Theories of Personality: Carl Rogers

History

• Born in 1902 in Illinois – Midwestern conservative religious upbringing
• Started training for the ministry but rejected it as too rigid, but those values evident in his approach
• A key advocate of humanistic psychology

Phenomenological Perspective

• Life’s Master Motive: The Actualizing Tendency
  • Primary motive is to actualize, maintain, or enhance
  • To become the best self that their inherited natures will allow them to be
  • Organismic Value Process: monitoring system of individuals to distinguish experiences that promotes or hinders actualization
• Roger’s Phenomenological Position
  • What is real to an individual is that which exists within the person’s frame of reference
• Here and Now (ahistorical)
  • To understand why a person behaves in such a way, we do not need to dig into his or her past instead we must understand the person’s relationship to the environment as he now exists and perceives it
• The Self-Concept
  • Composed of the real self and the ideal self and our goal is to narrow the gap between the two (actualization)
• Genuineness and Authenticity: being true to yourself and others by being aware of own feelings rather than presenting an outward facade

Congruence and Incongruence

• Congruence

  • Self-concept meshes well with actual experience (some incongruence is probably unavoidable)

• Incongruence

  • Self-concept does not mesh well with actual experience

  

Development

• Depends on which of the following does the person receive from SDs

Conditional Positive Regard

• Acceptance of some or rejection of other behavior
• Conditions of worth:
  • Evaluative notions concerning which behaviors are worthy or unworthy
  • Self-concept thus socially determined and, as a result, is incongruent with the inherent potentialities
  • To keep incongruence repressed defenses are used

Unconditional Positive Regard

• Basic, complete acceptance or respect
• Self-concept reflects all that there is in the inherent potentialities
• Self is considered congruent with potentialities

2 Basic Human Needs

• Self-Actualization: the need to fulfill all of one’s potential
• Positive Regard: the need to receive acceptance, respect, and affection from others
  • Often comes with conditions attached

The Fully Functioning Person (Going Towards Actualization)

• Openness to Experience
  • Open to responsibilities; embraces human experiences such as love, pain, suffering, forgiveness, compassion, etc.
• Existential Living
  • Every experience is a new experience and giving your best anytime (living the day as if it is your last)
• Organismic Trusting
  • Doing what you feel is right, not what is right or what society thinks is right
• Experiential Freedom
  • Capacity to choose and to be free
• Creativity
  • Productive (to self and culture)
• Accurate Empathy (Unconditional Positive Regard)
  • The only way to have accurate empathy is to accept the other person without judgment

Conditional in Person-Centered Therapy

• Direction comes from the client rather than from the therapist’s insights, so referred to as nondirective therapy, later client-centered therapy
  • Empathy
  • Congruence or genuineness
  • Unconditional positive regard

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