Cognitive psychology and the cognitive-behavioral therapy model are two pillars of general and clinical psychology. Just as humanistic theories have made enormous contributions to understanding the deepest aspects of the human being. But these two approaches are currently not in communication.
It is believed that the demonstrated efficacy of cognitive therapies can find deeper application if anchored in the anthropological references of humanistic visions. Excessive objectification of the human being could lead to a distancing from the profound meanings of human existence itself and push therapy towards a mechanistic approach that would reduce psychic life to its mere biological component.
The balance between these two perspectives provides the clinician with a broad and stable theoretical foundation and effective and personalized intervention tools.
Integrating the anthropological models is actually a rather simple task; the resulting model, the cognitive-humanistic model, sees humanistic theories as the nature of the human being, and cognitive theories as the way in which the human being works. The humanistic model provides us with a foundation and direction; the cognitive-behavioral model helps us navigate. Integrating the anthropological model of cognitivism with that of humanistic therapies requires a synthesis of the different conceptions of the human being that these approaches propose.
While cognitivism focuses on the mind as an information-processing system and on the cognitive patterns that influence perception and behavior, humanistic therapies emphasize subjective experience, self-realization, and personal meaning.
This work aims to provide some integrative principles on which to develop a new approach to understanding mental health and illness in the future.