Humanistic psychology is a psychological perspective which rose to prominence in the mid-20th century in the context of the tertiary sector beginning to produce in the most developed countries in the world more then the secondary sector was producing, for the first time in human history demanding creativity and new understanding of human capital.

Within the context of the three different approaches to psychology: behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and humanism it is sometimes referred to as "the third force". It adopts a holistic approach to human existence through investigations of creativity, free will, and human potential. Its ideas were picked up by spirituality It believes that people are inherently good.

One of its early sources was the work of Carl Rogers whose focus was to ensure that the developmental processes led to healthier, if not more creative, personality functioning. The term actualizing tendency, that eventually led Abraham Maslow to study self-actualization as one of human needs, was also coined by Rogers.

Abraham Harold Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American professor of psychology at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research and Columbia University who created Maslow's hierarchy of needs. He stressed the importance of focusing on the positive qualities in people, as opposed to treating them as a 'bag of symptoms.'

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Maslow was the oldest of eight children and was classed as "mentally unstable" by a psychologist. His parents were first generation Jewish immigrants from Russia who were not intellectually oriented but valued education. Maslow's parents immigrated to the U.S. in the beginning of the 1900s in order to flee from Czarist persecution, similar to many European coreligionists and to have a more prosperous life financially.

It was a tough time for Maslow, as he experienced Anti-semitism from his teachers and from other children around the neighborhood. He had various encounters with anti-semitic gangs who would chase and throw rocks at him. Maslow and other optimistic youngsters at the time with his background were in the struggle to overcome such acts of racism and ethnic prejudice in the attempt to establish an idealistic world based on widespread education and monetary justice. The tension outside of his home was also felt within it, he rarely got along with his mother, and eventually developed a strong revulsion to her. He is quoted as saying: {{quote|What I had reacted to was not only her physical appearance, but also her values and world view, her stinginess, her total selfishness, her lack of love for anyone else in the world – even her own husband and children – her narcissism, her Negro prejudice, her exploitation of everyone, her assumption that anyone was wrong who disagreed with her, her lack of friends, her sloppiness and dirtiness...

Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902 – February 4, 1987) was an influential American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach to psychology. Rogers is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research and was honored for his pioneering research with the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by the American Psychological Association in 1956.

The person-centered approach, his own unique approach to understanding personality and human relationships, found wide application in various domains such as psychotherapy and counseling (client-centered therapy), education (student-centered learning), organizations, and other group settings. For his professional work he was bestowed the Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Psychology by the APA in 1972. Towards the end of his life Carl Rogers was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with national intergroup conflict in South Africa and Northern Ireland. In a study by Haggbloom et al. (2002) using six criteria such as citations and recognition, Rogers was found to be the sixth most eminent psychologist of the 20th century and second, among clinicians, only to Sigmund Freud.