The Relationship of Positive Psychology to Humanistic Psychology

As you learn about positive psychology, you may find that you’re already familiar with some of the concepts being introduced as “new.” Perhaps you’ve already learned about humanistic psychology in your Introduction to Psychology course. Humanistic psychology is a subarea within the field that came about in the 1950s; well-known researchers Maslow and Rogers were among the founding fathers. This subarea is focused on such concepts as self-actualizing (reaching one’s potential), reaching goals, and achieving awareness. 

When comparing positive psychology and humanistic psychology, you will find many similarities between the two (e.g., both emphasize positive growth). When Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) were introducing the field of positive psychology, they attempted to distance the field from humanistic psychology. These researchers suggested that positive psychology takes a more balanced approach (i.e., positive psychology looks at both the good and bad in life, whereas humanistic psychology focuses almost exclusively on people being inherently good). Also, it was suggested that positive psychology places more emphasis on scientific research compared to humanistic psychology. Humanistic psychologists would likely have something to say about these proposed differences. 

The takeaway from this topic should be that there are more similarities than differences between positive psychology and humanistic psychology, and, while there are possibly some differences between the two subareas, the differences are generally quite subtle.