ABSTRACT
Having read the previous two chapters on behavioural and psychodynamic approaches to psychology, you might well be asking yourself ‘do we really need all these complicated theories to understand people?’ If you are thinking something along those lines-and that is a perfectly respectable position for a psychologist to take-you may be more at home with the humanistic school. The fact that this chapter is the shortest in the book, whereas the chapter on psychodynamic psychology is the longest, reflects the fact that, in contrast to the psychodynamic approach which uses complex theories as tools to understand people, humanistic psychologists favour a few simple principles to understand people. You might also be wondering when the more positive aspects of human nature like creativity and kindness are going to crop up in psychology. These areas are the
focus of the humanistic approach. Harkness (1998) has used the story of Percy the car to illustrate the principles of humanistic psychology. This is a shortened version of Percy’s story.
