CBT move on – week 7 part 1

Humanism

Humanistic, humanism and humanist are all terms used in psychology that are related to a ‘whole person with individual uniqueness’ approach without the ideology of a God or single creator. So rather than serving a God you service a humanistic meaning of life.

Such a group believes that an individual’s behaviour is connected to one’s self-concept and inner feelings.

Humanism became influential in the 70’s & 80’s and was originally developed as an alternate approach to behaviourism and the psychodynamic approach (aka dynamic psychology, is an approach to psychology that emphasises systematic study of the psychological forces that underlie human behaviour, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate to early experience).

It emphasises three major areas:

1. It provides a new set of values for understanding human nature and the human condition.
2. It expanded the horizon of methods of inquiry or research in the study of human behaviour.
3. It provides a broader range of methods in the practice of psychotherapy.

Assumptions:

The basic assumption of Humanistic Psychology is that phenomenology (an approach that concentrates on the study of consciousness and the objects of direct experience) is central and that people have a free will.

It also assumes people are basically good and have an innate need to make themselves and the world better. It emphasises personal worth, creativity of the individual. It is optimistic and believes the individual can overcome hardship, pain and despair.

Both Carl Rogers and  Abraham Maslow believe the basic motivation in life is personal growth and personal fulfilment. We may see these in different ways but man wants to continually enhance itself. Central to their theory is that subjective, conscious experiences of the individual. They believe that objective reality is less important than each individual subjective reality.

Humanists do not believe in qualitative research methods, (case studies, surveys, etc). They see man as completely unique from all other animals because man possesses thought, reason and language.

How can someone find out if they may be a Humanist? That question is one that is asked frequently. I gave a simple definition on the introduction to this section but for those who wish to have a more detailed explanation of what makes up the Humanist philosophy here follows an extract from the book; The Philosophy of Humanism where the author Corliss Lamont writes ten humanism pointers:

First, Humanism believes in a naturalistic metaphysics or attitude toward the universe that considers all forms of the supernatural as myth; and that regards Nature as the totality of being and as a constantly changing system of matter and energy which exists independently of any mind or consciousness.

Second, Humanism, drawing especially upon the laws and facts of science, believes that we human beings are an evolutionary product of the Nature of which we are a part; that the mind is indivisibly conjoined with the functioning of the brain; and that as an inseparable unity of body and personality we can have no conscious survival after death.

Third, Humanism, having its ultimate faith in humankind, believes that human beings possess the power or potentiality of solving their own problems, through reliance primarily upon reason and scientific method applied with courage and vision.

Fourth, Humanism, in opposition to all theories of universal determinism, fatalism, or predestination, believes that human beings, while conditioned by the past, possess genuine freedom of creative choice and action, and are, within certain objective limits, the shapers of their own destiny.

Fifth, Humanism believes in an ethics or morality that grounds all human values in this-earthly experiences and relationships and that holds as its highest goal the this-worldly happiness, freedom, and progress?economic, cultural, and ethical of all humankind, irrespective of nation, race, or religion.

Sixth, Humanism believes that the individual attains the good life by harmoniously combining personal satisfactions and continuous self-development with significant work and other activities that contribute to the welfare of the community.

Seventh, Humanism believes in the widest possible development of art and the awareness of beauty, including the appreciation of Nature?s loveliness and splendor, so that the aesthetic experience may become a pervasive reality in the lives of all people.

Eighth, Humanism believes in a far-reaching social program that stands for the establishment throughout the world of democracy, peace, and a high standard of living on the foundations of a flourishing economic order, both national and international.

Ninth, Humanism believes in the complete social implementation of reason and scientific method; and thereby in democratic procedures, and parliamentary government, with full freedom of expression and civil liberties, throughout all areas of economic, political, and cultural life.

Tenth, Humanism, in accordance with the scientific method, believes in the unending questioning of basic assumptions and convictions, including its own. Humanism is not a new dogma, but is a developing philosophy ever open to experimental testing, newly discovered facts, and more rigorous reasoning.

*From “The Philosophy of Humanism” – 8th edition by Corliss Lamont pps 13-15

Here is a quick recap before we move on…

What’s the Humanistic Therapeutic Process?

The first of the three distinctive elements of client-centred therapy is indeed the predictability of the therapeutic process in this approach, theres a predictable pattern of this therapeutic development both clinically and statistically.

The assurance which we feel about this was brought home to me recently when I played a recorded first interview for the graduate students in our practicum immediately after it was recorded, pointing out the characteristic aspects, and agreeing to play later interviews for them to let them see the later phases of the counselling process.

The fact that I knew with assurance what the later pattern would be before it had occurred only struck me as I thought about the incident. We have become clinically so accustomed to this predictable quality that we take it for granted. Perhaps a brief summarised description of this therapeutic process will indicate those elements of which we feel sure. – Humanism Practitioner at Centre of excellence, London

The language of therapy is very important, it can help or hinder the therapeutic process. This idea brings with it, when necessary to include play therapy, through disguised language as in drama or puppet therapy. It is effective in dealing with individual situations, and also in small group situations.

Here follows some real-life examples of a hospital using the aide of a puppeteer to carry out puppet therapy:

The following video shows another humanistic therapist using puppet therapy of another sort, but equally the same results:

Here follows some actual drama therapy sessions as examples:

You can also use language including your tonality to make sure it is all about the person (person-centred), it is almost like a culture-shock when you first do it but it is indeed highly probable that you will get maximum results from your versatility of language.

According to Centre of Excellence the ideal conditions which must be met in order to initiate and sustain this releasing therapeutic experience are listed below. They are the conditions that seem to create maximum therapeutic results.

This experience releases growth and forces a longing within the individual to come about elements are present.

1. Responsibility – If the counsellor operates on the principle that the individual is basically responsible for himself, and is willing for the individual to keep that responsibility.
2. Self-Actualisation – If the counsellor operates on the principle that the client has a strong drive to become mature, socially adjusted, independent, productive, and relies on this force, not on his own powers, for therapeutic change.
3. Safe and secure – If the counsellor creates a warm and permissive atmosphere in which the individual is free to bring out any attitudes and feelings which he may have, no matter how unconventional, absurd, or contradictory these attitudes may be. The client is as free to withhold expression as he is to give expression to his feelings.
4. Respecting one another – If the limits which are set are simple limits set on behaviour, and not limits set on attitudes. Please note: this applies mostly to children. The child may not be permitted to break a window or leave the room, but s/he is free to feel like breaking a window, and the feeling is fully accepted. The adult client may not be permitted more than an hour for an interview, but there is full acceptance of his desire to claim more time.
5.  Self-Awareness – If the therapist uses only those procedures and techniques in the interview which convey his deep understanding of the emotionalised attitudes expressed and his acceptance of them. This understanding is perhaps best conveyed by a sensitive reflection and clarification of the client’s attitudes. The counsellor’s acceptance involves neither approval nor disapproval.
6. Professionalism – If the counsellor refrains from any expression or action which is contrary to the preceding principles. This means reframing from questioning, probing, blame, interpretation, advice, suggestion, persuasion, reassurance.

If these conditions are met, then it is expected that in the great majority of cases the following results will take place.

1. The client will express deep and motivating attitudes.
2. The client will explore his own attitudes and reactions more fully than s/he has previously done and will come to be aware of aspects of his/her attitudes which s/he has previously denied.
3. The client will arrive at a clearer conscious realisation of his/her motivating attitudes and will accept themselves more completely. This realisation and this acceptance will include attitudes previously denied. S/he may or may not verbalise this clearer conscious understanding of him/herself or his/her behaviour.
4. In the light of his clearer perception of him/herself s/he will choose, on his/her own initiative and on his/her own responsibility, new goals which are more satisfying than his/her maladjusted goals.
5. The client will choose to behave in a different fashion in order to reach these goals, and this new behaviour will be in the direction of greater psychological growth and maturity. It will also be more spontaneous and less tense; more in harmony with social needs of others; will represent a more realistic and more comfortable adjustment to life. They’ll become more integrated than they were formerly in behaviour and in thought expression. It will be a huge step forward in the life of the individual.

Clinically, we know that sometimes this process is relatively shallow, involving primarily a fresh reorientation to an immediate problem, and in other instances so deep as to involve a complete reorientation of personality.

It is recognisably the same process whether it involves a girl who is unhappy in a dormitory and is able in three interviews to see something of her childishness and dependence, and to take steps in a mature direction, or whether it involves a young man who is on the edge of a schizophrenic break, and who in thirty interviews works out deep insights in relation to his desire for his father’s death, and his possessive and incestuous impulses toward is mother, and who not only takes new steps but rebuilds his whole personality in the process. Whether the issue is serious mental illness or problem solving an everyday issue the process is basically the same.

We are coming to recognise with assurance characteristic aspects of each phase of the process. We know that the catharsis involves a gradual and more complete expression of emotionalised attitudes. We know that characteristically the conversation goes from superficial problems and attitudes to deeper problems and attitudes. We know that this process of exploration gradually unearths relevant attitudes which have been denied to consciousness. We recognise too that the process of achieving insight is likely to involve more adequate facing of reality as it exists within the self, as well as external reality; that it involves the relating of problems to each other, the perception of patterns of behaviour; that it involves the acceptance of hitherto denied elements of the self, and a reformulating of the self-concept; and that it involves the making of new plans.

In the final phase we know that the choice of new ways of behaving will be in harmony with the newly organised concept of the self (self-actualisation); that first steps in putting these plans into action will be small but symbolic; that the individual will feel only a minimum degree of confidence that s/he can put his/her plans into effect; that later steps implement more and more completely the new concept of self, and that this process continues beyond the conclusion of the therapeutic interviews.

If these statements sound “too good to be true,” I can now conclude it has research backing it up and this research is developing to bring all phases of the process under objective scrutiny. Whenever, in science, a predictable process has been discovered, it has been found possible to use it as a starting point for a whole chain of discoveries.

Hence this orderly and predictable nature of non-directive therapy is regarded as one of its most distinctive and significant points of difference from other approaches. Its importance lies not only in the fact that it is a present difference. but in the fact that it points toward a sharply different future, in which scientific exploration of this known chain of events should lead to many new discoveries, developments and applications.

Naturally the question is raised, what is the reason for this predictability in a type of therapeutic procedure in which the therapist serves only a catalytic function? Basically the reason for the predictability of the therapeutic process lies in the discovery (I use that word intentionally), that within the client resides constructive forces whose strength and uniformity have been either entirely unrecognised or grossly underestimated. It is the clear cut and disciplined reliance by the therapist upon those forces within the client, which seems to account for the orderliness of the therapeutic process, and its consistency from one client to the next.

For many years, psychologists have only looked at the problem and not recognised that in most if not all individuals there exist growth; a force far powerful and substantially greater than any problem issue that may currently arise within most clients, this powerful force as another name or tendency, ‘self-actualisation’ which may act as the sole motivation for therapy. Previous therapists have disregarded this innate drive as something mythical and unicorn-like.

They hadn’t realised that under suitable psychological conditions these forces bring about emotional release in those areas and at those rates which are most beneficial to the individual. These forces drive the individual to explore their own attitudes and relationship to reality, to explore these areas effectively.

Prior experts failed to realise that the individual is capable of exploring his attitudes and feelings, including those which have been denied to consciousness, at a rate which does not cause panic, and to the depth required for comfortable adjustment. The individual is capable of discovering and perceiving, truly and spontaneously, the interrelationships between his own attitudes, and the relationship of himself to reality. The individual has the capacity and the strength to devise, quite unguided, the steps which will lead him to a more mature and more comfortable relationship to his reality. It is the gradual and increasing recognition of these capacities within the individual by the client-centered therapist that rates, I believe, the term discovery. All of these capacities I have described are released in the individual if a suitable psychological atmosphere is provided.

The Therapeutic Relationship

It is said that ‘the client-centred therapist stands at an opposite pole, both theoretically and practically’. The therapist has learned that the constructive forces in the individual can be trusted and that the more deeply they are relied upon, the more deeply they are released. These are the estimations or  has come to build his procedures upon these hypotheses, which are rapidly becoming established as facts; that the client knows the areas of concern which he is ready to explore; that the client is the best judge as to the most desirable frequency of interviews; that the client can lead the way more efficiently than the therapist into deeper concerns; that the client will protect him/herself from panic by ceasing to explore an area which is becoming too painful; that the client can and will uncover all the repressed elements which it is necessary to uncover in order to build a comfortable adjustment; that the client can achieve for him/herself far truer and more sensitive and accurate insights than can possibly be given to him/her; that the client is capable of translating these insights into constructive behaviour which weigh his/her own needs and desires realistically against the demands of society; that the client knows when therapy is completed and s/he is ready to cope with life independently. Only one condition is necessary for all these forces to be released, and that is the proper psychological atmosphere between client and therapist.

One might suppose that there would be a generally favourable reaction to this discovery, since it amounts in effect to tapping great reservoirs of hitherto little-used energy. On the contrary, there is no other aspect of client-centred therapy which comes under such vigorous attack and scrutiny than this.

It seems to be genuinely disturbing to many professional people to entertain the thought that this client upon whom they have been exercising their professional skill actually knows more about his inner psychological self than they can possibly know, and that he possesses constructive strengths which make the constructive push by the therapist seem puny indeed by comparison.

The willingness fully to accept this strength of the client, with all the re-orientation of therapeutic procedure which it implies, is one of the ways in which client-centred therapy differs most sharply from other therapeutic approaches.

The third distinctive feature of this type of therapy is the character of the relationship between therapist and client. Unlike other therapies in which the skills of the therapist are to be exercised upon the client. In this approach the skills of the therapist are focused upon creating a psychological atmosphere in which the client can work. If the counsellor can create a relationship permeated by warmth, understanding, safety from any type of attack, no matter how trivial, and basic acceptance of the person as s/he is, then the client will drop his/her natural defensiveness and use the situation. As we have puzzled over the characteristics of a successful therapeutic relationship, we have come to feel that the sense of communication is very important. If the client feels that he is actually communicating his present attitudes, superficial, confused, or conflicted as they may be, and that his communication is understood rather than evaluated in any way, then he is freed to communicate more deeply. A relationship in which the client thus feels that he is communicating is almost certain to be fruitful.

All of this means a drastic reorganisation in the mindset of the counsellor, particularly if he has previously utilised other approaches. He gradually learns that the statement that the time is to be “the client’s hour” means just that, and that his biggest task is to make it more and more deeply true.

Perhaps something of the characteristics of the relationship may be suggested by excerpts from a paper written by a young minister who has spent several months learning client-centred counselling procedures

“Because the client-centred, non-directive counselling approach has been rather carefully defined and clearly illustrated, it gives the “Illusion of Simplicity.” The technique seems deceptively easy to master. Then you begin to practice. A word is wrong here and there. You don’t quite reflect feeling, but reflect content instead. It is difficult to handle questions; you are tempted to interpret. Nothing seems so serious that further practice won’t correct it. Perhaps you are having trouble playing two roles — that of minister and that of counselor. Bring up the question in class and the matter is solved again with a deceptive ease. But these apparently minor errors and a certain woodenness of response seem exceedingly persistent.

“Only gradually does it dawn that if the technique is true it demands a feeling of warmth. You begin to feel that the attitude is the thing. Every little word is not so important if you have the correct accepting and permissive attitude toward the client. So you bear down on the permissiveness and acceptance. You will accept and reflect the client.

‘But you still have those troublesome questions from the client. He simply doesn’t know the next step. He asks you to give him a hint, some possibilities, after all you are expected to know something else, why is he here! As a minister, you ought to have some convictions about what people should believe, how they should act. As a counsellor, you should know something about removing this obstacle — you ought to have the equivalent of the surgeon’s knife and use it. Then you begin to wonder. The technique is good, but … does it go far enough! does it really work on clients? is it right to leave a person helpless, when you might show him the way out?

“Here it seems to me is the crucial point. “Narrow is the gate” and hard the path from here on. So one else can give satisfying answers and even the instructors seem frustrating because they appear not to be helpful in your specific case. For here is demanded of you what no other person can do or point out — and that is to rigorously scrutinise yourself and your attitudes towards others. Do you believe that all people truly have a creative potential in them? That each person is a unique individual and that he alone can work out his own individuality? Or do you really believe that some persons are of “negative value” and others are weak and must be led and taught by “wiser,” “stronger” people.

“You begin to see that there is nothing compartmentalised about this method of counselling. It is not just counselling, because it demands the most exhaustive, penetrating, and comprehensive consistency. In other methods you can shape tools, pick them up for use when you will. But when genuine acceptance and permissiveness are your tools it requires nothing less than the whole complete personality. And to grow oneself is the most demanding of all.” He goes on to discuss the notion that the counsellor must be restrained and “self-denying.” He concludes that this is a mistaken notion.

“Instead of demanding less of the counsellor’s personality in the situation, client-centred counselling in some ways demands more. It demands discipline, not restraint. It calls for the utmost in sensitivity, appreciative awareness, channeled and disciplined. It demands that the counsellor put all he has of these precious qualities into the situation, but in a disciplined, refined manner. It is restraint only in the sense that the counsellor does not express himself in certain areas that he may use himself in others.

I trust it is evident from this description that this type of relationship can exist only if the counsellor is deeply and genuinely able to adopt these attitudes. Client-centered counseling, if it is to be effective, cannot be a trick or a tool. It is not a subtle way of guiding the client while pretending to let him guide himself. To be effective, it must be genuine. It is this sensitive and sincere “client-centeredness” in the therapeutic relationship that I regard as the third characteristic of non-directive therapy which sets it distinctively apart from other approaches.