The humanistic psychological approach to change combines some of the insights from the previous three approaches while at the same time developing its own. It emerged as a movement in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. The American Association of Humanistic Psychology describes it as ‘concerned with topics having little place in existing theories and systems: e.g. love, creativity, self, growth … self-actualization, higher values, being, becoming, responsibility, meaning … transcendental experience, peak experience, courage and related concepts’.

In this section we look at how the humanistic approach differs from the behavioural and cognitive approaches, list some of the key assumptions of this approach, and look at three important models within humanistic psychology.