Entry #9 - The phenomenological perspective

The humanistic approach as a variety of theorists, and many of them applied different labels such as existential or phenomenological to their psychology. In the phenomenological viewpoint, there are two basic assumptions. The first is that behavior must be understood in terms of the subjective experience of the individual. Basically, if you want to understand behavior, you must first understand the person producing the behavior and how they see the world. The second assumption is that behavior is not constrained by either past experiences nor current circumstances. 

Rogers is one of the theorists involved in the phenomenal field. According to him we all live in a world of our own creation formed by our processes of perception. He referred to each individuals perception of reality as his or her phenomenal field. He also said that we have perceptual processes that structure our experiences of the world according to "highly individual realities". In many cases our personal perceptions (subjective reality) are in accordance with the "objective reality" or external world. According to Rogers we each live in our own subjective realities that can only be known completely by ourselves. It is this individual (or phenomenological) perception of reality rather than the objective reality that ultimately determines behavior. 

I think that this is a very interesting view of psychology and how our behavior is determined, and I agree with it to a certain extent. I definitely have a subjective reality that is sometimes quite different from the objective reality. One good example of this is how I see myself in my mind's eye - when I think of myself (physically) in my mind, I look different than I do in real life. It's not very different, but it's little things, and usually things that change on a daily basis - like how my hair is. While this probably does not affect my life much, as I am not particularly concerned about how I look, nor do I view myself in my mind's eye very often, it does show the gap between our personal subjective realities and the objective reality. 

The famous image that I attached to this post depicts someone at odds with the relation between their subjective reality and the external world or objective reality.