Who am I?

What do I enjoy?

How do others see me?

What do I find challenging?

What kind of person do I want to be?

What am I aiming to achieve?

What do I want out of my life?

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CARL ROGERS

+Carl Rogers and his

Theories

Actualizing Tendency

Real vs. Ideal Self Congruence

+Actualizing Tendency

A single “force of life”; the built-in motivation present in every life-form to develop its potentials to the fullest extent possible. 

In the course of actualizing their potentials, we created society and culture. 

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Self-Actualization

“Self-actualization implies that the person is acceptantly aware of what’s going on within and is consequently changing practically every moment and is moving on in complexity.”

Rogers, C. from Evans, R. I. 1975, pp. 17

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Real vs Ideal

+Real Self

Organismic Valuing

Positive Regard

Positive Self-Regard

+Organismic Valuing

Organisms know what is good for them

Evolution has provided us with the senses, the tastes, the discriminations we need

We instinctively value positive regard

+Positive Regard

Rogers’ umbrella term for things like love, affection, attention, nurturance, etc

+Positive Self-Regard

Self-esteem, self-worth and self-image all come under this idea.

These feelings and images come from others showing positive regard to us and caring for us (e.g. compliments)

Without this self-regard, we feel small and helpless, and again we fail to become all that we can be

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Ideal Self

Conditions of Worth

Conditional Positive Regard

Conditional Positive Self-Regard

+Conditions of Worth

Society also leads us astray with conditions of worth

Parents, teachers, peers, the media, and others, only give us what we need when we show we are “worthy,” rather than just because we need it.

E.g. We go to the toilet if we ask the teacher, we get something sweet when we finish our vegetables, and most importantly, we get love and affection if and only if we “behave!”

+Conditional Positive Regard

Getting positive regard on “on condition”

Society gives us positive regard only when we do what they want (the reward to the condition of worth)

+Conditional Self-Regard

Conditioning leads people to only like themselves when they meet the standards society sets

Standards were created without keeping each individual in mind unable to meet them unable to maintain any sense of self-esteem.

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The Fully-Functioning Person

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Congruency Where the individual’s real self is parallel to their ideal self

once a person has reached congruency they are able to live life fully, which Rogers focuses into 5 areas

+Openess to Experience

“[the individual] is more able fully to live the experiences of his organism rather than shutting them out of awareness.”

Fully-functioning people are able to experience things to the full extent, without defences stopping them

Comfortable with real self = feeling and sensing new things without fear of judgement

Carl Rogers, 1961

+Existential Living

Living in the here-and-now; The present is the only reality we have.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't remember and learn from our past.  Nor that we shouldn't plan the future. 

Just recognize these things for what they are:  memories and dreams, which are being experienced in the present.

+Organismic Trusting

Trust the real self, do what feels right, what comes naturally. 

One can only know what your real self has to say if you are open to experience and living existentially! 

Assumes you are in contact with the actualizing tendency.

+Experiential Freedom

Irrelevant whether or not people really had free will. 

One feels free when choices are available to us. 

The fully-functioning person acknowledges that feeling of freedom, and takes responsibility for his/her choices.

+Creativity

Free and responsible participate in the world. 

Obliged to contribute to the actualization of others, even life itself. 

This can be through creativity in the arts or sciences, through social concern and parental love, or simply by doing one's best at one's job. 

Creativity as Rogers uses it is very close to Erikson’s generativity.

+Incongruence occurs when ideal and real self are not similar > more disparity

> more problems created

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