Q.Explain the humanistic and psychoanalytic perspectives in psychology, bringing out how they differ in their view of human nature.

Freud's psychoanalysis views human behaviour as driven by unconscious desires and conflicts, often connected to pleasure-seeking, while the humanistic perspective of Rogers and Maslow takes a more positive view, emphasising free will and a natural drive to grow. …

Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis around 1900 as both a theory of human nature and a system for treating psychological disorders. In Freud's account, human behaviour is a dynamic manifestation of unconscious desires and conflicts -- meaning that much of what actually drives a person's actions and feelings lies outside their conscious awareness, and is often connected to the seeking of pleasure and gratification, including sexual desires. On this view, a person may not have honest or complete access to the real reasons behind their own behaviour; uncovering those hidden motivations is precisely the work psychoanalysis as a therapeutic method sets out to do.

The humanistic perspective, associated with psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, developed as a deliberate and quite different alternative. Rather than portraying people as governed by unconscious, often dark or pleasure-driven forces, humanists emphasised human beings' free will and a natural, built-in striving to grow, to be productive, and to fulfil their own inner potential -- a view of human nature that the chapter explicitly describes as more positive than psychoanalysis's. Humanistic psychologists directed a related, equally sharp criticism at behaviourism, arguing that behaviourism's picture of behaviour as determined entirely by external environmental conditions similarly undermines human freedom and dignity, reducing people to a mechanistic view of human nature with no genuine room for choice or self-directed growth. …