These psychologists, including Abraham Maslow and Clark Moustakas, believed this likely to become the central concerns of a new psychological movement, known as the "third force". These preliminary meetings eventually led to other developments, among those the launch of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology in 1961. This was soon to be followed by the formation of the Association for Humanistic Psychology (AHP) in 1963 and subsequent graduate programs in Humanistic psychology at institutions of higher learning.
1971 saw the establishment of an exclusive division devoted to Humanistic Psychology within the borders of the American Psychological Association (APA). This section is called Division 32, and it publishes its own academic journal called The Humanistic Psychologist (Aanstoos, Serlin & Greening, 2000). Among the theorists that are considered to have prepared the ground for Humanistic Psychology we find Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and Rollo May. Other persons that are considered to be leaders and inspirers of the movement include such names as Roberto Assagioli, Gordon Allport, Medard Boss, R. D. Laing, Fritz Perls, Anthony Sutich, Erich Fromm, Kurt Goldstein, Clark Moustakas, Lewis Mumford and James Bugental (Aanstoos, Serlin & Greening, 2000).
Counseling and therapy:
Humanistic psychology includes several approaches to counselling and therapy, among these we find the categories mentioned by Aanstoos, Serlin & Greening (2000) and Rowan (2001):
- Counselling: The existential psychology of Rollo May, person-centered or client-centered therapy (as originally developed by Carl Rogers), marital and family therapies.
- Psychotherapy: The existential psychotherapy of Medard Boss, Gestalt therapy (originally developed by Fritz Perls), Experiential psychotherapy, Bodywork, Psychodrama, Primal integration, Psychosynthesis, Depth therapy, Transpersonal therapy.
- Groupwork Encounter: The humanistic-existential group.
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