On what grounds did the humanistic psychologists criticize behaviorism and psychoanalysis?
The humanistic psychologists considered that the behavioral psychology is a sterile, artificial and narrow perspective of human nature. They proposed that the human nature is more complex than the robots, lab rats and other animals being tested. They further added that the humans cannot be quantified, objectified and lowered to stimulus-response portions. Not only behaviorism, psychoanalysis, as described by Freud, was also opposed by the humanistic psychologists.
Freudians were also criticized by the humanistic psychologists for analyzing only psychotic and neurotic individuals. They claimed that by just studying the dysfunction of the mind, positive qualities of the humans and the emotional health cannot be studied. By studying such individuals, other virtues, like joy, kindness, love, ecstasy, generosity, kindness and other positive aspects of the human nature is ignored.
Two psychologists who worked in this respect are Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. Abraham is also known as the humanistic psychology’s spiritual father. He studied a handful of outstanding people to analyze their base of difference from the other normal people. Maslow was enrolled as a psychology professor, the subject, to which he was not familiar with. The course that had to teach did not fascinate him much.
Hence, he turned away from it and got transferred to Wisconsin university. He started with his own childhood stories; how he used to escape from the awful situation by reading books. Hence, he became the first psychologist to study the human’s positive aspects. He determined his work that would be helpful for humans, for developing their personalities and positive attitude towards life.
The term used to describe this situation is self-actualization. Similar procedures were used by Rogers; however, instead of picking up the outstanding individuals, he used to treat his patients with the similar therapy. He proposed that the responsibilities and the circumstances, to which the person is exposed, deeply influence the personality of that individual.