• The humanistic-existential therapies encourage personal growth and actualize the potential.
Fundamental Assumption:
• The client has the freedom and responsibility to control his/her own behaviour.
• Psychological distress arises from feeling of loneliness, alienation and an inability to find meaning and genuine fulfilment in life.
• All individuals have desire for personal growth and self-actualization and an innate need to grow emotionally.
Causes of Distress:
1. Obstacles created by the society and family to achieve personal growth.
2. Obstacles in attainment of self-actualization, because it requires free emotional expression.
Treatment Modalities:
• The therapist is merely facilitator and guide. It is the client who is responsible for the success of the therapy.
• The client initiates the process of self-growth through which healing takes place.
Therapies based on Humanistic-existential Approach: Logo therapy is a form of existential therapy.
Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist and neurologist propounded logo therapy.
Basic Assumption: ‘Logo’ is the Greek word for ‘soul’ and “logo’ therapy ‘means treatment of the soul’.
• Person’s desire of finding the spiritual truth of ones existence is the source of motivation.
• binding meaning of self even in life-threatening circumstances is process of meaning making.
• There is a spiritual unconscious, which is the store house of love, aesthetic awareness and values of life.
Aim of Therapy: To help the client to find meaning and responsibility in their life irrespective of their life circumstances.
Treatment Modality:
• The therapist emphasizes the unique nature of the patients life and encourages them to find meaning in their life.
• The therapist is open and shares his/her feelings, values and his/her own existence with the client.
• The emphasis is on here and now.
• In the therapy, transference is actively discouraged.
• The goal is to facilitate the client to find meaning of his/her being.
Gestalt Therapy:
• It is humanistic therapy developed by Fritz Pearl and his wife Laima Pearl.
• It helps the client to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.
• The client is taught to bring his disowned thoughts, conflicts and anxieties to his awareness.
• The therapist does this by encouraging the client to act out or speak out his/her fantasies about feelings and conflicts.
• This therapy can also be used in group setting. Client Centered Therapy: This kind of therapy is developed by Carl Rogers.
• It is based on non-directive approach.
• To understand individual, we must look at the way they experience events rather than at the events themselves.
• The therapy provides a warm relationship in which the client can reconnect with his/her disintegrated feeling.
• The therapist shows empathy, i.e., understanding the client’s experience as if it were his/her own, is warm and has unconditionally positive regard, i.e., total acceptance.
• The therapist reflects the feelings of the clients in a non judgmental manner. The reflection is achieved by rephrasing the statements of the client, i.e., seeking simple clarifications to enhance the meaning of the clients statements.
• According to this therapy personal relationships improve with an increase in adjustment. In essence, this therapy helps the client to become his/her real self with the therapist working as a facilitator.
