In the 1950s and 1960s, psychologists began to try to understand personality from a viewpoint quite different from trait theory’s biological determinism and Freud’s focus on unconscious drives from unresolved childhood experiences. These new humanistic and existential theorists turned attention to how humans make healthy choices that create their personalities. Humanistic psychologists emphasized a positive, optimistic view of human nature that highlights people’s inherent goodness and their potential for personal growth. Existentialist psychologists focused on the individual as a responsible agent who is free to create and live his or her life while negotiating the issue of meaning and the reality of death. The humanistic–existential approach integrates these insights with a focus on how a personality can become optimal.

Humanists see the self-actualizing tendency, the human motive toward realizing our inner potential, as a major factor in personality. The pursuit of knowledge, the expression of one’s creativity, the quest for spiritual enlightenment, and the desire to give to society all are examples of self-actualization. As you saw in the Emotion and Motivation chapter, the noted humanistic theorist Abraham Maslow (1943) proposed a hierarchy of needs, a model of essential human needs arranged according to their priority, in which basic physiological and safety needs must be satisfied before a person can afford to focus on higher-level psychological needs. Only when these basic needs are satisfied can one pursue higher needs, culminating in self-actualization: the need to be good, to be fully alive, and to find meaning in life.

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Humanist psychologists explain individual personality differences as arising from the various ways that the environment facilitates—or blocks—attempts to satisfy psychological needs. For example, someone with the inherent potential to be a great scientist, artist, parent, or teacher might never realize these talents if his or her energies and resources are instead directed toward meeting basic needs of security, belongingness, and the like. Research indicates that when people shape their lives around goals that do not match their true nature and capabilities, they are less likely to be happy than those whose lives and goals do match (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

It feels great to be doing exactly what you are capable of doing. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) found that engagement in tasks that exactly match one’s abilities creates a mental state of energized focus that he called flow (see FIGURE 12.4). Tasks that are below our abilities cause boredom, those that are too challenging cause anxiety, and those that are “just right” lead to the experience of flow. If you know how to play the piano, for example, and are playing a Chopin prelude that you know well enough that it just matches your abilities, you are likely to experience this optimal state. People report being happier at these times than at any other times. Humanists believe that such peak experiences, or states of flow, reflect the realization of one’s human potential and represent the height of personality development.

Existentialists agree with humanists about many of the features of personality but focus on challenges to the human condition that are more profound than the lack of a nurturing environment. Rollo May (1983) and Victor Frankl (2000), for example, argued that specific aspects of the human condition, such as awareness of our own existence and the ability to make choices about how to behave, have a double-edged quality: They bring an extraordinary richness and dignity to human life, but they also force us to confront realities that are difficult to face, such as the prospect of our own death. The existential approach is a school of thought that regards personality as governed by an individual’s ongoing choices and decisions in the context of the realities of life and death.

According to the existential perspective, the difficulties we face in finding meaning in life and in accepting the responsibility of making free choices provoke a type of anxiety existentialists call angst (the anxiety of fully being). The human ability to consider limitless numbers of goals and actions is exhilarating, but it can also open the door to profound questions such as: Why am I here? What is the meaning of my life?

Thinking about the meaning of existence also can evoke an awareness of the inevitability of death. What, then, should we do with each moment? What is the purpose of living if life as we know it will end one day, perhaps even today? Alternatively, does life have more meaning given that it is so temporary? Existential theorists do not suggest that people consider these profound existential issues on a day-to-day and moment-to-moment basis. Rather than ruminate about death and meaning, people typically pursue superficial answers that help them deal with the angst and dread they experience, and the defences they construct form the basis of their personalities (Binswanger, 1958; May, 1983). Some people organize their lives around obtaining material possessions; others may immerse themselves in drugs or addictive behaviours such as compulsive web browsing, video gaming, or television watching in order to numb the mind to existential realities.

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For existentialists, a healthier solution is to face the issues head-on and learn to accept and tolerate the pain of existence. Indeed, being fully human means confronting existential realities rather than denying them or embracing comforting illusions. This requires the courage to accept the inherent anxiety and the dread of nonbeing that is part of being alive. Such courage may be bolstered by developing supportive relationships with others who can supply unconditional positive regard. There is something about being loved that helps take away the angst.