Renée van der Vloodt

The Human Givens approach offers a revolutionary new Organising Idea. It synthesises new understanding from medical and neuro-scientific research with the most effective ideas and methods from a variety of psychological approaches.

Disseminated and taught for just ten years in the UK, Human Givens is rapidly becoming recognised as a profoundly important improvement in our understanding of human functioning and is now also taught as an M.A.

The theory

The ‘human givens’ are the physical and emotional needs evolution has programmed into us, together with the resources we have developed over time to meet those needs. These innate needs seek their fulfilment through the way we interact with the environment using the resources nature 'gave' us.

Our needs include:

Security (stable work and home); connection to others through friendship and joint objectives; belonging to a wider community such as a company; status and self-esteem (that comes through learning and the competent application of skills); a sense of autonomy; attention (to give and receive it) and a drive for meaning.

Our resources include:

Curiosity; long-term memory and learning; imagination (which allows us to focus our attention away from our emotions in order to problem solve more objectively); the ability to understand and extract deeper meaning using metaphor (intuition through pattern matching); the capacity for empathy; an observing self (to stand back from our emotions); a dreaming brain (which we now know maintains healthy emotional templates); and a rational mind that can be a check  on our emotions.

Individuals are only able to reach their potential when needs are matched up in the environment in a balanced way.

Our innate potential is compromised if resources are neither recognised nor effectively utilised.

Effective companies will be those which, knowingly or not, work within this needs/resources framework.