Humanistic psychology came to exist sometime in 1950’s, as a chain reaction to psychoanalysis and behaviorism. It explicitly deals with the human context of the developmental psychological theory and the human psychological dimension.

Humanistic psychology was then summarized by James Bugental in 1964 into his five postulates, which stated that: human beings in general cannot be abated into components; humans naturally have their own unique context; human consciousness involves one’s awareness of himself or herself in the circumstance of others; humans have undesired responsibilities and choices; and the fifth one says that humans are intentional and seek creativity, meaning and value in their lives.

All this humanistic approach can be traced back to its existentialist roots. And sometimes, it is comprehended within the three different concepts of psychology such as humanism, psychoanalysis, and behaviorism. Behaviorism was born from Ivan Pavlov’s works with conditioned reflex, thus, it laid out a foundation for academic studies of psychology in the US, associating with it the names of renowned psychologists, B.F. Skinner and John B. Watson. Later on, this particular study was labeled as the study on the science of behavior. And much later, another popular psychologist, Abraham Maslow, named behaviorism as “the second force,” with the “first force” as psychoanalysis. This branch of psychological study was then given life by the researches of Erik Erikson, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Otto Rank, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Melanie Klein among others. All of these theorists concentrated on the realm of human psyche, in which they stressed out that must be associated with that of the conscious mind to come up with a healthy and amiable human personality.

Apart from the mentioned areas tackle by humanistic psychology, it also deals with several approached to therapy and counseling. One of the earliest methods that had been discovered was the developmental theory by Abraham Maslow. Such theory emphasized on the hierarchy of motivations and needs. Another was that of existential psychology by Rollo May, wherein it acknowledged human choices and tragic aspects of men’s existence. There was also the client-centered therapy or the person-centered therapy by Carl Rogers. It focused on the clients’ capacity to direct themselves to the proper path, as well as in understanding their own development.

Furthermore, humanistic therapy and counseling include depth therapy, Gestalt therapy, holistic health, humanistic psychotherapy, encounter groups, family and marital therapies, sensitivity training and Medard Boss’ existential psychotherapy. Self-help may also be categorized as part of humanistic psychology.

Basically, humanistic psychology bypassed the medical view of psychology to give way to a nonpathologizing concept of an individual. Usually, this is implicative of a therapist downplaying the pathological aspects of an individual’s life, favoring the healthier aspects. Its key ingredient is a simple meeting or interaction between a client and his or her therapist to carry on the possibility of a dialogue. To which, the goal of humanistic therapy is to aid the client to be stronger and to arrive at a healthy level of his or her sense of self, which may also be called as self-actualization. All this is so much part of humanistic psychology, motivated to be a science of experiences, focusing mainly on the actual happenings and experiences of persons.

Contrastingly, humanistic psychology has its own share of criticisms, which are all directed to the impossibility of its theories to be falsified. In addition, some critics claimed that this school of psychology lacked the predictive power, thus, is not right to be claimed as science. A scientific theory must bear with it predictive power and is falsifiable. Basing from these two, some antagonists concluded that humanistic psychology is indifferent to science.

Nonetheless, it stays to be figured out whether or not the general study of human psyche is the only exclusive domain of sciences. And humanistic psychology continues to be popular and proves to be highly beneficial.