This document discusses Carl Rogers' theory of the fully functioning person. [1] Rogers believed people have an innate tendency toward self-actualization. [2] For a person to be fully functioning, their real self must be congruent with their ideal self. [3] When a person reaches this state of congruency, they are able to live fully through openness, existential living, organismic trusting, experiential freedom, and creativity.

1. Who am I?
What do I enjoy?
How do others see me?
What do I find challenging?

2. What kind of person do I want
to be?
What am I aiming to achieve?
What do I want out of my life?

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CARL ROGERS

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Carl Rogers and his
Theories
Actualizing Tendency
Real vs. Ideal Self Congruence

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Actualizing Tendency
 A single “force of life”; the built-in motivation present in every
life-form to develop its potentials to the fullest extent possible.
 In the course of actualizing their potentials, we created society
and culture.

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“Self-actualization implies
that the person is acceptantly
Self- aware of what’s going on
Actualization within and is consequently
changing practically every
moment and is moving on in
complexity.”
Rogers, C. from Evans, R. I. 1975, pp. 17

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Real vs Ideal

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Real Self
Organismic Valuing
Positive Regard
Positive Self-Regard

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Organismic Valuing
 Organisms know what is good for
them
 Evolution has provided us with
the senses, the tastes, the
discriminations we need
 We instinctively value positive
regard

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Positive Regard
 Rogers’ umbrella term for things
like love, affection, attention,
nurturance, etc

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Positive Self-Regard
 Self-esteem, self-worth and
self-image all come under this
idea.
 These feelings and images
come from others showing
positive regard to us and
caring for us (e.g.
compliments)
 Without this self-regard, we
feel small and helpless, and
again we fail to become all
that we can be

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Ideal Self
Conditions of Worth
Conditional Positive Regard
Conditional Positive Self-Regard

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Conditions of Worth
 Society also leads us astray
with conditions of worth
 Parents, teachers, peers, the
media, and others, only give us
what we need when we show
we are “worthy,” rather than just
because we need it.
 E.g. We go to the toilet if we ask
the teacher, we get something
sweet when we finish our
vegetables, and most
importantly, we get love and
affection if and only if we
“behave!”

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Conditional Positive Regard
 Getting positive regard on “on condition”
 Society gives us positive regard only when we do what they
want (the reward to the condition of worth)

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Conditional Self-Regard
 Conditioning leads people to only like themselves when they
meet the standards society sets
 Standards were created without keeping each individual in
mind  unable to meet them  unable to maintain any sense
of self-esteem.

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The
Fully-Functioning
Person

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Congruency
 Where the individual’s real self is parallel to their ideal self
 once a person has reached congruency they are able to live
life fully, which Rogers focuses into 5 areas

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Openess to Experience
Carl Rogers, 1961
“[the individual] is more able fully to live the
experiences of his organism rather than shutting
them out of awareness.”
 Fully-functioning people are able to experience
things to the full extent, without defences stopping
them
 Comfortable with real self = feeling and sensing new
things without fear of judgement

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Existential Living
 Living in the here-and-now; The present is the only reality we
have.
 Doesn't mean we shouldn't remember and learn from our past.
Nor that we shouldn't plan the future.
 Just recognize these things for what they are: memories and
dreams, which are being experienced in the present.

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Organismic Trusting
 Trust the real self, do what feels right, what comes naturally.
 One can only know what your real self has to say if you are
open to experience and living existentially!
 Assumes you are in contact with the actualizing tendency.

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Experiential Freedom
 Irrelevant whether or not people really had free will.
 One feels free when choices are available to us.
 The fully-functioning person acknowledges that feeling of
freedom, and takes responsibility for his/her choices.

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Creativity
 Free and responsible  participate in the world.
 Obliged to contribute to the actualization of others, even life
itself.
 This can be through creativity in the arts or sciences, through
social concern and parental love, or simply by doing one's best
at one's job.
 Creativity as Rogers uses it is very close to Erikson’s
generativity.

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Incongruence
 occurs when ideal and real self are not similar > more disparity
> more problems created

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