M2. Lesson 2: Person Centered Theory

Question 1

What is the formative tendency?

Answer 1

The formative tendency states that all matter, both organic and inorganic, tends to evolve from simple to more complex forms.

Question 2

What is the actualization tendency?

Answer 2

Humans and other animals possess an actualization tendency: that is, the predisposition to move toward completion or fulfillment.

Question 3

What is self-actualization (according to Carl Rogers)?

Answer 3

Self-actualization develops after people evolve a self-system and refers to the tendency to move toward becoming a fully functional person.

Question 4

How does the concept of barriers to psychological growth work?

Answer 4

An individual becomes a person by making contact with a caregiver whose positive regard for that individual fosters positive self-regard. Barriers to psychological growth exist when a person experiences conditions of worth, incongruence, defensiveness, and disorganization. Conditions of worth and external evaluation lead to vulnerability, anxiety, and threat and prevent people from experiencing unconditional positive regard.

Question 5

When does incongruence develop?

Answer 5

Incongruence develops when the organismic self and the perceived self do not match.

Question 6

What happens when the organismic and perceived self become incongruent?

Answer 6

When the organismic self and perceived self are incongruent, people will become defensive and use distortion and denial as attempts to reduce incongruence.

Question 7

What happens when distortion and denial are insufficient to block out the incongruence?

Answer 7

People become disorganized whenever distortion and denial are insufficient to block out incongruence.

Question 8

What happens to vulnerable people?

Answer 8

Vulnerable people are unaware of their incongruence and are likely to become anxious, threatened, and defensive.

Question 9

What happens when vulnerable people come in contact with a therapist?

Answer 9

When vulnerable people come in contact with a therapist who is congruent and who has unconditional positive regard and empathy, the process of personality change begins.

Question 10

What does the process of therapeutic personality change consist of?

Answer 10

This process of therapeutic personality change ranges from extreme defensiveness, or an unwillingness to talk about self, to a final stage in which clients become their own therapists and are able to continue psychological growth outside the therapeutic setting.

Question 11

What are the basic outcomes of client-centered counseling?

Answer 11

The basic outcomes of client-centered counseling are congruent clients who are open to experiences and who have no need to be defensive. Theoretically, successful clients will become persons of tomorrow, or fully functioning persons.

Question 12

What was Carl Rogers the founder of?

Answer 12

The founder of client-centered therapy

Question 13

What kind of psychology professional was Rogers?

Answer 13

Unlike Freud, who was primarily a theorist and secondarily a therapist, Rogers was a consummate therapist but only a reluctant theorist (Rogers, 1959).

Question 14

What was Carl Rogers more concerned with?

Answer 14

He was more concerned with helping people than with discovering why they behaved as they did. He was more likely to ask “How can I help this person grow and develop?” than to ponder the question “What caused this person to develop in this manner?”

Question 15

What did Rogers have in common with other theorists?

Answer 15

Like many personality theorists, Rogers built his theory on the scaffold provided by experiences as a therapist.

Question 16

Compared to other theorists, how was Rogers different?

Answer 16

Unlike most of these other theorists, however, he continually called for empirical research to support both his personality theory and his therapeutic approach.

Question 17

What did Rogers advocate for?

Answer 17

Perhaps more than any other therapist-theorist, Rogers (1986) advocated a balance between tender-minded and hardheaded studies that would expand knowledge of how humans feel and think.

Question 18

Why did Rogers not feel comfortable with theories?

Answer 18

Even though he formulated a rigorous, internally consistent theory of personality, Rogers did not feel comfortable with the notion of theory. His personal preference was to be a helper of people and not a constructor of theories. To him, theories seemed to make things too cold and external, and he worried that his theory might imply a measure of finality.

Question 19

What happened to Rogers and his formulation of the client-centered theory?

Answer 19

During the 1950s, at a midpoint in his career, Rogers was invited to write what was then called the “client-centered” theory of personality, and his original statement is found in Volume 3 of Sigmund Koch’s Psychology: A Study of a Science (see Rogers, 1959). Even at that time, Rogers realized that 10 or 20 years hence, his theories would be different; but unfortunately, throughout the intervening years, he never systematically reformulated his theory of personality. Although many of his subsequent experiences altered some of those earlier ideas, his final theory of personality rests on that original foundation spelled out in the Koch series.