Abstract
This chapter considers the issue of human motivation. It is suggested that humans are motivated to meet their basic psychological needs, which include avoiding pain, maximizing pleasure and maintaining satisfactory attachments to other people. In meeting these needs, people are driven by two basic tendencies, to either approach or avoid situations. Over time, they develop routine patterns of behaviour in trying to meet their needs, called motivational schemas. Such schemas often operate automatically and at an implicit level, such that clients may not be routinely aware of how they respond to day-to-day situations. Finally, it is suggested that therapeutic goals are to help clients take stock of where they are being frustrated in meeting their basic needs, and the behavioural patterns which they have developed around this. The resulting insight may help clients to change and moderate their strategies or develop completely new ways of trying to meet their needs.
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Ward, T., Plagnol, A. (2019). In Search of the Good Life. In: Cognitive Psychodynamics as an Integrative Framework in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25823-8_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25823-8_3
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