I first came across the Human Givens paradigm in the April 12, 2003 edition of the New Scientist.
In an interview with Joe Griffin, one of the psychologists who developed the ideas, two things arrested my attention:

once aroused, the brain has to complete the cycle of arousal ...
and
an appropriate metaphor can bypass the defensiveness of the conscious mind
and go in as a seed to the right neocortex which understands patterns.

As the avec esprit project is about dealing with the emotional dimension (read arousal or apathy) in disenfranchised learners, the ideas looked promising. The Human Givens paradigm has helped us understand the role of metaphor and guided imagery (visualisation) in changing patterns that are limiting the range of options in many young people.

Here is a summary of the Human Givens approach from several publications, including the following book and monographs by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell (2003) published by Human Givens Publishing Ltd.

Human Givens: a new approach to emotional health and clear thinking
Breaking the cycle of depression: a revolution in psychology
The APET model: patterns in the brain
The shackled brain: how to release locked-in patterns of trauma

The psychological pressures of living in our modern world

There is currently much uncertainty among professionals and politicians about the best way to approach the psychological problems of living in our modern world: how best to educate our children; help unsocialised young adults; treat the rising rates of anxiety and depression; work with addicts; and grapple with the chaotic consequences of broken families, etc.

A new organising idea
Whenever there is widespread uncertainty, a new ‘organising idea’ is usually needed, to bring clarity and a wider perspective to the issues. An organising idea plays an active role in shaping perception, thinking and research, and is always big enough to encompass and create a context for earlier ideas which may have tackled problems piecemeal. The human givens approach is a new organising idea founded on a solid basis of fundamental research. It is driven by our ever increasing scientific knowledge about human biology, behaviour and psychology — and an interest in how best to put such knowledge to practical use.

What are human givens?
Human givens are what we are all born with: our essential biological and emotional needs and the innate resources that we have evolved in order to fulfill them. These innate needs seek their fulfilment through the way we interact with the environment using the resources nature ‘gave’ us.

Our emotional needs include:

• the need for security (stable home life and a safe territory to live in)
• the need for intimacy and friendship
• the need to give and receive attention
• the need for a sense of autonomy and control
• the need to feel connected to others (through fun love and intimacy), and be part of a wider community
• the need for status
• the need for self-esteem (achieved through emotional maturity, successful learning and the competent application of skills)
• the need for meaning and purpose.

• curiosity
• memory and the ability to forget
• the ability to problem solve
• the ability to focus attention
• imagination (which allows us to focus our attention away from our emotions in order to problem solve more objectively)
• the ability to understand the world and other people through metaphor (pattern matching)
• self-awareness (an observing self)
• a dreaming brain
• resilience
• the ability to empathise and connect with others
• a rational as well as an emotional brain.

It is these needs and resources, which are built into our biology, that, together, make up the human givens.

Achieving mental and physical health
We are living in a time when more and more people seem to need help in dealing with the rapid changes in society. Depression, anxiety, anger, addiction and other mental and social problems are on the increase everywhere.

Those who are able to have their needs met and who have access to their innate resources are more likely to be mentally and physically healthier, more stable and better integrated. Those whose needs are not fulfilled, or whose innate resources are damaged or used incorrectly, may suffer considerable distress or develop, as a means of coping, antisocial behaviours which are a burden to others or to society at large.

There are hundreds of different types of counselling and psychotherapy models and whether they work or not always depends on how closely they are aligned to what is known about biological, psychological and behavioural functioning — the human givens. In the same way, in the evolution of heavier-than-air flying machines, the effectiveness of a new design — i.e. whether the machine flew — depended on how closely it was aligned to the ‘givens’ of gravity, the laws of physics and aerodynamics.

The human givens approach, by definition, encompasses all effective ways to help people and shows us why some approaches are inevitably doomed to fail. Wherever people come purposefully together in groups or communities, the fulfilment and use of the human givens are basic to the achievement of joint aims. The human givens approach therefore has equal relevance for the worlds of education, work, law and social services.