ABSTRACT
This chapter examines what Abraham Maslow called the ‘third force’ within psychology, namely, the humanistic-phenomenological approach. The ‘humanistic psychology’, first coined by John Cohen, a British psychologist, aimed at condemning ‘ratomorphic robotic psychology’. Humanistic psychology acknowledges individuals as perceivers and interpreters of themselves and their world, trying to understand the world from the perceiver’s perspective, rather than from the position of a detached observer. While Maslow put ‘self-actualisation’ at the top of his need hierarchy, Carl Rogers preferred the term ‘actualising’; these relate to ‘a psychology of being’ and ‘a psychology of becoming’, respectively. Within psychology, a loosely defined existentialist movement began to emerge, initially as a reaction to orthodox Freudian theory. A number of European theorists and therapists argued for the importance of basing our analyses of human behaviour in the phenomenological world of the subject. Notable amongst these was Viktor Frankl, founder of logotherapy.
