Name of Student: SHIELA S.

BADIANG
Course: ADVANCED THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
Activity: CRITIQUE PAPER #5

Title: Rediscovering Rogers's Self Theory and Personality

The article written by Ismail and Tekke published in the Journal of

Educational, Health and Community Psychology was all about rediscovering Carl
Rogers’s Self-Theory and Personality. Central to Rogers's personality theory is the
notion of self or self-concept, where Rogers defines it as "the organized, consistent
set of perceptions and beliefs about oneself." Rogers (1902-1987) pioneered
humanistic psychotherapy and was the one of first therapists to focus on a person-
centered approach (Feist & Roberts, 2018). His humanistic approach of the self-
concept became the core of the study of personality which is composed of concepts
such as self-worth, self-image, and ideal self.

Self-image usually includes the influence of our body image intrinsically. How
we see ourselves highly influences our good psychological health since it directly
affects how we feel, think and act in the world. The self-image is also known as our
real-self. As mentioned in the article, Rogers (1954) identified the ‘real self’ is
initiated by the actualizing tendency, follows organismic valuing, needs, and
receives positive regard and self-regard. According to Grice (2007), the real self also
feels most true to what and who you are. Though it may not be impeccable, it is the
part that feels most real to you (cited in Ismail &Tekke, 2015).

The ideal-self according to McLeod (2007), simply represents our strivings to

achieve our goals or ideals. This may not be consistent during the childhood stage to
our current stage and to succeeding stages in life. This suggests that this is a
continuing strong drive and goals which alter from time to time. The ideal self is also
highly influenced by the demands of society which are sometimes different from the
actualization tendency.

Actualization tendency refers to organismic experiences of the individual;

that is, it refers to the whole persons’ conscious and unconscious, physiological and
cognitive (Feist & Roberts, 2018). Further, the actualization tendency is the basic
human motivation to actualize, maintain, and enhance the self, which encompasses
all physiological and psychological needs (Schultz & Schutz, 2016). In the article, it
placed a great emphasis that the actualization tendency is best explicated into self-
actualizing individuals leading to becoming a fully functioning person. To self-
actualize is fulfilling one's potential and achieving the highest level of human
beingness (McLeod, 2014). The drive toward self-actualization is just a part or
subset of a larger actualization tendency (Feist & Roberts, 2018).

Self-worth encompasses what and how you think about yourself. The feelings
of self-worth are usually developed and shaped from your interaction with your
parents and other significant people during your early childhood. This is all about
how you value yourself (McLeod, 2014). The condition of worth is when we live
according to people's expectations and approval (Feist & Roberts, 2018). A
condition of worth simply occurs when the positive regard of your significant
people is conditional, that is when you live based on their expectations and
preferences that might distort your awareness of your own experiences and who
you are. On the other hand, the unconditional positive regard, the self-concept
carries no conditions of worth, the true self and experience are congruent, and the
person is psychologically healthy (Ismail and Tekke, 2015).

The focus of the authors’ paper was on Rogers’s concept of positive regard,
self-worth, and actualizing tendency. Positive regard can be explored through self-
image, ideal-self, and congruence. Self-worth is impacted by both conditional and
unconditional regards which can be attributed to how one copes with challenges in
life, tolerates failures and sadness at times. While actualizing tendency is associated
with fully functioning or self-actualizing individuals.

However, placing a great emphasis that positive regard can be explored

through self-image, ideal-self, and congruence is somewhat unclear to me as it was
not explained in the article how these concepts are associated with each other,
especially on the part of ideal-self. Though self-image and congruence are easily
understood by the notion that positive regard can guide someone to see and
continue to experience the development of one’s human beingness, congruence with
unconditional positive regard facilitates the consistency between the true self and
experience. However, there was not a clear-cut explanation when positive regard is
associated or explored with ideal-self. Using Roger’s concept of ideal-self, it is
defined as one’s view of self as one wishes to be (Feist & Roberts, 2018). From my
viewpoint, I agree with the position of the article's authors on the idea that positive
regard experiences can help develop a psychologically healthy person. On the other
side, I also disagree that positive regard can be expounded with ideal-self. The ideal-
self can be tricky if it develops far from the real-self or self-image where it is part of
the self-concept, which indicates an incongruence and an unhealthy personality.
Hence, positive regard experiences do not always give a favorable account to the
subsystem of the self which is the ideal self. Instead, awareness of one’s self-image
and ideal self has more value to avoid incongruence between the self-image or real-
self and ideal-self. Accordingly, a wide gap between the ideal-self and the self-
concept indicates incongruence and an unhealthy personality (Feist & Roberts,
2018).
REFERRENCES:

Engler, B. (2016). Personality theories. Cengage Learning

Feist, J. et.al. (2018). Theories of personality. McGraw-Hill Education.

Isamil, H. and Tekke M. (2015). Rediscovering Rogers's Self Theory and Personality.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286456614

Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2016). Theories of personality. Cengage Learning.