acquire from disturbed clients. For clients who seem to believe that nobody really cares, the humanistic model offers a therapy that is far from estrangement and into a situation in which one can find a friend who will always listen and accept the person for who he is. This is a subtle way of gaining the client’s confidence in the therapist and gradually allowing himself toward the therapeutic process. In spite of these, the humanistic model seems to stop here and not really provide concrete steps in helping the client especially those who have developed dependency from others, could not make decisions on their own, or may be too psychologically ill to think for themselves. In specific, in trying to rewrite the life script that has been obtained since childhood and assumed to dwell in the unconscious, this model has not been specific on how to access the unconscious to let the client realize the illogical beliefs he has formed about himself and of the world. And if the unconsciously motivated life script has already been uncovered, this model has not also been explicit about how to revise something that has already been ingrained for years and now will be suddenly changed. A need for specific strategies to dig dipper into this realm and bring the client’s issue to a resolution is being called for to make it effective. Also, its assumption of the human nature that is basically good may not show a realistic and balanced view as it seems to ignore that people do mistakes and are also capable of behaving in an immature manner. Thus, the humanistic model can be used in the early stages of the psychopathological procedure but will need the assistance of other therapies if it will be used effectively. Works Cited Davies, Dilys and Dinesh Bhugra. Models of Psychopathology. England: Open University Press, 2004. Read More