Mental Health Care

The basic precept of humanistic therapy is that psychological problems often stem from problems of alienation, loneliness, depersonalization, failure to find meaning in life, and from lack of genuine fulfilment. The therapy encourages the individual to take charge of his life, to accept himself for what he is, recognize his own potential for growth, and bring suitable changes in the self. A humanistic therapist offers a caring supportive environment to guide the individual towards personal realizations and insights. The therapy typically takes a year or two of weekly sessions.

Three of the most influential forms of humanistic therapy are: existential therapy, person-centred therapy, and Gestalt therapy.

Existential therapy

Existential therapy deals with important life themes. These themes include living and dying, freedom, responsibility to self and others, finding meaning in life, and dealing with a sense of meaninglessness. Followers of existential therapy help people confront and explore anxiety, loneliness, despair, fear of death, and the feeling that life is meaningless.

Person-centred therapy

Developed by American psychologist Carl Rogers, the person­ centred theory of personality and psychotherapy lays emphasis on the concept of self-actualization and self-direction. This theory propounds that people, like other living organisms, are driven by an innate tendency to maintain and enhance themselves, which in turn propels them toward growth, maturity, and life enrichment. Within each person lies capacity for self-understanding and constructive change. Person-centred therapy attempts to produce a genuine environment of accepting and understanding and caring. A person under this therapy can expect unconditional, honest, and positive regard from a genuine therapist; they can feel empathically understood, less anxious, and more willing to reveal their own selves with all their weaknesses. A person-centred therapist adopts an approach called active listening, to demonstrate empathy-letting the person know that they are being fully listened to and understood. During the therapy session, the therapist tries to restate what the person has said and seeks clarification of his feelings. The therapist seeks mainly to reflect the client’s statements back to the client accurately, and does not try to analyze, judge, or lead the direction of discussion.

Gestalt therapy

Gestalt therapy was developed in Germany. According to it, behaviour represents more than the sum of its parts. A gestalt or a whole, both includes and goes beyond the sum of smaller, independent units. It deals with essential characteristics of actual experience, such as value, meaning, and form. Gestalt therapy aims at creating in the individual an awareness of his current needs, and how the drive to satisfy these needs may influence his behaviour at that point of time.

Gestalt therapists use a wide variety of techniques to make an individual more aware of himself, and they often invent techniques that might help to accomplish this goal. One of the best-known Gestalt techniques is the ‘empty-chair technique’, in which an empty chair represents another person or another part of the individual’s self. For example, if a person is angry with her mother for not being caring to her, she may pretend her mother is sitting in the (empty) chair. She may then express her feelings by speaking in the direction of the chair. Next, she might play the role of the mother by moving on to the previously empty chair, and explain to the angry daughter (that is, herself), what it is all about. Thus, talking to different parts of her own self, her emotional conflicts may be resolved.

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