ABSTRACT
This movement developed in the USA in the 1960s and was a gestalt type of approach, looking at the wholeness of each human being. It also based itself on the belief that we all have free will and that this is conscious, i.e. we choose freely and consciously when we make decisions, however small these may be. This approach was a reaction against and a rejection of the dehumanising and/or deterministic ideas of behaviourism and psychodynamic theory, and represented a positive and hopeful view of ourselves including ageing. The first humanistic psychologists included Bugental, Rogers and Maslow, and they aimed for an approach which could truly understand and describe a complete human being, what today might be called an holistic approach.
