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