About the human givens project

Over fourteen years ago a group of psychologists and psychotherapists set out to discover why the field of counselling and psychotherapy was so disorganised and fragmented, why some approaches work relatively swiftly and others do not, and what could be done to reform a chaotic field with hundreds of different models to reconcile it with the emerging findings of neuroscience.

Leaving aside anything dogmatic, hypothetical or inconsistent with knowledge about brain function, the result was the human givens approach to psychotherapy, which rests on a fundamental understanding of the basic needs of each human being.

Pulling together psychological research, neurobiology and ancient wisdom, and enriching these further with new scientific insights, the human givens approach is rapidly being recognised as a profoundly important development in understanding human behavoiur — it has been described as the “missing heart of positive psychology”. Many people find it refreshingly different in the ways in which it assimilates, develops and effectively uses the latest knowledge available to us.

Using the human givens framework as the basis for psychotherapy works remarkably well, but something else soon started to emerge.

Doctors, nurses, social workers and teachers also started to learn about the approach with a view to using some therapeutic elements in their own working lives, but they soon started to realise that the human givens organising ideas could be used as the basis for building a new approach to education, social work and health care; an approach that puts the real needs of the user and practitioner ahead of the doctrine or administrative convenience that drive so many of our institutions.

Now there are mental health settings, schools, doctors’ surgeries and children’s homes that use the human givens approach as the bedrock of their practice, and, unsurprisingly, these places have a wonderful atmosphere and get remarkable results.

(For articles containing examples of how the approach is benefitting a variety of different fields, please see back issues of the 'Human Givens' journal, the book: Human Givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking, and the Human Givens Institute's website.)

The approach continues to spread: lawyers, diplomats, arbitrators, town planners – a huge range of professionals are now using the Human Givens understanding of our species’ real needs to inform their work. And this is not surprising – can you think of any legitimate task or function that would not run better if it were designed with the real needs of human beings in mind?

If you would like to find out about the implications of the human givens in de-stressing individuals, schools, hospitals, government, prisons and anything else that involves people, see the links above and on our links page.

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