Carl Rogers (Person-Centered Theory)

Roger identified himself with the humanistic orientation in contemporary psychology. His theory is phenomenologically placed a strong emphasis on the experiences of the person, their feelings and values and all that is summed up by the expression inner life.

Personal History

Rogers theory of personality was originally presented in 'client centered therapy' (1951) elaborated and formalized in a chapter written for 'psychology a study of science' (1959) and mere informally described in 'on becoming a person' (1961).

The Structure of Personality

The 'organism' and the 'self' are two constructs, footing upon which the whole theory rests.

• The organism: it is the locus of all experiences psychologically. Experience include everything potentially available to awareness that is going on within the organism at any given moment. This totality of experience constitutes the phenomenal field. The phenomenal field is the individual's frame of reference that can only be known to the person. How the individual behaves depends upon the phenomenal field (subjective reality) and not upon the stimulating conditions (external reality). "The whole person", Rogers wrote, is one who is completely open to the data from internal experiencing and the data from the experiencing of the external world.
• The Self: a portion of the phenomenal field gradually becomes differentiated. This is the self or self concept. In addition to the self as it is (the self structure) there is an ideal self, which is what the person would like to be.
• Organism and self: Congruence and incongruence when the symbolized experiences that constitute the self faithfully mirror the experiences of the organism the person is said to be adjusted, mature, and fully functioning, such a person accepts the entire range of organismic experience without threat or anxiety. He/she is able to think realistically. Incongruence between self and organism makes individuals feel threatened and anxious. They behave defensively and their thinking becomes constricted and rigid.

Implict in Roger's theory are two other of congruence-incongruence. One is the congruence or lack of it between subjective reality (the phenomenal field) and externally reality (the world as it is). The others is the degree of correspondence between the self is large, the person is dissatisfied and maladjusted.

Dynamics of Personality

According to Roger's "the organism has one basic tendency and striving to actualize maintains and enhane the experiencing organism". This actualizing tendency is selective paying attention only to those aspects of the environment that promise to move the person constructively in the direction of fulfillment and wholeness. On on hand there is a single motivation force, the self-actualizing drive and on the other hand there is a single goal of life to become self-actualized or a whole person.

Roger's added a new features so that concept of growth when he observed that the forward moving tendency can only operate when the choiches are clearly perceived and adequately symbolized. Despite the monistic character of Rogers's motivational theory, he singled out for special attention to needs the need for positive regard and the need for self regard. Both are learing needs. Th former develops in infancy as a consequence of the baby's being loved and cared for, the latter is establishing by virtue of the baby's receiving positive regard from others.

The development of Personality

Roger's focused upon the ways in which evaluations of an individual by others. Particularly during childhood, tend to favour distancing between experiences of the organism and experiences of the self.

Because evaluations of the hild's behaviour by its parents and other are sometimes positive and sometimes negative, the child learns to differentiate between actions and feelings that are worthy (approved) and those that are unworthy (dissaproved). Unworthy experiences tend to become excluded form the self-concept even though they are organismically valid. This results in a self-concept even though they are organismically valid. This results in a self-conception out of line with organismic experience. The child tries to be what others want it to be instead of trying to be what really is.

Gradually, then, through childhood the self-concept becomes more and more distorted due to evaluations by others. Consequently, an organismic experience that is at variance with this distorted self concept is felt as a threat and evokes anxiety. In order to protect the integrity of the self concept, these threatening experiences are denied symbolization or given a distorted symobilzation.

Not only does the breach between self and organism results in defensiveness and distortion, but it also affects a person's relations with other people. People who are defensive are inclined to feel hostile toward other people whose behaviour, in their eyes, represent their own denied feelings.

In client-centered therapy, the warm acceptane attitude on the part of the counselor encourages clients to explore their unconscious feelings and to bring them into awareness. Slowly and tentatively they explore the symbolized feelings that threaten their security. In the safety of the therapeutic relationship these hitherto threatening feelings can now be assimilated in to the self-structure. The assimilation may require rather drastic reorganization in the self-concept of the client in order to bring it into line with the reality of organismic experience. Roger's admitted that some people may be able to accomplish the process without undergoing therapy.

An important social benefit gained from the acceptance and assimilation of experiences to see whether they require a change in the value structure. Any fixed set of values will tend to prevent the person form reaching effectively to new experiences. One must be flexible to adjust appropriately to the changing conditions of life.

Abnormal Behaviour: According to Roger's model, psycho-pathology or emotional distress occurs in individuals who have been exposed to conditional positive regard. The associated conditions of worth lead to self-experience incongruence. This incongruence, which is analogous to the Id-superego conflict in Freud's model, generates anxiety as it approaches awareness. The individual respond with denial or distortion, because awareness of incongruence would jeopardizes receipt of positive regards from self and others. The goal of defense thus is maintenance of the (artificial or inaccurate) self concept. This model fits nicely a number of apparently paradoxical behaviours.

In contrast, individuals who experience unconditional positive regard maintain or reinstate self experience congruence. Because of the absence of conflict or incrongruence, such individuals have no need to rely on defenses. Roger characterized such healthy people as fully functioning.

Individuals who are living this good life appear to have three characteristics:

1. The person developes an increasing openness to experience
2. Such people exhibit increasingly existential living
3. They have increasing trust in the organism

Person and self are same when the self is completely congruent with the organism. The organism, a living, growing, holistic system, is the basic psychological reality. Any deviation from this reality threatens the integrity of the person.

Characteristic Research and Research Methods

1. Pioneer investigator in the areas of counseling and psychotherapy, stimulated and conducted research into the nature of the process that occur during clinical treatment.
2. Qualitative studies: many of Roger's ideas about personality have been explicated by a qualitative pointing to procedure that consists of demonstration by extracts from the record of client's verbalizations, what his or her self-pictures and what changes occur in it during therapy.
3. Content analysis: this research method consists of formulation a set of categories by means of which the verbalizations of the client can be classified and counted. Categories of positive, negative and ambivalent feeling toward self and others were formulated and applied in to cases in therapy.
4. Rating scales: One of Roger's and his collaborators principal contribution to the investigation of psychotherapy is the measurement of process and change during therapy by the use rating scales. Roger felt more is to be learned about therapeutic effectiveness by studying the attitudes and behaviour of the therapist in relation to changes in the client. For this purposes, two types of rating scales have been developed; those that measure the therapist's attitudes and those that measure change in the client.
5. Q. Technique studies: method of research that William Stephenson developed were uniquely adapted for investigating the self concept by the single-case method. These methods are referred as Q-technique. Its is a method of studying systematically the notions of a person about him or herself, although it can be used for other purposes as well. The person is given a packet of statements and is asked to sort them into a prearranged distribution along a continuum from those most characteristic of the person doing the sorting to the least characteristic of the person. Sorting may be made not only for how people see themselves at the present time but also for how they would like to be, called the ideal sort and also how they were in the past.
6. Experimental studies of the self-concept: current interest in the self-concept has transcended its original locus in the therapy situation and has become a subject for investigation under laboratory conditions. Testable hypothesis regarding the self-concept have been derived from theories other than Roger's.

Evaluation

Organismic theory as a reaction against mind-body dualism, faculty psychology and stimulus response behaviourism has been immensely successful. Client-centered therapy is one established and widely used method of treatment.

Criticism-the chief contribution that many psychologists make of Roger's theory is that it is based upon a naive type of phenomenology. There is abundant evidence to show that factors unavailable to consciousness motivate behaviour and that's what a person says to him/herself is distorted by defenses and deceptions of various kinds.

Roger's has been criticized for ignoring the unonscious, whose potency for controlling human conduct has been attested to by psychonalytic investigations over a period of 8 decades.

Another criticism focuses on Roger's failure to describe the nature of the organism. If the organism is the basic psychological reality what are the characteristics of this reality? what precisely are potentialities residing within the organism that are to be actualized?

What ever the future of Roger's theory may be, it has served well the purpose of making self and object of empirical investigation. Many psychologists have given theoretical status to self, regarding the phenomenal self have led directly to the making of predictions and to investigate activities. Heuristically his theory has been extremely potent and pervasive force.

Summary

• Roger's theory emphasized greatly on the persons experience feelings and value. This was originally presented in 'client centered therapy'. The organism and the self are two constructs on which this theory is based. The congruence between self and organism is an important aspects of an individual to live in integrity.

• Self actualization is the core part of this theory for which an individual's strives all his life. Evaluation of individual particularly in childhood by others results in the formation of self-concept.

• The research method followed by Roger's to form the self-theory are qualitative studies, content analysis, rating scales, Q-technique study and experimental studies of the self-concept.

• The criticism faced by the Roger are that this theory was based upon a naive type of phenomenology, he ignored the concept of unconsciousness and he failed to describe nature of organism.