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On Becoming a Person

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According to Rogers, people could only self-actualize if they had a positive view of themselves (positive self-regard). This can only happen if they have unconditional positive regard from others – if they feel that they are valued and respected without reservation by those around them (especially their parents when they were children). Carl Rogers (1959) believed that humans have one basic motive, which is the tendency to self-actualize– i.e., to fulfill one’s potential and achieve the highest level of “human-beingness” we can. The Good Life Is About Becoming, and Becoming Is About Fulfilling Your Potential Humanist Psychology Is Existentialist Psychology He believed that the experience of being understood and valued gives us the freedom to grow, while pathology generally arises from attempting to earn others’ positive regard rather than following an ‘inner compass’. This means that self-actualization occurs when a person’s “ideal self” (i.e., who they would like to be) is congruent with their actual behavior (self-image).

With that being said, it should be noted that Rogers didn’t expect such a thing; in fact, On Becoming a Person is not even a monograph, but a collection of articles penned by Rogers during a whole decade. Rogers quotes two authors – Abraham Maslow and Ashley Montagu – as the “solitary voices” of protest against the widely accepted notion that “man is irrational, unsocialized, destructive of others and self.” Because only in the first case the psychotherapist truly believes that the person sitting next to him is a person, someone in the process of becoming something, and not someone whose existence is already fixed.He contended that each human being, plant, and animal has an inborn goal to actualize itself as it is. The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, the more consistent or congruent we are and the higher our sense of self-worth. A person is said to be in a state of incongruence if some of the totality of their experience is unacceptable to them and is denied or distorted in the self-image. If that sounds like something every psychotherapist ever has said to you at least a couple of times, consider it Rogers’ fault. I have been trying to suggest what happens in the warmth and understanding of a facilitating relationship with a therapist. It seems that gradually, painfully, the individual explores what is behind the masks he presents to the world, and even behind the masks with which he has been deceiving himself. Deeply and often vividly he experiences the various elements of himself which have been hidden within. Thus to an increasing degree, he becomes himself – not a façade of conformity to others, not a cynical denial of all feeling, nor a front of intellectual rationality, but a living, breathing, feeling, fluctuating process – in short, he becomes a person. Key Lessons from “On Becoming A Person” Hence the child is not loved for the person he or she is, but on condition that he or she behaves only in ways approved by the parent(s).

You see, he realized, after a pretty long career as both a researcher and a clinician, that he – or anyone else for that matter – is simply not competent enough to solve other people’s problems. After all, everyone has them and what really puts one human being in a position above another one? A rich full life: Rogers describes the life of the fully functioning individual as rich, full and exciting, and suggests that they experience joy and pain, love and heartbreak, fear and courage more intensely. His description of the good life: Self-actualization (also referred to as self-realization or self-cultivation) can be described as the complete realization of one’s potential as manifest in peak experiences which involve the full development of one’s abilities and appreciation for life (Maslow, 1962). Any experience that is inconsistent with the organization of the structure of the self may be perceived as a threat, and the more of these perceptions there are, the more rigidly the self structure is organized to maintain itself.There’s another quote from this book we thought we shouldn’t omit, especially having in mind the fact that one of the most influential Western intellectuals at the moment is Jordan Peterson. In other words, this positive regard, love, or acceptance is conditionally based on the individual’s behaviors, attitudes, or views aligning with those expected or valued by the person giving the regard. Somewhere here I want to bring in a learning which has been most rewarding, because it makes me feel so deeply akin to others. I can word it this way. What is most personal is most general. There have been times when in talking with students or staff, or in my writing, I have expressed myself in ways so personal that I have felt I was expressing an attitude which it was probable no one else could understand, because it was so uniquely my own…. In these instances I have almost invariably found that the very feeling which has seemed to me most private, most personal, and hence most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be an expression for which there is a resonance in many other people. It has led me to believe that what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others. This has helped me to understand artists and poets as people who have dared to express the unique in themselves.”

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