Humanistic and moral duty approach

If you have ever seen how a loving mother treats her child, you know what a humanistic approach is. For a loving mother, a child is everything, it is a value in itself, it is a deity, it is a collection of all the best, not because it is so objectively, but because it is so in the eyes of a mother who loves him. A mother’s love is unconditional, a mother loves her child always and everything, and a mother knows that all her child needs is her love. A loving mother always believes in the best intentions of her child, and if he did something bad, she or someone else is to blame for this, but never the child himself. A child is sacred, it is something fragile, it should only be treated with care and meet all its needs. The child has a desire to do good deeds and a desire for self-development, and all that adults need to do is only to create conditions for this to be revealed.

If all of the above is transferred to the attitude of a psychologist towards his clients, you will understand what a humanistic approach is.

The humanistic approach appeared as a response and opposition to the administrative-authoritarian, impersonal approach to man that prevailed at the beginning of the XNUMXth century. In accordance with humanistic views, human life is priceless, and the weak are especially in need of protection: children, women and the disabled. In pedagogy, these are views according to which every child has a positive core that needs only help to develop. The humanistic approach is faith in a person, primarily in the positiveness of his intentions. It is believed that a child is born initially free, and this initial freedom of a child is an absolute value in itself. Humanism objects to the imposition of one or another worldview on children, believing that the child himself should determine his own path. In education, non-directiveness is welcomed; pressure, coercion and manipulation cannot be used. The humanistic approach avoids teaching, it tends to accept the person as he is and help him along the way of his growth. The ideal of development is a harmoniously developed personality, a person who lives happily and freely.

In practical psychology, the humanistic approach is most pronounced in psychotherapy, in helping people who find themselves in a difficult situation, in relieving them of mental pain and solving their problems. However, there are many approaches in psychotherapy, and the humanistic approach in psychotherapy is soft help, the creation of warm and safe conditions, the approach “Accept the person as he is. Help him on the path of his growth” and the principle “Do no harm!”. With a humanistic approach, the psychotherapist requires unconditional acceptance of the client, expressed, in particular, in empathic listening and emotional support. No pressure, no prescriptions, just warmth and understanding. To save clients from unnecessary stress and mental trauma, they are given the instructions “Take care of yourself and your loved ones, do not set too difficult tasks. You are in the center of the world, the main value.”

If the humanistic approach implements a soft, maternal model of love, then the moral duty approach implements a tough and forceful, demanding paternal model of love. In the field of practical psychology, the approach of moral duty is not often encountered. James, Frankl, Bratus, then thoughtfulness … — the psychotherapeutic approach often deals with clients who are preoccupied with personal problems, and talking with them about moral duty is as adequate as talking about the dangers of sweets with young children. They don’t hear. The approach of moral duty realizes itself mainly in developmental psychology, in work with healthy people who are ready to set themselves serious life tasks. The approach of moral duty requires a person to constantly study and develop, teaches and educates, sets social tasks for a person, sets moral guidelines and ideals for him.

The basic premises of the moral duty approach are: “Man, your dignity and the value of your life are measured by your deeds. Each of us serves something higher. You must take care not only of yourself, but also of your family and Motherland.” “A man must plant a tree, build a house, raise a son” — this is from here. In this approach, strength is valued: the strength of the mind, the strength of the will, the strength of the given word, and here it is believed that all the best should belong to the best: not to children, but to adults, not to idlers, but to efficient people, not helpless, but promising. In psychological work, they try to take people out of their comfort zone in order to strain them into business and accustom them to the difficulties of life. The task of a psychologist in such a process is to take a person out of his comfort zone, strain him to work, accustom him to the difficulties of life and train him, requiring tension of his mind and will. In the choice between «Take care of safety, do no harm» and «Take care of sufficient workload, provide education», the proponents of this approach choose the latter. Here they do not regret, they are not afraid of injuries, they go to the goal and appreciate high results. An educator working in line with this approach takes responsibility for the result, for the fact that he will turn his pupil into a Human. Here the freedom of the individual is not an end in itself, but a means: freedom for! Individuals are not born, individuals are made. The ideal of both upbringing and self-education is a hierarchically developed personality with high values.

The approach of moral duty, together with humanism, constitute the «two wings» of the ethical orientation. If the humanistic approach implements a soft, maternal model of love, then the moral duty approach implements a tough and forceful, demanding paternal model of love.

«I love you any!» — says the mother, and the child understands that he is loved. “You will be my son if…” the father demands, and the child understands that one is not born a son, one becomes a son…

Without a motherly, unconditionally accepting attitude, a child grows up cold and tough, without a fatherly demanding attitude, a child is poorly able to strain himself and overcome difficulties, does not know what discipline is and does not know how to achieve a goal. Naturally, the harmonious upbringing of a child presupposes the complementarity of these two approaches. But what has already been realized in the upbringing of children, in the practice of working with adults, has remained a painful problem. It can be argued that, at least in psychology, the situation in which Carl Rogers pioneered his approach has turned upside down: now the humanistic approach dictates its own norms as the only correct ones, and everything that does not directly correspond to it is rejected.

It seems that the time of confrontation between these two poles has passed, the time has come to synthesize the best of these two approaches, to create a harmonious union of male and female principles in psychology.

The main choice of a practical psychologist: a psychotherapist or a psychologist-educator

In the field of practical psychology, you can work both as a consultant and as a trainer, while the main choice still remains: are you more of a psychotherapist or more of a teacher? Do you heal or do you teach? Most often today this choice is made in the direction of psychotherapy.

At first, this seems quite romantic: “I will help people in difficult situations,” soon a vision comes that the psychologist-consultant easily turns into a life service employee, hastily repairing rotting specimens.

However, every year there is a growing understanding that it is necessary to move from direct assistance to people with problems to prevention, preventing the appearance of problems. That it is necessary to deal with developmental psychology, that this is precisely the promising direction that will create a new person and a new society. A psychologist must learn to become a teacher. See →