Buguental’s Humanistic Psychology Concepts and Techniques

Posted on May 19, 2025 in Social sciences

Buguental: Basic Postulates

• The person is the sum of their components.
• Existence of a self consumed within relationships.
• The lives of conscious human beings.
• The self chooses and decides.
• Goal-oriented lives.

Position of the Therapist

• The self is in the center of psychology, against scientific requirements of objectivity.
• Give more importance to the sense of ‘what’ than to procedural issues.
• Validations are based on human criteria.
• Rely on phenomenological guidance.
• Attaches importance to qualitative methods.

Concept of the Person

• Is a totality.
• Is a subjective holder.
• Has a structured central core (Self).
• Tendency to self-fulfillment.
• Conscious capacity and symbolization.
• Creativity.
• Is free.
• Organismic self.
• Response to the consequences of choices.
• Relates to others.

Parameters of a Healthy Person

• Openness to experience.
• Ability to live the present.
• Organismic trust.
• Autonomy.
• Capacity to live without fear of loneliness.
• Capacity to establish meaningful interpersonal relationships.
• Capacity to express expansive and oppressive feelings.
• Capacity to contact own needs and recognize them.
• Conscious realizing (awareness).
• Creativity and productivity.
• Capacity for addressing a self-actualizing life project.
• Personal growth.

Process of Therapeutic Change

• Initiation, activation, transformation, and emotional integration.
• Self-awareness expansion.
• Body sensitization.
• Muscle contractures solution.
• Closure of unfinished situations.
• Reconciliation with oneself.
• Therapeutic intentions favor change.

Therapeutic Procedures Favoring Change

• Centration here and now.
• Narrow focus on client’s experience.
• Genuine client-therapist relationships.
• Full presence of the therapist.
• Comprehensive communication.
• Oscillating directivity/accompaniment.
• Creative use of technique.

Personal Growth Domains

• Self-knowledge.
• Emotional integration.
• Self-awareness.
• Body integration.
• Interpersonal relationships.
• Healthy living style.
• Spiritual development.

Characteristics of a Healthy Person (SM)

• Self-acceptance.
• Continuous personal growth.
• Meaning of life.
• Positive relationships.
• Autonomy.

Therapist Values

• Centrality of human experience over theory.
• Personal and group confidence.
• Trust.
• Potential for change.

Therapist Attitudes

• Empathic comprehension.
• Positive acceptance.
• Congruence.

Group Facilitation Techniques

• Educates and involves active participation in activities.
• Involves people as a whole.
• Facilitates knowing others.

Experiential Methods

• Experiential technology.
• Involves existential commitment.
• Experiential focus involves the person.
• Positive acceptance driver.
• Activation of excited feelings system.
• Promotes contact experience.

Instrumental Methods

• Instructional.
• Commitment to the task.
• Focus on acquiring operating skills.
• Policy and objective attitude.
• No activation.
• Promotes development of practical skills.

Integration Sets

• (Motor, emotional, and intellectual).
• Promote integration.
• Promote personal process.
• Activated domain praxis: physical, emotional, and cognitive development.

Interactive Dynamics

• (Dialogic, contact, confrontational, expressive).
• Develops personified communication patterns.
• Creates a climate of trust and intimacy.
• Creates feelings of belonging.
• Promotes group learning and self-discovery.

Body Techniques

• (Breathing exercise, relaxation, harmonization, and activation).
• Commitment from the body through movements.
• More favorable cheerful and energetic disposition.
• Unlock system and body tensions, increasing self-awareness.

Meditative and Attentional Practices

• (Emotional core, body care, attention, and meditative development).
• Increased levels of self-awareness, behavior, and emotions.
• Sensations and self-awareness expand capacities seen in relation to the environment.

Guided Imagery

• (Starting from issues, life experiences, exploring one’s own potential).
• Self-knowledge.
• Detection of difficulties.
• Resolutions of conflicts.

Self-Practice

• (Present exploration, reflection of past and future).
• Integrates meaningful info for the person to clarify and understand construction processes.
• Facilitates exploration of personal experience.

Psychodramatic Techniques

• (Basic and specified).
• Use the expression and representation capacity of the mental system.
• Integrating the body, emotions, and cognitions.
• Imagine, sensations, and verbal expression.
• Mobilizes biographical emotional experiences associated with cores.