Humanism takes the position that the human intellect is sufficient to deduce moral principles and that all human beings have the same natural right to dignity and personal autonomy. The humanistic perspective does not absolutely reject the underlying principles of psychoanalytical theory, but places more focus on conscious self-reflection than on any assumption that the roots of all human conduct is necessarily a function of repressed trauma, sexual urges, and unresolved psychological conflicts. Humanism also rejects anthropocentrism in that it does not consider human life to be different in kind from other biological life forms, but only different in degree of development and complexity.

Existentialism:

Existentialism rejects many of the same concepts as humanism in the realm of religious or supernatural sources of human morality. Whereas humanists start with an assumption that human beings are inherently good and that the...

Existentialism acknowledges that human life may ultimately have meaning and purpose, but only to the extent the individual finds a way of consciously defining those concepts. Existentialism differs from psychoanalytic theory in that the latter emphasizes the relevance of the unconscious mind over conscious thought and the former only conscious reasoning; it differs from humanism primarily in that it rejects any suggestion that human life has any inherent worth on it own.