Chapter 5 - Summary Personality and Individual Psychology PDF

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Chapter 5

Carl Rogers

phenomenal field

Feelings of Authenticity

Rogers’s concept of human motivation

Phenomenological Perspective

To Rogers, these psychodynamic views did not adequately portray human existence or human potential. Rogers thus provided a new theory of the person. It emphasized conscious perceptions of the present rather than merely unconscious residues of the past, interpersonal experiences encountered across the course of life rather than merely parental relations in childhood, and people’s capacity to grow toward psychological maturity rather than merely their tendency to repeat childhood conflicts. the space of perceptions that makes up our experience—is a subjective construction. The individual constructs this inner world of experience, and the construction reflects not only the outer world of reality but also the inner world of personal needs, goals, and beliefs. Inner psychological needs shape the subjective experiences that we interpret as objectively real. There is a strong concept of authenticity and self that needs to be maintained. People are prone to a distinctive form of psychological distress. It is a feeling of alienation or detachment—the feeling that one’s experiences and daily activities do not stem from one’s true, authentic self. Rogers’s clinical experiences convinced him that the core of our nature is essentially positive. Our most fundamental motivation is toward positive growth. In psychology or other disciplines, such as philosophy, a phenomenological approach is one that investigates people’s conscious experiences. The investigation, in other words, does not try to characterize the world of reality as it exists independent of the human observer.

The Personality Theory of Carl Rogers: Self

Ideal Self Vs. Actual Self Q Sort

The Semantic Differential

Instead, one is interested in the experiences of the observer: how the person experiences the world. Self: According to Rogers, the self is an aspect of phenomenological experience. It is one aspect of our experience of the world, that is, one of the things that fill our conscious experience is our experience of ourselves, or of “a self.” Phrased more formally, according to Rogers, the individual perceives external objects and experiences and attaches meanings to them. The total system of perceptions and meanings make up the individual’s phenomenal field. That subset of the phenomenal field that is recognized by the individual as “me,” or “I” is the self. The self, or self-concept, represents an organized and consistent pattern of perceptions.

What you want to be vs. what you are In the Q-sort, the psychologist administering the test gives the test-taker a set of cards, each of which contains a statement describing a personality characteristic: “Makes friends easily”, “Has trouble expressing anger”, and so forth. Test-takers sort these cards according to the degree to which each statement is seen as descriptive of themselves. This is done on a scale labeled Most characteristic of me on one end and Least characteristic of me on the other. In the semantic differential, the individual rates a concept on a number of seven-point scales defined by polar adjectives such as good–bad, strong–weak, or active–passive.

Self-Actualization

self-consistency

congruence Subception

need for positive regard

Or example, a person may rate a concept “My Self” or “My Ideal Self” using these scales Rogers did not think that behavior was primarily determined by animalistic drive states, as did Freud. Rogers felt that, instead, the most fundamental personality process is a forward-looking tendency toward personality growth. He labeled this a tendency toward selfactualization. “The organism has one basic tendency and striving—to actualize, maintain, and enhance the experiencing organism” The concept of self-consistency originally was developed by Lecky (1945). According to Lecky, the organism does not seek to gain pleasure and to avoid pain but, instead, seeks to maintain its own self-structure. The individual develops a value system, the center of which is the individual’s valuation of the self. Individuals organize their values and functions to preserve the self-system. Individuals behave in ways that are consistent with their self-concept, even if this behavior is otherwise unrewarding to them. Alignment of self perception and behaviours. awareness of an experience that is discrepant with the self-concept before it reaches consciousness. Defensive processes are engaged, such as distortion of the meaning of experience and denial of the existence of the experience. The idea is that people need not only the obvious biological facts of life—food, water, shelter, and so on —but also something psychological. They need to be accepted and respected by others,

conditions of worth self-esteem by

that is, to receive others’ positive regard Conditions that must be met to gain praise Coopersmith defined self-esteem as the evaluation an individual typically makes with regard to the self. Self-esteem, then, is an enduring personal judgment of worthiness, not a momentary good or bad feeling resulting from a particular situation....