Human Givens / Human Needs Therapy

Core ideas

1. Mental health depends on needs being sufficiently met

   Human Givens organises psychopathology around a simple thesis: when basic human emotional needs remain unmet for too long, the organism generates signals of distress and defensive patterns. This idea shifts the focus from pathology as an internal defect towards the relationship between person, environment and the satisfaction of needs. Reference: Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2003). Human Givens: A New Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking.

2. Innate resources are the main route to change

   The model holds that a person does not need to receive from outside all the capacities required for change, but rather to recover and direct resources that are already part of the human endowment: imagination, learning, attention, memory, empathy and the capacity for attachment. Therapy works when it unblocks those resources and orients them towards real needs. Reference: Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2003). Human Givens: A New Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking.

3. High arousal prevents clarity and learning

   Human Givens gives clinical priority to reducing arousal because an emotionally over-aroused person thinks worse, learns worse, listens worse and uses their resources worse. Therapy therefore usually begins by stabilising the system before introducing reframes, decisions or behavioural assignments. Reference: Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2003). Human Givens: A New Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking.

4. Imagination can heal or maintain the problem

   Imagination is a central resource because it makes it possible to anticipate, create alternatives and rehearse responses, but it can also turn into worry, catastrophising and rumination. The model understands many forms of anxiety and depression as imagination repeatedly directed towards threat, loss or failure. Reference: Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2003). Human Givens: A New Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking.

5. Depression is maintained by a psychobiological cycle

   One of Griffin and Tyrrell's distinctive contributions is the formulation of depression as a cycle between worry, emotional arousal, intensified REM sleep, exhaustion and reduced meaningful action. The intervention seeks to break that cycle by reducing rumination, improving rhythms and restoring activity linked to needs. Reference: Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2004). Dreaming Reality: How Dreaming Keeps Us Sane, or Can Drive Us Mad.

6. The APET model explains the speed of emotional reactions

   APET makes it possible to understand that many reactions arise not from deliberate thoughts but from automatic pattern matches that activate emotion before conscious thought can reinterpret the situation. This offers a useful formulation for trauma, phobias, anger, anxiety and intense relational responses. Reference: Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2003). Human Givens: A New Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking.

7. Therapy should be brief, active and goal-oriented

   Human Givens presents itself as a pragmatic approach that seeks to produce functional change in few sessions where possible. The RIGAAR structure expresses this orientation: building rapport, gathering relevant information, setting goals, accessing resources, agreeing strategies and rehearsing responses. Reference: Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2003). Human Givens: A New Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking.

8. Trauma is treated by reducing conditioned arousal

   The treatment of trauma in Human Givens seeks to reduce the automatic emotional response associated with memories or triggers, using imaginal techniques such as the rewind and sufficient stabilisation to avoid over-exposure. The clinical aim is for the memory to stop activating the organism as though the danger were still present. Reference: Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2003). Human Givens: A New Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking.

9. Individual suffering is understood within life ecologies

   Although the model works with individual resources, its formulation demands attention to context: relationships, work, community, security, recognition, privacy and meaning. A human need is not met by inner insight alone, but through real conditions of life and patterns of interaction that allow the organism to function. Reference: Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2003). Human Givens: A New Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking.

10. Its clinical strength is its operational simplicity; its limitation, the comparative evidence

    Human Givens offers a clear, useful and pedagogically powerful formulation for integrating needs, resources, sleep, arousal and action, but it must be presented accurately: its independent empirical base is smaller than that of more researched and manualised treatments. Reference: Psychology Today. Human Givens Therapy; Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2003).

Influences

• Brief therapy
• Solution-focused therapy
• Cognitive behavioural therapy
• Ericksonian clinical hypnosis
• Evolutionary psychology
• The neuroscience of sleep
• Human needs theory
• Conditioning and learning
• Psychoeducation
• Clinical pragmatism

Key references

• Griffin, J. (1997). The Origin of Dreams: How and Why We Evolved to Dream.
• Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (1998). The human givens. The Therapist.
• Griffin, J., Tyrrell, I., & Winn, D. (2003). Human Givens: A New Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking.
• Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2004). Dreaming Reality: How Dreaming Keeps Us Sane, or Can Drive Us Mad.
• Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2007). How to Lift Depression... Fast.
• Griffin, J., & Tyrrell, I. (2013). Human Givens: The New Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking.
• Human Givens Institute. What are the human givens?
• Human Givens Institute. The Human Givens Approach.
• Psychology Today. Human Givens Therapy.