The Humanistic Psychology and Positive Psychology Connection: Implications for Psychotherapy

Abstract

This article explores the common ground between positive and humanistic psychology and responds to positive psychology’s challenges to humanistic psychology about research and a concern for social values. It begins with a brief review of the humanistic psychology movement and shows how its many developments in fact constitute a “positive psychology.” Next, the article moves into an exploration of the unique research approaches and areas of study dictated by the primacy in humanistic psychology of human experience. The article shows how positive psychology can gain from recognizing the merit of experiential, process-oriented research methodologies. The article concludes by highlighting the ways that the new emphasis on happiness and optimal experience promoted by research psychologists not only affirms humanistic psychology’s principles but also serves to reinforce some of the positive directions long practiced by experiential, existential, somatic, and spiritually oriented psychotherapies.