Tag: Humanistic Psychology

Esalen and the human potential movement

Posted in behavior modification, Humanistic Psychology, philosophy, psychological models, psychology, psychotherapy1 Comment

In previous posts I’ve written about humanistic psychology, which has been called the Third Force in modern psychology, after Freudian psychodynamic psychology and Behaviorism. The founders – including Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, and Rollo May – seeing that psychology was primarily focused on psychopathology, wanted it to also focus on psychological health and personal growth. Esalen Institute, an isolated  retreat on the Pacific coast near Big Sur, California, is considered by many to be the birthplace of humanistic psychology. I’ve wanted to visit Esalen, a retreat center for growth and learning, since my graduate education in a humanistic psychology program. I’ve just returned home from a writing retreat at Esalen, and it felt like a weekend on holy ground.

Esalen Institute was founded by Michael Murphy and Richard Price in 1963. The land on which Esalen is located was owned  by Michael’s family for generations, and the two of them had a vision of a center for holistic learning. The place is called Esalen because for thousands of years the area was the home of the indigenous Esselen people. Accordingly, Esalen is considered sacred land, and is treated with reverence by residents and visitors. It’s isolated, far from any town, and doesn’t have cell phone service or television. There are hot springs down by the rocky shore, and everyone knows that clothing is optional at the baths. When I soaked, naked, in a pool, looking out at the Pacific sunset, I had the sense of participating in an ancient cleansing ritual.

Humanistic psychology has also been called the human potential movement. The only required course in my psychology Masters program was “Human Growth and Potential” – known by the students as “Gro and Po.” Although most of my coursework involved psychotherapy and psychological testing, I could understand why Gro and Po was required. Psychology had to be about more than psychopathology and the remediation of symptoms. Indeed, our equivalent of an “Abnormal Psychology” course was “Unconventional Modes of Experience,” lest there be any stigma regarding “abnormal.”

While psychanalytic theory and Behaviorism were dogmatic and monolithic, humanistic psychology was more like a tree, with many roots and branches. It was holistic in its orientation to the study of human behavior, focusing on mind and body as a unity, and exploring the factors that enhance creativity and enable self-actualization. It was holistic in studying both Eastern and Western philosophies and practices, recognizing the benefits of things such as yoga and Buddhist meditation, long before they became popular. Existentialism and phenomenology also influenced the human potential movement.

From the beginning of the movement, Esalen has been its Mecca. Fritz Perls did a five year residency in the late sixties, leading gestalt therapy seminars. Other eminent persons who influenced the development of humanistic psychology and had Esalen residencies were Gregory Bateson, Joseph Campbell, Ida Rolf, Virginia Satir, Rollo May, and Alan Watts. Today people go there to study massage and body work, wellness and alternative medicine, psychotherapy, meditation, and a variety of other subjects. I went there to work on being a better writer, and came home with my spiritual batteries re-charged.

A lot of what was new and esoteric back in the sixties and seventies has gone mainstream. Among the extra-curricular classes available to students in the psychology graduate program at West Georgia College (now the University of West Georgia) were massage, hatha yoga, zen meditation, clowning, tai kwan do, and vegetarian cooking. The program was allied with the Philosophy Department, and there were opportunities to study existentialism and phenomenology. In my therapy courses, I learned about psychoanalytic theory, behavior modification, client-centered therapy, gestalt therapy, transactional analysis, sex therapy, and trance work. Once I was a working psychotherapist, my therapeutic orientation was existential, and I was very eclectic in terms of therapeutic style and techniques. I consider myself very fortunate to have attended the West Georgia College psychology Masters program.

Contemporary concepts like emotional intelligence and positive psychology couldn’t have emerged from Freudian psychodynamic theory or Behaviorism. The humanistic psychology movement created a new paradigm for human growth and potential as a legitimate area of study within the science of psychology. I think that the regard for Freud’s contribution to psychology and psychotherapy will diminish over time, relative to the contributions of humanistic pioneers like Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, and Milton Erickson.

The concept of emotional intelligence suggests that there are other kinds of intelligence than cognitive intelligence. Accurate empathy and compassion are important factors in human relating, and are deserving of scientific study by students of human behavior. I had initial objections to the whole notion of positive psychology, thinking, “psychology is neither positive nor negative.” But then I came to realize that it’s an outgrowth of the impulses that inspired humanistic psychology. The study of psychological wellness and peak performance, of thriving, of human creativity and the process of self-actualizing, is a legitimate pursuit within the field. Psychodynamic theory and Behaviorism will always have their place in psychology, but they need to be viewed in the context of the psychology of growth and human transformation.

The Gloria sessions

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I’ve written posts about my education as a psychotherapist in the humanistic psychology program at the University of West Georgia, and my exposure to a variety of therapeutic modalities. These included Rogerian (client-centered), gestalt, and cognitive behavioral therapy. I remember watching a videotaped film titled “Three Approaches to Psychotherapy” that I’ve always thought of as “the Gloria sessions.” For many years this film was only available for viewing by professional therapists, faculty, and students of psychotherapy; but now all three sessions can be viewed on YouTube.

In 1965 a courageous young woman named Gloria – a divorced single mother – agreed to be videotaped in brief therapy sessions with three of the most influential American psychotherapists of the twentieth century: Dr. Carl Rogers (client-centered therapy), Dr. Fritz Perls (gestalt therapy), and Dr. Albert Ellis (cognitive behavioral therapy). Watching the sessions again, I was reminded of Gloria’s courage and candor. The production quality isn’t always good and following the Perls  session takes concentration, due both to poor sound quality and Perls’ thick German accent. But if you want to see three masters of psychotherapy at work, this film is a treasure trove. Their approaches to working with Gloria are very different.

In each segment, the therapist briefly describes his approach to therapy, then works with Gloria, then comments on the session. In the first segment Carl Rogers says that if the therapist can establish certain conditions in relating to the client, “therapeutic movement” will predictably occur. The first condition is genuineness, and the second is congruence – meaning that your non-verbal communication is congruent with your verbalizations. The third condition is transparency , meaning that the therapist hides nothing and can be easily “seen through.” Rogers states that if these three conditions exist, and the therapist can be in tune with the client’s “inner world” (how she experiences herself in the world) insights and growth will follow.

During the session Gloria keeps trying to get Dr. Rogers to give her advice about making a decision, and dealing with guilt feelings related to the decision. He never accedes to her request, but keeps accurately reflecting on what she’s saying, allowing her to eventually take ownership of the issue, and to trust her own judgment. (Contrary to popular belief, good therapists seldom or never give advice.) Rogers is comfortable with silences, and at one point asks, “What do you wish I’d say to you?” She gets it. In his commentary, he remarks on how her “then-and-there” orientation at the start of the session quickly becomes a “here-and-now” focus. He highlights the “I-Thou” quality of their experience, rejecting Freud’s intellectual concept of transference/counter-transference in favor of Martin Buber’s term for authentic relating. He concludes, “Gloria and I really encountered each other” and says he thinks that both of them benefitted from their brief encounter. Watching again, I can’t help but agree.

Perls puffs on a cigarette while he describes gestalt therapy, and Gloria lights up at the beginning of the session, admitting that it’s a response to anxiety. In his introduction Perls, like Rogers, endorses the I-Thou relating essential to the therapeutic relationship, and the idea that therapy should not dwell on the then-and-there, but should always focus on the here-and-now of direct experience. He states that a gestalt therapist never offers interpretations, but provides clients with experiential opportunities to discover things about themselves, often by interrupting the client’s verbalizations and calling attention to automatic behaviors that the client is usually unaware of. Early in the session Perls labels some of Gloria’s behaviors as “phony” – which has a specific meaning in gestalt therapy. She’s initially bewildered and angry, feeling judged. She’s very defensive, but Perls doesn’t back off, and Gloria appears to catch on to what he’s saying by the end of the session. He was never judging her; he was giving her an experiential lesson in her automatic, typical defenses. It’s known in gestalt therapy as “being on the hot seat.” It was Perls who wrote what became known as the Gestalt Prayer, which starts with: “I am not in this world to live up to your expectations and you are not in this world to live up to mine.”

In his introduction, Albert Ellis expounds upon the notion that – contrary to Freudian psychodynamic theory – the past isn’t the primary determinant of present-day distress or dysfunction. The past may have a role in its formation, but it’s present behaviors that maintain the problem – specifically, the irrational things we tell ourselves about our experiences and their consequences. As I’d remembered, Ellis came across like the  stereotypical pushy, fast-talking New Yorker, but his words were precise and logical. In his short session with Gloria he manages to convey the principles of rational thinking, by applying them to Gloria’s anxieties about dating and seeking a life partner. She appears to grasp the notion that she makes undesirable situations worse by catastrophizing. “Don’t beat yourself over the head or convince yourself you’re a no-goodnik, just because you didn’t get the outcome you wanted.” He explained how he gives his clients behavioral homework assignments to complete between sessions, and suggests that Gloria should set up opportunities to take some small risks, instead of holding back in social situations. Its a behavioral technique called exposure, and Ellis was one of its early proponents.

When I first saw “Three Approaches to Psychotherapy,” I remember that there was a brief interview with Gloria after the sessions; but I wasn’t able to find it online. As I recall, Gloria said that she liked Carl Rogers the best, and learned some valuable things from Albert Ellis; but her session with Fritz Perls was the one she most benefitted from. If you don’t understand the basics of gestalt therapy, what Perls says and does in the session won’t make much sense. It shook Gloria up; but that’s what good gestalt therapists do, and Perls was one of the best. I highly recommend the Gloria sessions to social science students, psychotherapists in training or practice, and people who want to know more about psychotherapy.

Little did I know when I first watched the film that I’d actually meet Rogers and Ellis. I’ve already written about my brief meeting with Carl Rogers. In a later post I’ll describe my encounter with Albert Ellis.

First blog post

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You don’t have to be sick to get better

 

My psychology graduate program at West Georgia College (now the University of West Georgia) was the only program in the Southeast, in the grad school catalogs I studied, to promote itself as a “humanistic psychology” program. For a while humanistic psychology was anathema to many fundamentalist Christians, some of whom saw it as having Satanic origins and goals. All I’ll say about that is that there was nothing in the humanistic psychology movement that was dissonant with the Christian values I was raised with, and some of my classmates were Christians.

Humanistic psychology was practically synonymous with the “human potential movement” in psychology, and was referred to as the Third Force in psychology – the first being Freudian psychodynamic theory and the second being Behaviorism. It was an umbrella term for new theories and therapies that didn’t fit neatly into either psychodynamic or behavioral theory or practice, and wasn’t grounded in remediation of psychopathology. Many or most humanistic psychologists were interested in psychologically healthy persons, as well as therapies that didn’t rely on psychodynamic interpretations or behavior modification techniques.

Among the theories and therapies in the movement were Carl Rogers’ client-centered therapy, gestalt theory and therapy, Transactional Analysis, William Glasser’s Reality Therapy, as well as various movement therapies (Feldenkreis, Alexander Technique, structural integration), encounter groups, systems theory, Eriksonian hypnosis, and neuro-linguistic programming. I’ll have more to say about some of these theories and therapies in later posts. It was an exciting time to study psychotherapy, and I couldn’t have chosen a better Masters program to prepare me for my career.

Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” was an important part of the foundation of the human potential movement. Like all models it has its flaws, but it’s a model that explains how potentials for growth are limited by identifiable life circumstances. It isn’t grounded in psychopathology; everyone can be located somewhere in the model. Maslow described a universal hierarchy of needs, generally depicted as a pyramid. The most basic human needs are physiological, such as the need for air, food, water and shelter. According to Maslow, if these basic survival needs aren’t being met, you stay stuck in survival mode and can’t grow, or meet higher-level goals. Once these needs are met, you have the potential to grow.

Next up on the pyramid are safety needs. If you aren’t safe or secure in your life, you have to devote your efforts to security issues before you can move on and try to live up to your potentials. The third level of needs according to Maslow is social needs – healthy relating with family and friends. Our relationships are an integral part of who we are, and without them we’re incomplete. Maslow suggested that once we’ve met our essential needs up to this level, we can work on esteem needs: self-esteem, confidence, competence and achievement. Those who’ve reached this level in meeting their hierarchal needs have the potential to rise to the highest level: self-actualization.

Self-actualization is a process, not a goal. People who have their physiological, safety, social and esteem needs adequately met can devote their energies to personal growth – which may involve helping others and/or developing new competencies. Self-actualizing people can be authentic and spontaneous in relationships, and can follow their creative impulses, doing what they most want to do to the best of their ability. Of course life circumstances and obligations can limit what self-actualizing people are able to accomplish in terms of self-expression and achievement, but they can continue to grow and learn until they either lose their capacities or die.

Just because you’re grown up doesn’t mean you have to stop growing. Growth can be a life-long process if you cultivate the garden of your unique life. My next few posts will be about factors – including thoughts and beliefs – that can either facilitate or impede personal growth.