Rapid technological changes, the growing alienation of the individual in a highly industrial society and the threat of nuclear destruction, all prepared the ground for the seeds from which Humanistic psychology grew. Since the gradual replacement of religious and moral traditions by the industrial dehumanization of life, more and more people are now searching within through processes like meditation, reflecting upon the meaning of life and discovering a new basis for their values.
Humanistic psychology as an academic “human-potential” movement emerged as a reaction against the reductionist and pathologizing interpretations of behaviorism and psychoanalysis. These two approaches ignored certain areas of human nature such as values, self-actualization, self-transcendence, psychological health and the dignity of the individual in therapy and in life. Coincidentally, those are the same meditation benefits found in many body-centered approaches and meditation techniques.
Humanistic psychology criticizes behaviorists for their lack of interest in understanding the wholeness of the human being. In its empirical-analytical approach behaviorism leaves out mental structures, and individuals have no free will, no choice, and even no mind! It considers man as a passive victim of stimuli present in the environment, and the individual is nothing but a machine that consists of chains of conditioned and unconditioned reflexes. But according to the humanist psychologist, the individual is master of his own fate rather than a product of environment forces.
The behavior therapist stresses the mechanical conception of man, as if man can be explained by a scientific system, ignoring the unique qualities of the person. For the humanist psychologist such a view does not generate an adequate image of man, or a philosophy of life, and does not provide a satisfactory guide to living, to value, and to choices.
Through behavioral techniques man becomes calculated and impersonalized and the humanist psychologist in order to counter alienation stresses the fostering of the fullest exploration of the unique and universal nature of man.