Questions, Lecture and Writing Assignment on Carl Rogers
William O'Meara (c) copyright 1997
1. Define human behavior. What is the goal of human behavior? Page 64
2. What needs does this behavior strive to fulfill?
3. What is the underlying principle or driving force of human behavior? In general, what does human nature need in order to actualize itself?
4. What is congruence?
5. What is the source of personality maladjustment? What is the cause or reason for the source of maladjustment? Explain your answers by using the following terms of positive regard, conditional positive regard and unconditional positive regard, and condition of worth.
6. Is the need for positive regard learned or innate? the need for self-regard learned or innate? What is the answer of Rogers? Why would he give such an answer? How is there a basis for these needs to develop the value of the individual?
7. What is your answer to question 6: are the needs for positive regard and self-regard learned or innate? Why?
8. Nevertheless, what is the main point being made by Rogers? Why?
9. What is the five point summary of Rogers' theory? Explain these points by reference to the general hypothesis about human relationships offered by Rogers.
10. Explain what Rogers means by his favorable reference to Kierkegaard's statement: "to be that self which one truly is. " Can you give an example from your own life where you discovered yourself being that self which one truly is? Give the example in some detail.
Lecture on Carl Rogers' Concept of Determinsim and Freedom
Basic to Rogers' concept of human nature is that human behavior is purposeful. Human behavior, in fact, all organic behavior, is the goal directed behavior or attempt of the organism to satisfy its needs as experienced in the field as perceived. The goal toward which it strives is the actualization, maintenance, and enhancement of the organism so that all needs will be fulfilled in a balanced way. This goal directed behavior is the result of an actualizing tendency which is the inherent capacity of the organism to develop all its capacities in ways which serve to maintain or enhance the organism. This capacity involves not only the tendency to satisfy what Abraham Maslow, in Motivation and Personality and Towards a Psychology of Being terms deficiency needs for air, food, water, mother love, and warmth, but also the tendency to satisfy what Maslow calls growth needs, the need for development and differentiation of various organs and functions of the individual. These growth needs include the tendency toward expansion of effectiveness through the use of tools, expansion and enhancement through reproduction. Life processes do not merely tend to preserve life but also to transcend the momentary status quo of the organism, expanding itself continually and imposing its autonomous determination upon an ever increasing horizon.
For both Rogers and Maslow, human nature is self-actualizing. Human nature tends to activate and fulfill all human capacities in an harmonious way. Rogers sums up the important implications of this concept of man's nature as self-actualizing: "The mainspring of creativity appears to be the same tendency which we discover so deeply as the curative force in psychotherapy--man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities. By this I mean the directional trend which is evident in all organic and human life --the urge to expand, extend, develop, mature -- the tendency to express and activate all the capacities of the organism, or the self. This tendency may become deeply buried under layer after layer of encrusted psychological defenses; it may be hidden behind elaborate facades which deny its existence; it is my belief however, based on my experience, that it exists in every individual, and awalts only the proper conditions to be released and expressed. It is the tendency which is the primary motivation for creativity as the organism forms new relationships to the environment in its endeavour most fully to be itself." (On Becoming A Person, pp. 350-1)
In order that human nature be able to actualize itself, there are required basic conditions in its natural and social environment. For example, the infant needs food to be able to live. Further, the infant needs basic social contacts. In his theory of human nature, Rogers has attempted to identify the basic conditions of social relationships which enable human nature to self-actualize.
Before we identify those conditions, we will note some of Roger's definitions. Congruence is an accurate matching of experiencing and awareness, of one's self-experience and one's self-concept. An example of congruence is the infant who cries when she is hungry. Perhaps one reason why most people respond to infants is thelr genuineness. An example of incongruence is an angry person who denies that he is angry. Rogers hypothesizes that incongruence between self-concept and self-experience is the source of personality maladjustment. The fundamental reason for the rise of incongruence is that every human being has a need for positive regard. This term signifies such attitudes as warmth, liking, respect, sympathy. The need for positive regard develops as awareness of the self develops and is so compelling that it may take precedence over the individual's personal experiential valuing process in terms of his actualizing tendency. Although some psychologists and philosophers have looked upon the infant's need for love and affection as an inherent or instinctive need, Rogers tends to accept the position that it is a learned need commonly developed in early infancy.
If the human infant does not receive unconditional positive regard, if the individual feels that in some of his respects he is prized and in others not, a condition of worth arises in his self-concepts. The individual values an experience of his own in terms of whether or not his social others value it and not in terms of his own experiential valuing process.
Although positive regard needs to be first experienced by the baby from others when they call it "good baby", the child as ishe matures becomes capable of imagining her own social other, (for some this would be conscience), that positively or negatively regards the individual's self. The individual can develop a positive or negative attitude toward herself which is no longer directly dependent upon the attitudes of others. The individual becomes her own significant social other. This need for self-regard is a learned need and is dependent upon satisfaction of the need for positive regard from others for the individual as an infant and child.
Although Rogers emphasizes that both the need for positive regard from others and the need for self-regard are learned, there is an inherent basis for these needs to develop the value of the individual. For since the individual has an inherent tendency to actualize the human potentialitaies she has, the individual has a tendency to develop the value of her person. For the actualization of her potentialities to their fullest functioning is precisely the perfection of valuable state of the person.
Nevertheless, the main point is that the actualizing tendency will not operate properly unless the individual is exposed to the proper conditions which allow the tendency to develop the individual's potentiality to love herself and others. The individual will not be able to become her own significant social other who accepts herself unless she has experienced unconditional positive regard from a significant social other. And even if she has had that experience, the individual will find it difficult to sustain positive self-regard unless she views herself as receiving positive regard from others either now or at some later time.
Rogers sums up his theory as follows:
A General Hypothesis About Human Relationships:
If I can create a relationship characterized on my part:
Then the other individual in the relationship:
The individual learns in the existentialist philosophy of Kierkegaard, "to be that self which one truly is," states Rogers. One becomes in awareness the fullness of one's external and internal (emotional) experience, thereby perceiving the goal-directed tendency of the self to self-actualization as one's deepest need; and one becomes in choice the goals towards which the actualizing tendency properly tends. These goals are the tendency to develop accurate awareness, perceiving the truth, the tendency to become an independent decision maker in the light of one's own accurate perceptions and reasonable thinking, and the tendency to value self for one's own sake as a valuable person in one's own right, and to value other persons as valuable for their own sake.
Writing Assignment: Paper 300-400 words in length
Your writing assignment based on A General Hypothesis About Human Nature:
Either describe an occasion or occasions in which you established the three conditions described by Rogers in his 'If' statement, then describe what happened for that other individual, seeing whether or not Rogers' predictions came true for that other;
Or describe an occasion or occasions in which another person established those three conditions described by Rogers in his 'If' statement, and then describe what happened for yourself, seeing whether or not Rogers' predictions came true;
Or create a short story exemplifying one of the first two alternatives.
In the past some students have written that an individual befriended them and then gave them some solid advice on how to shape up their personality. Such a situation does not fit the assignment. For Rogers does not include in his three conditions the giving of such advice. It may be that in such a situation, the three conditions were also established along with the giving of such advice. So a student could write about such a situation. But the point of Rogers' hypothesis is that the three conditions are the necessary and sufficient conditions of growth of human understanding and freedom. This growth includes both proper self-understanding and self-choice (self-love) and understanding and choice (love) of others as they really are.