Carl rogers biography pdf freedom to learn

The Humanistic Perspective in psychology, as the name suggests, is rooted in the belief that human beings are unique individuals that have an innate tendency towards self-actualisation.

Thus, humanistic psychology holds the human potential at its core and strongly opposes biological determinism and psychoanalysis, both of which were popular trends in psychology in the mid-twentieth century.

Behaviourism and psychodynamics were both rejected by humanistic psychologists because of their dehumanising nature and excessive reliance on determinism.

Instead, behaviourists suggested that human behaviour is a product of reinforcement and relied primarily upon results obtained from animal research. The psychodynamic approach also based its findings on unconscious and immeasurable instinctive forces that supposedly determine human behaviour.

On the other hand, humanistic psychology works with the assumption that human beings posses