Humanistic and Existential Personality Theories Many theorists have dedicated their lives trying to figure out how the personality of a person is shaped. While the theories presented have brought up interesting and valid points on what causes personality, there are others that have taken a different approach to its study. There is the Humanistic-Dynamic theory by Abraham Maslow, the Person-Centered theory by Carl Rogers, and the Existential Psychology made popular by Rollo May.
Analyze how humanistic theories affect individual personalities Maslow created a step by step process that he believed each individual must go through in order to get to the top. The five step hierarchy of needs begins with physiological needs, moves on to safety, then to love and belongingness, esteem, and concludes with self-actualization. Maslow believed that the needs lower in the staircase have prepotency, meaning that they “must be satisfied or mostly satisfied before higher level needs become activated” (Feist & Feist, 2009, ch.10). In other words, people need their basic needs, such as eating and drinking, met before they will even care about their safety and security. Once a person who is hungry has the opportunity to eat, for instance, even if is not to the point of getting full, it will still satisfy that need and enable him or her to move on to the next step. Rogers did not concern himself too much with why people have the personalities they do, but instead he worried about what he could do to help them. Rogers’ Person-Centered theory had two major assumptions: the formative tendency and the actualizing tendency. Rogers felt that all matter will “evolve from simpler to more complex forms” (Feist & Feist, 2009, ch.11). He called this process the formative tendency and used nature for examples of this theory. He also felt that all humans tend to “move toward completion