Charlotte Bühler

Charlotte’s Background in Europe

Born on December 20, 1893 in Berlin Germany to Walter and Rose Malachowski

As a graduate student, she studied under Oswald Kuelpe, but he died unexpectedly. Karl Buhler took over her supervision.

Shortly after Karl and Charlotte started working together, they got married in April 1916

In 1922 her husband and her accepted positions at the University of Vienna, where she founded a child-study laboratory

Charlotte’s Background in the USA

•In 1923, she served as a Rockefeller Fellow at Columbia University, where she studied child and youth psychology with Edward Thorndike.

•In 1943, she became a clinical psychologist at the Minneapolis General Hospital

•Two years later, the Buhler’s moved to California, where Charlotte continued her work as a clinical psychologist at the LA County Hospital. •She was a prominent figure in distinguishing humanistic psychology, the “Third Force,” from psychoanalysis and behaviorism.

Charlotte’s Obstacles – The Nazi Invasion

Hitler’s rise to power and the arrest of her husband for racial and political reasons.

When Nazis invaded Austria in 1938, they closed the Vienna Psychological Institute and destroyed all of her research records.

The Nazis imprisoned Charlotte’s husband for his political and ideological beliefs.

As evidence of the Nazi influence in the university's psychology department, Karl Buhler's successor replaced his scheduled courses with such as "Race and Character" (Ash, 1987).

Charlotte’s Obstacles – Living in America

Charlotte left Austria for Norway after negotiating the release of her husband. The following year they both moved to America.

Charlotte noted that the first ten years in the U.S. were very difficult; they both were unable to write.

The best positions were already taken by that time, and her husband’s research program was out of step with the behaviorist Zeitgeist in the U.S.

Charlotte’s Strengths

She made major contributions in the areas of lifespan development and humanistic psychology

Her work is very original. Unlike Adler and Goldstein, who worked off of the psychoanalytic concepts of Freud and others, Buhler created her theory off of her own ideas.

She was very driven and “never seemed to have less than four important projects going at the same time.”

Charlotte’s Weaknesses

She often used the words self-actualization, self-realization, and self-fulfillment interchangeably but she defined them differently

Self-actualization is a big part of developmental theory, but it never appears in her descriptions of children’s progression through the various developmental phases

Her thoughts of childhood and adolescence have yet to be brought together to form a single, well-organized system for interpreting child and adolescent development

Charlotte Buhler’s Influence

Completed 55 works between the ages of 25 and 80 on life-span development and humanistic psychology.

She was not only a theorist and a researcher, but became a clinician later in life, practicing her humanistic therapy.

Her work has been published in 16 languages.

Her work was reissued in Germany after WWII and had a significant influence on German psychology, in the area of life-span development.

Her research largely focused on cognitive and personality development.

Buhler’s Influences cont.

Her method of using diaries as data, revealed to her that by late adolescence people start raising the questions of "what is my purpose in life?" Even in infant research, Buhler found evidence of curiosity, social interest, delight in achievement and distinctive individual styles in activity of infants no older than a few months“

Her research largely focused on cognitive and personality development

Although Maslow is often credited with being the "father of humanistic psychology", a review of her early work indicates that her ideas actually predate his

A Psychotherapy Session

The therapist should help the patient discover the problem and see the differences between his/her conditioned self and their actual self.

After the period of assisted exploration, the therapist should ask “questions of evaluation”.

Psychotherapy According to Buhler

According to Buhler this questioning process is essential to the entire psychotherapy theory.

If the questions are used appropriately a therapist can ascertain what the patient’s goals are, what the obstacles are, and how much freedom exists to achieve the goals.

Buhler focused heavily on this concept of freedom.

Case Study

Arlene, 31 year old, homosexual, public nurse Buhler uses this case to demonstrate her theories about

freedom and completeness of human existence. The problem: Arlene’s girlfriend, Jenny, had recently moved

out because of an affair she was having. Through many sessions Buhler realized that Arlene’s true

problem stemmed from the feelings of rejection from her father.

This caused Arlene to constantly require attention and affirmation from Jenny which led to a dependent relationship.

This dependent relationship that Arlene had with first her father and then with Jenny made her “unfree”.

Arlene set goals for herself on how she could be in a loving relationship without this feeling of dependency that made her feel “unfree”.

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http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/charlottebuhler.html Charlotte buhler . (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.feministvoice.com/charlotte-buhler/ Buhler, Charlotte . (2008). Encyclopedia judaica . Retrieved April 4, 2011, from

http://www.jeiwshvirtuallibrary.org/jsource.judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_03714.html Buhler, Charlotte (1893-1974). (2008). Encyclopedia of childrenand childhood in history and society . Retrieved April

4, 2011, from http://www.faqs.org/childhood/Bo-Ch/B-hler-Charlotte-1893-`974.html Charlotte malachowski buhler . (n.d.). Retrieved from http://psychology.okstate.edu/museum/women/bu-de.html Derobertis, E. M. (2006). Charlotte bühler's existential-humanistic contributions to child and adolescent psychology.

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 46(48), doi: 10.1177/0022167805277116 Gavin, E.A. (1990). Charlotte M. Buhler (1893-1974). In O'Connell, A.N. & Russo, F.F. (Eds.) Women in psychology: A

bio-bibliographic sourcebook. New York: Greenwood Press. Ash, M.G. (1987). Psychology and Politics in Interwar Vienna: The Vienna Psychological Institute, 1922-1942. In Ash,

M.G. & Woodward, W.R. (Eds.) Psychology in twentieth-century thought and society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Kazdin, A. (2000). Charlotte Buhler. In Encyclopedia of Psychology (pp. 482-483). New York: Oxford University Press. Chapman, A., Conroy, W., & Sheehy, N. (1997) Charlotte Buhler. In Biographical Dictionary of Psychology. New York:

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