[0:02]Carl Rogers's Theory of Personality: Key Concepts.
[0:09]Carl Rogers, one of the forerunners of the humanist movement in psychology, was fascinated by the growth potential of healthy people. Along with another well-known psychologist Abraham Maslow, Rogers contributed to the understanding and perception of self and personality. Focusing on individual choices, his theory emphasized that biology is not deterministic, but individuals' self-determination and free will will help them become the best version of themselves. Indeed, Roger's theory of personality emphasized the free will of human beings and their great potential for goodness. This explains why Roger's theory of personality puts the onus on self-actualizing tendency during the formation of self-concept. Rogers then made considerable advancements in this field by stating that an individual is a creative and active being who lives in the present scenario and responds subjectively to his existing encounters and relationships based on personal perceptions. With this context, let me now briefly sketch the key concepts of Roger's theory of personality. Personality Development and Self-Concept. While creating his personality development theory, Rogers put the onus on subjective experience and humanistic psychology. According to him, every individual exists in a world where circumstances and experiences are continually changing. He further claims that the human being reacts to the change in his phenomenal field as per his beliefs. For Rogers, this phenomenal field refers to an individual's subjective reality, which includes internal thoughts and emotions, as well as external objects and other people. And it must be noted that for Rogers, the motivation as well as the environment of a human being act on their phenomenal field. Rogers also argues that it is self-actualizing tendencies that motivate the behavior of a person to achieve the highest level of success. It is worth noting that Rogers was credited with coining the term "actualizing tendency", which pointed towards a human being's basic instinct to achieve success at his highest possible capacity and ability. Now, according to Rogers, an individual interacts with his environment and with others and forms a structure of self-concept. This idea of self-concept or self is defined as a conceptual pattern of values and concepts related to oneself. In the case of positive self-concept, an individual finds the world a positive and safe place and tends to feel good in his environment and with himself. Needless to say, it becomes the opposite in negative self-concept. Here, the individual will not feel safe or good in his environment and thus feel unhappy and sad. Ideal Self vs Real Self. Rogers categorized the self into two, namely, the real self and the ideal self. On the one hand, the real self was described as what an individual is now, and on the other hand, the ideal self is someone that he wanted to become in ideal conditions. It must be noted, however, that for Rogers, an individual should achieve consistency between his two selves. In fact, Rogers believes that an individual experienced congruence when his thoughts related to both ideal self and real self were in tandem and his self-concept was accurate. He believed that high congruence leads to greater self-worth in an individual, and it automatically resulted in a productive and healthy life. Conversely, if there is a great gap or discrepancy between the ideal self and the real self, a person experienced what he believed to be a state of incongruence. This leads to maladjustment and results in an unproductive and unhealthy life. Unconditional Positive Regard and Self-Worth. According to Rogers, unconditional positive regard involves showing complete support and acceptance of a person no matter what that person says or does.
[4:54]As Rogers explained in this 1957 article published in the Journal of Consulting Psychology, unconditional positive regard means caring for the client, but not in a possessive way or in such a way as simply to satisfy the therapist's own needs. He adds, it means caring for the client as a separate person, with permission to have his own feelings, his own experiences. Now, Rogers believes that people have a need for both self-worth and positive regard for other people. How people think about themselves and how they value themselves plays a major role in well-being. As Rogers argues, people with a stronger sense of self-worth are also more confident and motivated to pursue their goals and to work toward self-actualization because they believe that they are capable of accomplishing their goals. According to Rogers, during the early years, children hopefully learn that they are loved and accepted by their parents and other family members, which contributes to feelings of confidence and self-worth. Unconditional positive regard from caregivers during the early years of life can help contribute to feelings of self-worth as people grow older. As people age, the regard of others plays more of a role in shaping a person's self-image. Rogers believes that when people experience conditional positive regard, where approval hinges solely on the individual's actions, incongruence may occur. Incongruence happens when a person's vision of their ideal self is out of step with what they experience in real life.
[6:42]It is important to note that congruent individuals will have a lot of overlap between their self-image and their notion of their ideal self. An incongruent individual will have little overlap between their self-image and ideal self. Rogers also believes that receiving unconditional positive regard could help people become congruent once more. By providing unconditional positive regard to their clients, Rogers believes that therapists could help people become more congruent and achieve better psychological well-being. The Good Life and the Fully Functional Person. Rogers insisted that the ultimate goal of all individuals is to reach the ideal state of self-actualization. This is what Rogers calls a successful personality or a fully functional person. According to Rogers, fully functioning people exhibit 7 traits, namely: 1) openness to experience, 2) living in the moment, 3) trust in one's feelings and instincts, 4) self-direction and the ability to make independent choices, 5) creativity and malleability, 6) reliability, and 7) feeling fulfilled and satisfied by life. It must be noted, however, that fully functioning people are congruent and have received unconditional positive regard. In many ways, full functioning state is an ideal that can't be completely achieved, but those who come close are always growing and changing as they strive to self-actualize. This explains why for Rogers, self-actualization does only entail having attained one's goals, wishes, and desires in life. Self-actualization also entails the act of overcoming all the challenges and difficulties along the way.
[8:43]As Rogers writes, The organism has one basic tendency and striving to actualize, maintain, and enhance the experiencing organism. And it is in this last note that we can situate Roger's notion of the good life. For Rogers, the good life, which we can gleaned from self-actualized personalities, is not an outcome to be achieved once and for all, but rather it is a process that we have to be constantly engaged with and to be continually moving towards. Most importantly, it is about having the freedom to move in any direction but moving in the direction that is most authentic to us, one that brings meaning to our life. As Rogers writes, It seems to me that the good life is not any fixed state. It is not, in my estimation, a state of virtue, or contentment, or nirvana, or happiness. It is not a condition in which the individual is adjusted, fulfilled, or actualized. The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination. The direction is that which is selected by the total organism, when there is psychological freedom to move in any direction.
