What criticisms did the humanistic psychologists make of behaviorism and psychoanalysis?
What criticisms did the humanistic psychologists
make of behaviorism and psychoanalysis?
The behaviorist approach to human behavior believed that all human learning can be attributed to the interaction of humans with certain stimuli associations in their environment, they called this conditioning. On the other hand, the humanistic approach believed that human nature is far more complex and unpredictable than that of robots, and animals and that behavioral psychology had put forward a narrow perspective of human nature which is limited to the constraints of conditioning. Humanistic psychologists believed that it was not possible and suitable to quantify and objectify human behavior by limiting it to stimulus-response associations.
Humanist psychologists were also against the concept of psychoanalysis given by Freud as it painted a very negative picture of human behavior. It was also criticized by humanistic psychologists as it was based on the analysis of only psychotic and neurotic individuals, that is, they put forward the counter argument that it was not possible to study the positive qualities and emotional aspect of human behavior by simply studying the dysfunctions and maladaptive behaviors. Humanistic psychologists believed that by studying only psychotic individuals the other aspects of human nature such as kindness, joy, ecstasy, love, etc. were disregarded and ignored.
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