Humanistic psychology emerged as an explicit movement in the 1950s, it was founded by George Kelly, Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, who believed that fundamental aspects of human experience had been neglected by psychology of time. According to the American Association of Humanistic Psychology (1962, p. 2) “It stands for…respect for differences in approach, open-mindedness regarding acceptable methods, and interest in exploring new aspects of human behavior…yes deals with topics that have little space in existing theories and systems: for example love, creativity, self, growth,... self-realization, higher values, being, becoming, spontaneity,... responsibility, meaning,... experience peak, courage and related concepts'. The concern of the humanistic psychologist was to do justice to the conscious experience that people have of themselves and their role in directing their lives. The assumption is that everyone in the world has potential of growth and development (Carver & Scheier, 2000). Humanistic psychology has had a number of influences. Although it arose partly as a reaction to psychoanalysis, the idea of unconscious motivation has not been discarded and the concerns of the two perspectives often overlap. they overlap. The humanistic perspective has also been influenced by both European and Asian philosophies. In the late 1950s Maslow was one of the key figures in founding both the Association and the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. Rather than focusing on problem states, his primary interest was to explore the healthy personality and the “furthest reaches of human nature.” His early years were characterized by difficulties, his parents thought little of him and his mother was cruel in her treatment of him. He will later say that his… medium of paper… has been fine-tuned and committed and therefore has meaning. This doesn't give us rational answers to questions of meaning, but the questions matter less. Three important conceptualizations of the self were developed by early humanistic psychologists such as Maslow and Rogers. They emphasized the self as being or becoming (Polkinghorne, 2001). Both the humanistic and existential perspectives favor the idea of a fluid and changing, yet integrated self. The second concept is that the self is experienced (Polkinghorne, 2001) and therefore the self is the final idea of the self as an agent, or has the capacity to act. Existentialism is the area of philosophy concerned with the meaning of human existence. It carries the idea that the self cannot exist without a world, and the world cannot exist without a person perceiving it. Humanism emphasizes the value of a person and the importance of human values.
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