Humanistic Perspective to Understand the Case of David Berkowitz

Humanistic School of Psychology

By Keertana Nagrajan (1930239)

Up till the mid-1950s, the study of human behaviour was focused on the environment and external factors. There wasn’t a school of thought that promoted individual human nature, uniqueness among beings, individuality and freedom of thought and expression laying emphasis on subjective experiences. To fill this gap, there emerged the Humanistic school of psychology. While psychoanalysis and behaviourism tried to understand the human mind and behaviour, humanistic psychology provided a holistic view of the individual and viewed an individual as a whole person (Greening, 1985). While the origins of humanistic philosophy can be dated back to the middle ages, significant leaps were made in psychology with the contributions of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. 

In “Motivation and Personality” by Maslow (1954), he boldly introduced the concept of needs as motivations. According to Maslow, there is a five-level model of needs that can be arranged in a hierarchy through the use of a pyramid (McLeod, 2007). Going upwards, the needs are physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem and self-actualization. The theory simply states that the fulfilment of each of these needs drives human motivation and that the satisfaction of each tier of needs must be somewhat complete before an individual can focus on the completion of other needs that are placed higher in the hierarchy. 

The ultimate goal, according to humanism, is for every individual to attain self-actualization, thereby reaching their ‘full potential, self-fulfilment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences’ (McLeod, 2007). 

Another major contributor to the field was Carl Rogers. Rogers believed that to attain self-actualization, people need an environment that provides “openness, self-disclosure, unconditional positive regard and empathy” (McLeod, 2014). Without these, Rogers said, that a person would never be able to self-actualise as their real and ideal self would be incongruent. 

Analysing David Berkowitz’s Case Using Theories of Humanism 

Keeping this basic model in mind, if David Berkowitz’s case is analysed, several inferences can be drawn. Berkowitz’s history reveals that a few days after his birth, his biological mother Elizabeth “betty” Broder gave him away because Broder’s husband threatened to leave her if she kept the baby. Right after being born, Berkowitz’s basic physiological needs of shelter, sleep, mother’s milk and nurturing care were not met. Subsequently he was adopted by Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz.

It is in public knowledge, as reported by journalist John Vincent Sanders, that Berkowitz’s childhood and early years were “troubled”. At a very young age he started causing trouble and engaging in delinquent behavior such as petty theft and starting fires. Even after consulting psychotherapists, the cause of Berkowitz’s destrutive behavior was not found. When he was 14, his adoptive mother died of breast cancer, after which his life at home became strained and strenuous. It can be believed that he never healed from his mother’s death and his unfriendly relationship with his father’s second wife did not help his situation. From this we can gather that his needs for safety at home and school remained unsatisfied as well. His abandonment by his birth mother, the death of his adoptive mother and lack of a motherly figure with his father’s second wife all must have contributed to a lack of safety in his home environment and personal security. Additionally, after joining the United States Army and serving in an infantry division, his sense of safety must have been compromised further. To add to this, after losing his position with the Army, Berkowitz could never hold a job for a significant period of time and had to meet his basic needs of food, water and shelter by doing petty jobs. All this further added to his sense of insecurity in his occupational and professional life. 

Subsequently, the absence of a strong functional family system (including a history of absent father figures and unavailable mothers) also contributed to the failure of him meeting his love and belonging needs. Due to his troubled time at school and in the Army, he also could never forge strong friendships or relationships with anyone, thereby having to lead his life without any sense of connection and community with others. 

It can be safely said that all his adverse life experiences led him to not being able to develop a strong sense of self, including a flailing self-esteem, self respect, viewing himself in a status lower to others and just generally feeling helpless and inadequate. 

As we know from Maslow’s theory, Berkowitz’s failure to meet his basic needs may have led to him never being able to self-actualize and reach his fullest potential. 

According to Fox and Levin, many serial killers and criminals tend to engage in lawless acts as this provides them with a feeling of control. Moreover, they enjoy being chased by the police and media as it gives them a sense of importance and social power, which they could never get being a law abiding citizen of society (Fox & Levin, 1998). It has also been researched that many acts of criminality are closely linked with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Spencer, 2021). Family composition with broken homes are found to produce 10-15% higher chance of delinquency (Englehart, 2016 in Spencer, 2021). It is proven that children who experience marital instability or familial discord are more likely to enter a life of crime (Englehart, 2016). The loss of a parent also puts children at the risk of failure of meeting physiological, safety and love and belongingness needs (Spencer, 2021). According to research, many needs are compromised when a child has had adverse life experiences. Berkowitz’s family’s poor socioeconomic status and abandonment tied directly to his physiological needs, criminality of birth mother and loss of adoptive mother tied into his safety needs, familial instability influences his belonging needs, esteem was disadvantaged by parental neglect (Spencer, 2021). All of these led to his self-actualization needs remaining unfulfilled.  

All of Berkowitz’s life, he grew up without an ideal environment for growth. If viewed from Carl Rogers’ theory, his feelings as a child were never acknowledged. Even after visiting a psychotherapist, he was not provided help for his minor delinquent acts. Neither his family nor teachers tried to understand his emotions and help him, therefore his openness to experience was curbed. He was never able to live fully and experience life in all its happiness, he was always daunted by his past. He could never develop feelings of trust for others due to his neglectful parents. His self worth and self-image were consequently damaged by his needs of love and belonging not being satisfied. He was never given unconditional positive regard by his peers or family thereby never being able to achieve self-actualization. Furthermore, any incongruence between his ideal and real self was left undetected and no help/opportunity was provided to him to increase the congruence. 

Humanism believes that all human beings are innately good and have pure intentions and any act of social deviance or criminality is rooted in them not being able to realise their true selves and their actual potential. As Englehart (2016) said “delinquency arises when an individual’s bonds to society are fractured”. This seems to have certainly been the case with David Berkowitz. At his roots, Berkowitz was a good and pure child who failed to receive the love, acceptance and security that he rightly deserved. All his life’s choices after that were mere reflections of what his family and society failed to provide him with.

References 

Englehart, M.T. (2016). Beyond family structure: Examining the association between family instability and childhood delinquency (Masters dissertation, the Ohio State University). Retrieved from https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_etd/send_file/send?accession=osu1462895 401&disposition=inline

Fox, James; Levin, Jack (1998). "Multiple Homicide: Patterns of Serial Killers and Mass Murder". Crime and Justice. 23: 407–55. doi:10.1086/449274.

Greening, T. (1985). The Origins of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and the Association for Humanistic Psychology. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 25(2), 7–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167885252002

Mcleod, S. (2014). Carl Rogers | Simply Psychology. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/carl-rogers.html

Mcleod, S. (2020, December 29). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

Spencer, Mina (2021). “Juvenile Delinquency: Considering Risk Factors Through the Lens of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs”. Veritas Classical Academy.