Abstract
The aim of this article is to discuss the concept of posttraumatic growth (PTG) from the perspective of humanistic psychology. Research findings in PTG have posed what seem to be challenging theoretical questions. Questions that seem perplexing or paradoxical to mainstream research are: whether PTG is a normative process, if it is better described as personality change, what its relationship is with PTSD, if PTG is the same as resilience, if PTG is illusory, and finally, if PTG is actually adaptive. These six questions, I would argue, only seem perplexing or paradoxical when the lens through which they are being examined is the same as when studying illness. There are important differences in how the humanistic growth paradigm approaches the topic of PTG compared to the illness ideology. In this article, I discuss these questions from the perspective of Joseph and Linley’s (2005) organismic valuing process (OVP) theory of growth following adversity. Seen from the humanistic psychology tradition of OVP theory, PTG represents a normative affective-cognitive process of real change toward constructive personality development that leads to resilience and adaptive functioning. I hope to position the topic of growth following adversity more clearly within the field of humanistic psychology and to set a new nonmedicalized research agenda for researchers and clinicians.
Highlights
In the early 1990’s, following an explosion of research in the 1980’s into posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), some researchers began to observe that survivors of trauma reported perceiving benefits and positive changes (e.g., Calhoun & Tedeschi, 1991; Joseph, Williams, & Yule, 1993)
I hope to position the topic of growth following adversity more clearly within the field of humanistic psychology, and to set Posttraumatic growth as a process and an outcome a new non-medicalized agenda for researchers in positive psychology to be explicit in their theoretical positionality in relation to the concept of growth
This is not ignore the psychological distress of the client; but to recognise that in Organismic Valuing Process (OVP) theory there is no meaningful distinction to be made between therapy for posttraumatic stress and posttraumatic growth (PTG) as both are descriptions of the very same process, that of reconciling the incongruence between self and experience, and that the client is intrinsically motivated in this direction
Summary
AUTHOR NOTE Stephen Joseph is professor in the School of Education at the University of Nottingham, England, where he convenes the human flourishing research group. I use Joseph and Linley’s (2005) Organismic Valuing Process (OVP) theory of growth following adversity to discuss how these questions may be viewed differently from the humanistic psychology tradition, such that they no longer seem perplexing or paradoxical. Posttraumatic growth as a process and an outcome the same way as when one refers to the economy growing, to mean an increase in productivity, income, and so on It is in this economic sense that empirical researchers conceptualize their dependent variables for statistical analysis. All researchers doing quantitative statistical analysis approach the topic of PTG in an economic sense; but the point is that it is not clear in the vast majority of published papers whether the term is being used in the other sense of growth as a biological process of constructive personality development, than purely as a noun referring to an increase in a positive characteristic of the person. I will describe the OVP theory in more detail, beginning with its roots in Rogers’ (1959) theory of personality development
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