CARL RANSOM ROGERS’ HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVES ON PERSONALITY

Carl Rogers was a prominent psychologist and one of the founding members of the humanist movement. Along with Abraham Maslow, he focused on the growth potential of healthy individuals and greatly contributed to our understanding of the self and personality. Both Rogers’ and Maslow’s theories focus on individual choices and do not hold that biology is deterministic. They emphasized free will and self-determination, with each individual desiring to become the best person they can become.

Humanistic psychology emphasized the active role of the individual in shaping their internal and external worlds. Rogers advanced the field by stressing that the human person is an active, creative, experiencing being who lives in the present and subjectively responds to current perceptions, relationships, and encounters. He coined the term actualizing tendency, which refers to a person’s basic instinct to succeed at his or her highest possible capacity. Through person-centered counseling and scientific therapy research, Rogers formed his theory of personality development, which highlighted free will and the great reservoir of human potential for goodness.

Personality Development

Central to Rogers' personality theory is the notion of self or self-concept.  This is defined as "the organized, consistent set of perceptions and beliefs about oneself."

The self is the humanistic term for who we really are as a person.  The self is our inner personality, and can be likened to the soul, or Freud's psyche.  The self is influenced by the experiences a person has in their life, and out interpretations of those experiences.  Two primary sources that influence our self-concept are childhood experiences and evaluation by others.

According to Rogers (1959), we want to feel, experience and behave in ways which are consistent with our self-image and which reflect what we would like to be like, our ideal-self.  The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, the more consistent or congruent we are and the higher our sense of self-worth. 

A person is said to be in a state of incongruence if some of the totality of their experience is unacceptable to them and is denied or distorted in the self-image.

The humanistic approach states that the self is composed of concepts unique to ourselves. The self-concept includes three components:

Self-worth

Self-worth (or self-esteem) comprises what we think about ourselves. Rogers believed feelings of self-worth developed in early childhood and were formed from the interaction of the child with the mother and father.

Self-image

How we see ourselves, which is important to good psychological health. Self-image includes the influence of our body image on inner personality.

At a simple level, we might perceive ourselves as a good or bad person, beautiful or ugly. Self-image affects how a person thinks, feels and behaves in the world.

Ideal-self

This is the person who we would like to be. It consists of our goals and ambitions in life, and is dynamic – i.e., forever changing.

The ideal self in childhood is not the ideal self in our teens or late twenties etc.

Positive Regard and Self Worth

Carl Rogers (1951) viewed the child as having two basic needs: positive regard from other people and self-worth.

How we think about ourselves, our feelings of self-worth are of fundamental importance both to psychological health and to the likelihood that we can achieve goals and ambitions in life and achieve self-actualization.

Self-worth may be seen as a continuum from very high to very low.  For Carl Rogers (1959) a person who has high self-worth, that is, has confidence and positive feelings about him or herself, faces challenges in life, accepts failure and unhappiness at times, and is open with people.

A person with low self-worth may avoid challenges in life, not accept that life can be painful and unhappy at times, and will be defensive and guarded with other people.

Rogers believed feelings of self-worth developed in early childhood and were formed from the interaction of the child with the mother and father. As a child grows older, interactions with significant others will affect feelings of self-worth.

Rogers believed that we need to be regarded positively by others; we need to feel valued, respected, treated with affection and loved. Positive regard is to do with how other people evaluate and judge us in social interaction. Rogers made a distinction between unconditional positive regard and conditional positive regard.

Unconditional Positive Regard

Unconditional positive regard is where parents, significant others (and the humanist therapist) accepts and loves the person for what he or she is.  Positive regard is not withdrawn if the person does something wrong or makes a mistake. 

The consequences of unconditional positive regard are that the person feels free to try things out and make mistakes, even though this may lead to getting it worse at times.

People who are able to self-actualize are more likely to have received unconditional positive regard from others, especially their parents in childhood.

Conditional Positive Regard

Conditional positive regard is where positive regard, praise, and approval, depend upon the child, for example, behaving in ways that the parents think correct.

Hence the child is not loved for the person he or she is, but on condition that he or she behaves only in ways approved by the parent(s). 

At the extreme, a person who constantly seeks approval from other people is likely only to have experienced conditional positive regard as a child.

Congruence

A person’s ideal self may not be consistent with what actually happens in life and experiences of the person. Hence, a difference may exist between a person’s ideal self and actual experience. This is called incongruence.

Where a person’s ideal self and actual experience are consistent or very similar, a state of congruence exists. Rarely, if ever, does a total state of congruence exist; all people experience a certain amount of incongruence.

The development of congruence is dependent on unconditional positive regard. Carl Rogers believed that for a person to achieve self-actualization they must be in a state of congruence.

According to Rogers, we want to feel, experience and behave in ways which are consistent with our self-image and which reflect what we would like to be like, our ideal-self.

The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, the more consistent or congruent we are and the higher our sense of self-worth. A person is said to be in a state of incongruence if some of the totality of their experience is unacceptable to them and is denied or distorted in the self-image.

Incongruence is "a discrepancy between the actual experience of the organism and the self-picture of the individual insofar as it represents that experience.

As we prefer to see ourselves in ways that are consistent with our self-image, we may use defense mechanisms like denial or repression in order to feel less threatened by some of what we consider to be our undesirable feelings.

A person whose self-concept is incongruent with her or his real feelings and experiences will defend because the truth hurts.

“The Good Life”

Rogers described life in terms of principles rather than stages of development. These principles exist in fluid processes rather than static states. He claimed that a fully functioning person would continually aim to fulfill his or her potential in each of these processes, achieving what he called “the good life.” These people would allow personality and self-concept to emanate from experience. He found that fully functioning individuals had several traits or tendencies in common:

1. A growing openness to experience–they move away from defensiveness.

2. An increasingly existential lifestyle–living each moment fully, rather than distorting the moment to fit personality or self-concept.

3. Increasing organismic trust–they trust their own judgment and their ability to choose behavior that is appropriate for each moment.

4. Freedom of choice–they are not restricted by incongruence and are able to make a wide range of choices more fluently. They believe that they play a role in determining their own behavior and so feel responsible for their own behavior.

5. Higher levels of creativity–they will be more creative in the way they adapt to their own circumstances without feeling a need to conform.

6. Reliability and constructiveness–they can be trusted to act constructively. Even aggressive needs will be matched and balanced by intrinsic goodness in congruent individuals.

7. A rich full life–they will experience joy and pain, love and heartbreak, fear and courage more intensely.

The Fully-Functioning Person

Rogers suggested that people who continually strive to fulfill their actualizing tendency could become what he referred to as fully-functioning. A fully-functioning person is one who is completely congruent and living in the moment.

Like many other aspects of his theory, unconditional positive regard plays a critical role in the development of full functioning. Those who receive nonjudgmental support and love can develop the self-esteem and confidence to be the best person they can be and live up to their full potential.

Rogers identified five characteristics of the fully functioning person:

1. Open to experience: both positive and negative emotions accepted. Negative feelings are not denied, but worked through (rather than resorting to ego defense mechanisms).

2. Existential living: in touch with different experiences as they occur in life, avoiding prejudging and preconceptions. Being able to live and fully appreciate the present, not always looking back to the past or forward to the future (i.e., living for the moment).

3. Trust feelings: feeling, instincts, and gut-reactions are paid attention to and trusted. People’s own decisions are the right ones, and we should trust ourselves to make the right choices.

4. Creativity: creative thinking and risk-taking are features of a person’s life. A person does not play safe all the time. This involves the ability to adjust and change and seek new experiences.

5. Fulfilled life: a person is happy and satisfied with life, and always looking for new challenges and experiences.

For Rogers, fully functioning people are well adjusted, well balanced and interesting to know. Often such people are high achievers in society.

Critics claim that the fully functioning person is a product of Western culture. In other cultures, such as Eastern cultures, the achievement of the group is valued more highly than the achievement of any one person.

Criticisms of Rogers’ Theories

Like Maslow’s theories, Rogers’ were criticized for their lack of empirical evidence used in research. The holistic approach of humanism allows for a great deal of variation but does not identify enough constant variables to be researched with true accuracy. Psychologists also worry that such an extreme focus on the subjective experience of the individual does little to explain or appreciate the impact of society on personality development.