History of Theories in Psychology (PSYC 493)

Existentialism can be put in the category of new creation. The search for finding meaning and for living life according to that meaning is similar to the goal of living a Christian life towards making it into heaven. I think that it is very interesting that in order to fully live a meaningful life you must come up with what your meaning to life is.
As Christians we are held responsible for our actions for the Kingdom and our actions in life. The idea of responsibleness, an idea that Frankl came up with, can be attributed to that of being responsible for living your life and yours alone. No one can find meaning for you. You are responsible for finding your own meaning to life and for trying to live out that life to the fullest. This is the same as living out the Christian lifestyle to the fullest, and in turn you can find meaning to put to your life.

Maslow is recognized as the one most responsible for making humanistic psychology a formal branch of psychology. Humanistic psychologists believe that every person has a strong desire to realize his or her full potential, to reach a level of self-actualization. Self-actualization is defined as the innate human tendency toward wholeness, the person is open to experience and embrace the higher values of human existence.

I think that this is related to redemption because we do not really understand our full potential until we see what God can do in our lives. We cannot achieve things on our own, we will always need God’s help. The only way that we can get that help is to trust in him. This is where redemption comes into play. I think that Maslow described how we can also be afraid of our future and not want to put our trust in God. He called this the Jonah complex. It is defined as fear of one’s own greatness or running away from one’s best talents. We have great potential, but we cannot achieve such goals without God in our lives. He will always pave the way for us. Although sometimes it may be difficult. Maslow hits on how important self-actualization is for a person. I think that we can only achieve self-actalization through the Lord. He will help to show our potential and what we can do with our talents. Even though sometimes we may doubt ourselves, we must remember to put our trust in him. Redemption fits Maslow well because to reach the  highest hierarch of needs, self-actualizaiton, we cannot do it alone. We will need guidance and encouragement, something that God will always provide us with as long as we trust in him.

Jean Piaget was a very well-rounded academic at an early age and was a prominent writer. He’s contributed work in the areas of children’s cognitive perception of causality, time, morality, and space. His contributions still influence many areas of study that involve human development. Though he’s known for much more, the textbook mainly covers Piaget’s 4 stages of human ontogeny.

1. Sensorimotor (birth-2): infant becomes aware of the relationship of physical sensations and actions.
2. Preoperational (2-7): child begins to identify how the world is organized, how it functions, and how humans interact with one another.
3. Concrete operations (11 or 12): mental processes that allow individuals to solve problems begins to develop for physical objects
4. Formal operations (11 or 12): the ability to solve abstract problems develop

These are stages of early human development, and for that reason, I believe Piaget fits well into Creation. His research is about understanding how individuals develop in their environments.  I believe Piaget was one of the first to create a reliable map that we use to predict human development. This was considerably useful in therapeutic context for psychology, language, and sociology.  Also in my opinion, Piaget’s approach is much more realistic than psychoanalytic psychology.

Humanism is often today associated with atheism, perhaps in part because it rejects practices typical of many religions and part because many non-religious individuals adhere to its principles. Humanistic psychology is even at odds with other branches of psychology, claiming a special spot for mankind as purpose-driven creatures that are (usually) distinct from animals. I associate Carl Rogers, and most humanistic psychology, with restoration because of the optimistic views of humankind he held as self-actualizing beings.

The concept of the restoration in Christianity branches into a few different beliefs. Some believe it will be done almost entirely by God, and that we will be snatched away by a Rapture when the time comes. Other believe that it will be done primarily by humans on God’s behalf, with varying degrees of help. Humanistic psychology would tend, of course, to get along more with the later view. However, while Rogers might see an individual quest for each person, the Christian metanarrative sees a more broad, communal effort toward a final goal. Heaven, or a restored Earth, is something that we will reap together, rather than each entering a personal heaven.

Humanistic psychologists were also often existentialists, and therefore put a lot of emphasis on confronting death. Many of them would say that the Christian promise of eternal life is nothing more than denial and refusal to accept death as an inevitable consequence. For some individuals, this may be true. Some very difficult questions like the purpose of suffering are disregarded by some, who say things like “Well, I’ll just have to ask God when I get to heaven!” Even Jesus had to confront his own death, however. An atheist friend of mine once brought up a point that stuck with me for years. “What kind of sacrifice,” he asked, “is it to give your live when you know you’re going to come back from the dead 2 days later?” And he’s not wrong. Most people disregard Jesus’ intense prayer and fear at Gethsemane as his anticipation of the pain, not death. Perhaps, however, somewhere in the head of Jesus, who was both 100% man and 100% God, he only mostly, or only intellectually knew that he was going to die.

After all, for the claim that Jesus was entirely human to be true, he had to have experienced the fear of a permanent death. If this is true, than the existentialist claim that we must all confront death does not threaten our Christian faith, but rather gives us a new way to think about our fragile humanity. Fear need not be entirely rational. Sometimes it simply “is.”

Rollo May presented the paradox of human existence: that we live as objects of which experience happen to and we live as subjects who can interpret and respond to these experiences.

For a psychoanalyst, this concept reflects a little bit of existentialism. Things happen and as Viktor Frankl would say, they happen absolutely absurdly. But, like Frankl, May emphasized the power of the human choice to interpret, understand, and respond to the environment around them. In this sense people are free. May continues this idea to say that “freedom comes with it responsibility, uncertainty, and therefore anxiety”.

Maybe y’all can help with this. I cannot decide whether May fits under Creation or the Fall. We are products of creation (objects) who were created with an immense amount of freedom to live on and subdue the earth. Additionally, free will was offered and accepted. We were truly free. But given the choice, we lived as subjects who decided to know of good and evil and were suddenly aware of all the world around them. Following the Fall, Adam and Eve were covering shame, literally. The freedom of knowledge that they had came at a cost. For that reason I think May also fits with the Fall.

Just because I need to choose though, I think that May best fits with Redemption. As Christians we are have been redeemed and live with the blessing of a burden. As we are no longer bound by sin, but instead walk free, we are held to a greater conviction to live responsively to the world around us, exercising our freedom to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly. That’s easier said than done in a world where we are subjects, but also objects.

Carl Rogers’s view of client centered therapy and unconditional positive regard can be placed into the category of the restoration. Unconditional positive regard is something that I think that is important for therapy. I do not think it is important solely for the client, but also the therapist. Carl Rogers understood that this concept is hard in practice because it is a way of learning for the therapist as well as the client. It’s is not an easy task to accept a person for no matter what they do. But God does that for us everyday. To be reminded what God wants us to do for others is important because we are called to accept not to judge.  Therapy that is centered around acceptance is a perfect place for clients to get the help they need.

I cannot believe I am actually writing my last blog post for this class. It’s crazy to think how time flies….anyway

I like Carl Rogers. He was very well known for using the Humanistic approach. I really liked his approach to psychology. I can relate to Rogers because he saw potential in people and for that I put him with creation. The reason being might be considered a stretch but he wanted people to be fully functional. He saw that in order for people to be fully functional they must be constantly growing and experiencing new things in life. The person would need an increase in experiences, in creativity, in optimism, etc. I love this. I love this mostly because I could not agree more. People, in my opinion, don’t spend enough time just living life. We, increasingly so, spend time at our computers, in our offices, in front of a tv, not outside and getting the creative juices flowing. Again, I love this. It has given me a lot to think about and has given me an opportunity to evaluate myself and really look at how I am approaching things. If I am completely honest, I am only coming to some of these realizations as I am nearing graduation. Carl Rogers saw that when looking at the psychology of a person, one had to focus on the person. He seems to call out those who follow his advice. It is intimidating but overall very beneficial.

I have also found the Holocaust to be very interesting. It is apart of history that makes you sit there and think how such things could happen just being under the power of one person. Viktor Frankl and a select few of others saw a meaning to life and not only helped themselves out, but others around them in the concentration camp. I would place Frankl under the Fall because even though his world was crashing under him after losing his family in the camps, he did not let it stop him from finding that meaning of life. “Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.” From what we experience in life, by our choice we either embrace it as a blessing or just something that happened because of a wrong decision. Even if what we experienced was bad, we always have the choice to change the meaning. I just feel like if we do not exercise our freedom, then how can we find a purpose in life, grow from it, and move on from past experiences.

I enjoyed learning about Frankl and his belief that man has the power to decided his fate. Man may have the same set of circumstances, but he can either hide within those circumstances, or use them to find meaning and value in them which in return helps man to be a stronger individual. The choosing of our interpretation and meaning of our experiences we grow in freedom. According to Frankl, “Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds meaning.” This illustrates a redemptive spirit to look past the case of circumstances, like the prisoners in the concentration camps, and find a meaning when there were not many left.  Frankl also explains how some may stay stagnant and therefore not find any meaning and living life as a puzzle piece in someone else’s puzzle. To not live up to their human potential keeps them at a safe zone which Frankl believed was a fall of humans. The human life is a path. In each circumstance there is a fork in the road where you can work to find individual meaning or take the path of acceptance in fate.

Alfred Adler is very interesting man with a set of attention-grabbing theories. Adler started the psychoanalytic move alongside Freud. Although he did help found this movement, Adler rejected Freud’s emphasis on sex and kept with the theory that personality difficulties are rooted in inferiority. Adler’s two contributions that I am going to talk about are fictional finalism and his personality theory.

Fictional finalism was very new to psychology when he first wrote about it. The theory states that there are future fictional goals to which a person aspires. The goals are usually he end to which the person is aspiring. These are also called the self-ideal and the guiding fiction. The second theory that Adler brought to psychology was that the human personality could be explained teleologically. He argued that parts of the individual’s unconscious self ideally work to convert feelings of inferiority to superiority, or completeness.

I believe that these two theories have the ability to place human nature into the Redemption category. Individuals are considered to have their own incomparable life. Adler believed that each person is their own individual being and should be treated as such. The way Adler talks about a persons experience seems to be congruent with the ideas of Redemption.