The humanistic tradition emerged partly in opposition to the fantastical qualities of psychoanalytic theory, and it became quite popular in the middle part of the last century. It focuses on how people experience the world, how we conceptualize ourselves and relate to others, and how we create a life of meaning. The central issues attended to are important: empathy, authenticity, and a sense of self. I became interested in psychology because of humanists like Abraham Maslow (famous for discovering the importance of peak experiences), and I loved people like Fritz Perls (Gestalt therapy), Viktor Frankl (a concentration camp survivor who focused on the creation of meaning and developed a method called logotherapy), and Carl Rogers.