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theories of personality

1. Rogers: Person Centered Theory
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Carl Rogers and Client-Centered
Theory:

Overview of Client-Centered Theory
Carl Rogers is best known for client-
centered therapy, but he also
developed a humanistic theory of
personality based on his work as a
psychotherapist. Unlike Freud, who
focused more on theory than therapy,
Rogers prioritized helping people
grow over explaining why they
behaved a certain way. His main
question was:
“How can I help this person grow and
develop?”
rather than
“What caused this person to develop
in this manner?”

Key Features of Rogers’ Approach
1. Therapist Experience as
Foundation:
Rogers’ theory emerged
directly from his practical
experiences with clients, not
just abstract theorizing.
2. Empirical Research:
Unlike many humanistic
theorists, Rogers advocated
research to support his
personality theory and
therapeutic methods,
balancing tender-minded
(compassionate) and
hardheaded (rigorous) studies.
3. Reluctance Toward Theory:
o Rogers felt that theories
could make human
behavior seem cold and
external.
o He preferred focusing on
helping people rather
than creating definitive
theoretical constructs.
o Even though he
formulated a consistent
theory of personality, he
was hesitant about
presenting it as a “final”
model.
4. Client-Centered Theory
Development:
o In the 1950s, Rogers
formalized his ideas in
what was called the
client-centered theory

2. of personality (published
in Volume 3 of Sigmund
Koch’s Psychology: A
Study of a Science,
1959).
o He anticipated that his
ideas would evolve over
the years, but his final
theory largely rested on
that original foundation.

Summary
Rogers’ approach is humanistic,
empathetic, and practical, focusing
on growth, self-realization, and
helping clients rather than rigidly
explaining or predicting behavior. His
work laid the foundation for a person-
centered perspective that has
influenced psychotherapy, education,
and positive psychology.
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Person-Centered Theory Overview
• Evolution of Terminology:
Rogers’ approach to therapy
changed names over time:
o Early: Nondirective
(term later considered
unfortunate)
o Later: Client-centered,
person-centered,
student-centered,
group-centered, person-
to-person
o Client-centered = refers
to therapy
o Person-centered = refers
to the broader
personality theory
• If-Then Framework:
Rogers’ theory can be
expressed in if-then
statements, making it one of
the more clearly formulated
humanistic theories.
o Example in therapy:
If the therapist demonstrates
congruence, unconditional positive
regard, and accurate empathy,
then therapeutic change occurs;
if therapeutic change occurs, then the
client gains self-acceptance, greater
trust in self, and other positive
outcomes.
• This framework emphasizes
that the therapist’s attitudes

3. and behaviors create the
conditions for psychological
growth and self-actualization in
the client.
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Rogers Person-Centered Theory notes
with the key terms bolded:

Basic Assumptions
Rogers proposed two main
assumptions in person-centered
theory:
1. Formative Tendency – all
matter, organic and inorganic,
evolves from simple to complex
forms (e.g., galaxies, crystals,
organisms, human
consciousness).
2. Actualizing Tendency – all
living beings have an innate
drive to fulfill their potential; it
is the only motive humans
possess and involves the whole
person (physiological,
emotional, rational, conscious,
and unconscious).
Actualizing Tendency includes:
• Maintenance Needs – basic
survival needs like food, safety,
and resisting change.
• Enhancement Needs – growth-
oriented needs like curiosity,
learning, playfulness, and self-
exploration.
Conditions for Human Actualization:
• Relationships with a congruent,
empathetic partner who shows
unconditional positive regard
allow the actualizing tendency
to fully operate.
• These three qualities are
necessary and sufficient for
psychological growth and
becoming a fully
functioning/self-actualizing
person.

The Self and Self-Actualization
• Self-Concept – all aspects of
the self perceived in
awareness; may differ from the
organismic self. Experiences
inconsistent with the self-
concept are often denied or
distorted.

4. • Ideal Self – the self a person
aspires to be. A large gap
between self-concept and ideal
self leads to incongruence and
psychological tension.
• Self-Actualization – the subset
of the actualization tendency
related to realizing the
perceived self. Congruence
between the organismic self
and the perceived self leads to
harmony and personal growth.

Awareness
• Awareness – the conscious
perception of experiences;
Rogers used it synonymously
with consciousness and
symbolization.
• Levels of awareness:
1. Experiences below
awareness (ignored or
denied)
2. Experiences freely
admitted to the self-
concept
(nonthreatening,
consistent with self)
3. Experiences distorted to
fit the self-concept
(incongruent
experiences)


Levels of Awareness
Rogers (1959) identified three levels
of awareness:
1. Below Awareness –
Experiences that are ignored or
denied.
o Ignored experiences:
Not attended to because
attention is limited (e.g.,
a woman walking down a
busy street).
o Denied experiences:
Consciousness of the
experience is blocked
due to guilt, fear, or
threat (e.g., a mother
hiding anger toward her
children).
2. Freely Admitted Experiences –
Experiences that are accurately
symbolized and consistent
with the self-concept.

5. o These are
nonthreatening and
accepted into the self-
structure (e.g., a pianist
recognizing a friend’s
compliment about his
skill).
3. Distorted Experiences –
Experiences that are perceived
inconsistently with the self-
concept.
o Distortion occurs to
assimilate the
experience into the
existing self-concept.
o Example: The pianist
being complimented by a
distrusted competitor
may distort the praise
because it feels
threatening.

Denial of Positive Experiences
• People often distort or deny
positive feedback, even when
deserved.
• Positive experiences may be
denied because of distrust of
the giver or feeling
undeserving.
• Compliments can carry an
implied threat, linking approval
with potential criticism.

Becoming a Person
• Contact with others (positive or
negative) is essential for
personal development.
• Developing positive regard
from others leads to positive
self-regard.
• Once established, positive self-
regard becomes autonomous
and self-perpetuating, similar
to Maslow’s ideas on love,
belonging, and self-esteem.

Barriers to Psychological Health
1. Conditions of Worth
• People often receive
conditional positive regard:
acceptance depends on
meeting others’ expectations.
• Leads to evaluation of
experiences based on others’
approval, not one’s organismic
self.

6. • Can result in incongruence and
psychological conflict.
2. Incongruence
• Occurs when self-concept and
organismic experience do not
align.
• Causes psychological
disequilibrium, conflict, and
inconsistent behaviors.
3. Vulnerability
• Greater incongruence → more
vulnerable.
• Lack of awareness of
discrepancies leads to behavior
that seems incomprehensible.
4. Anxiety and Threat
• Gaining awareness of
incongruence produces anxiety.
• Awareness that the self is no
longer congruent leads to feelings
of threat.
5. Defensiveness
• Protects the self-concept by
denying or distorting
inconsistent experiences.
• Distortion: misinterpreting
experiences to fit self-concept.
• Denial: refusing to perceive
experiences.
6. Disorganization
• Occurs when defenses fail and
behavior becomes disorganized
or psychotic-like.
• Behavior may inconsistently
follow organismic experience
or a shattered self-concept.
• Rogers preferred the terms
“defensive” and
“disorganized” over diagnostic
labels like neurotic or
psychotic.

Psychotherapy
• Client-centered therapy:
simple in statement but
difficult in practice. Requires a
therapist who is congruent,
provides unconditional positive
regard, and demonstrates
empathy.

Conditions
• Necessary and sufficient for
therapeutic growth:
1. Congruent therapist

7. 2. Empathy
3. Unconditional positive regard
4. Perception of these qualities by
the client
5. Adequate duration of contact

Counselor Congruence
• Exists when organismic
experiences are matched by
awareness and expression.
• Being real or genuine,
expressing emotions freely
without denial or distortion.
• Involves three components:
feelings, awareness,
expression.
• Incongruence can occur
between feelings and
awareness, or awareness and
expression.

Unconditional Positive Regard
• Acceptance and prizing of
clients without conditions.
• Shows nonpossessive warmth,
respects autonomy, and allows
the client to make their own
choices.
• Constant and unwavering,
regardless of behavior.

Empathic Listening
• Empathy: accurately sensing
the client’s feelings and
communicating understanding.
• Enables clients to feel safe,
understood, and to explore
their experiences.
• Distinct from sympathy (feeling
for a client) – empathy is
feeling with a client.
• Therapist experiences the
client’s feelings cognitively and
emotionally but maintains the
client’s ownership of
experiences.

Process
• When congruence,
unconditional positive regard,
and empathy are present,
therapeutic change occurs.
• Although each client is unique,
the process is lawful and

8. predictable in its general
outcomes.

Stages of Therapeutic Change
• Rogers (1961) divided
constructive personality
change into seven stages on a
continuum from defensive to
integrated.
Stage 1
• Unwillingness to
communicate, extremely rigid,
resistant to change.
• Do not recognize problems or
own feelings.
Stage 2
• Slightly less rigid, talk about
external events and others.
• Disown or fail to recognize own
feelings, may discuss them as
objective phenomena.
Stage 3
• Freely talk about self, but still
as an object.
• Discuss feelings and emotions
in past or future tense, avoid
present feelings.
• Deny individual responsibility
for decisions.
Stage 4
• Begin to discuss deep feelings,
not always presently felt.
• Start recognizing incongruence
between perceived self and
organismic experience.
• Tentatively allow therapeutic
relationship involvement.
Stage 5
• Significant change and growth.
• Express present feelings, rely
on internal locus of evaluation.
• Make own decisions, accept
responsibility.
• Develop differentiation of
feelings.
Stage 6
• Dramatic growth, movement
toward fully functioning/self-
actualizing.
• Allow previously denied or
distorted experiences into
awareness.

9. • Become more congruent,
match experience, awareness,
and expression.
• Develop unconditional self-
regard, experience
physiological loosening.
Stage 7
• Growth continues outside
therapy.
• Become fully functioning
persons of tomorrow,
generalize in-therapy
experiences to real life.
• Unified organismic self and
self-concept, fluid evaluation of
experiences.
• Maintain congruence,
unconditional positive self-
regard, and empathy/love
toward others.

Here’s a clear summary of the
characteristics of the Person of
Tomorrow based on your text:

Characteristics of the Person of
Tomorrow (Rogers)
1. Adaptability – Psychologically
healthy people can adjust to
changing environments and
recognize that blind conformity
or rigid adjustment has little
long-term survival value.
2. Openness to experience –
They accurately perceive and
accept all stimuli, internal or
external, without denial or
distortion. They fully
acknowledge emotions such as
joy, anger, fear, or tenderness.
Trust in the organismic self – They
rely on their own feelings and
experiences as a guide for making
decisions, while respecting the
rights and feelings of others.
3. To live fully in the moment –
They live fully in the present,
appreciating each moment
without preconceived
expectations. They do not
deceive themselves or seek
approval from others.
4. Authenticity and relational
confidence – They can form
honest, intimate, and
nonjudgmental relationships.
They are genuine in
interactions and care for others

10. without possessiveness,
hypocrisy, or defensiveness.
5. Integration and wholeness –
They unify conscious and
unconscious processes, bridge
the gap between real and ideal
self, and openly express their
feelings without facades.
6. Basic trust in human nature –
They act ethically, care for
others, and appropriately
channel aggression while
experiencing anger without
harming others unreasonably.
7. Richness of life experience –
Fully open to all experiences,
they feel emotions deeply, live
in the present, and participate
actively and meaningfully in
life.

Philosophy of Science
Rogers viewed science as
beginning and ending with
subjective experience, but
requiring objective, empirical
methods in between. Scientists,
like the “person of tomorrow,”
must be intuitive, open to
experience, and deeply involved in
their subject. In his Chicago
Studies, Rogers prioritized clinical
problems over methodology,
forming hypotheses from clinical
impressions before developing
methods to test them,
investigating both the process and
outcomes of client-centered
therapy.

Here’s a concise summary of the
Method and Findings sections:
Method: Rogers’ study measured
subtle personality changes using
both objective tests (TAT, Self-
Other Attitude Scale, Willoughby
Emotional Maturity Scale) and the
Q-sort technique for clients’ self-
perceptions. Participants included
18 men and 11 women seeking
therapy, divided into therapy (wait
and no-wait) and control groups.
Therapy sessions were recorded
and transcribed, and testing
occurred at multiple points,
including follow-ups, to control for
motivation, time, and repeated
testing effects.
Findings: Therapy participants
showed reduced discrepancy
between self and ideal self after

11. treatment, with gains largely
maintained at follow-up. Control
participants showed little change.
Changes were more pronounced
in self-concept than in perception
of others, indicating therapy
specifically promoted personal
growth.

Rogers’ concept of real-ideal self
congruence is central to mental
health: the closer one’s real self is
to the ideal self, the healthier and
more adjusted they are. Higgins’
self-discrepancy theory expanded
this to include real-ideal and real-
ought self discrepancies,
predicting that real-ideal gaps lead
to dejection (e.g., depression),
while real-ought gaps lead to
agitation (e.g., anxiety).
Studies on online gaming and
virtual worlds show that people
often create avatars or online
selves closer to their ideal selves,
particularly those with low self-
esteem or high depression. This
can foster positive outcomes like
autonomy or recovery from
negative experiences, but high
escapism can lead to pathological
gaming.
Neuroscientific research shows
that real-ideal self-discrepancy
activates the brain’s reward
center, with genetic differences
(serotonin gene polymorphisms)
influencing emotional responses.
People with “short-short” gene
variants experience greater
reward activation but more
negative emotions, while those
with “long-long” variants feel
more satisfied and less depressed.
These findings link self-
discrepancy to brain activity,
genetics, and emotional
outcomes, though causality is still
unclear.