Humanistic theories on how to self actualize : Carl Rogers Abraham Maslow

[lightsun]

The self is central to personality to humanistic theorist Carl Rogers.
We perceive the world and our experience through our ideas about
the self,our self concept. Rogers sees the self concept as core to
understanding human behavior and personality because according to
Rogers, we "Act according to our self-concept," be it be positive or
negative.
Indeed Rogers feels we create our own "perceptual reality" and live
in our own "subjective" phenomenological world that we create from
our experiences and feelings about our self. To understand the
personality we must enter into the subjective world of a person and
begin to empathize or understand the person from their own subjective
reality.

[lightsun]

Humanistic psychologists believe that man is essentially good and
rational. He is motivated from birth to actualize his self and is
innately driven to self-actualize his or her potential. Given a
nurturing environment in which people give the child the unconditional
positive regard, the child will grow toward enhancement of his
unique self.
Personality to Rogers is the unique expression of each person's
self-actualizing tendency as it unfolds in the person's perceptual
reality. Personality reflects our feelings, beliefs and attitudes
about ourselves, our self concept. If a person"s central motivating
force, the drive for self actualization, is unimpeded, the person will
choose experiences they enhance growth and lead to actualization
of potential and self fulfillment.

[lightsun]

Given unconditional positive regard during development the child
develops into a fully functioning person who is spontaneous, open,
flexible, creative and loving. Fully functioning persons are congruent,
freely expressing their true feelings. Their outside behaviors are
congruent with their inside feelings so they are honest and genuine in
their approach to the world.
Unfortunately the growth process is often thwarted. Instead of
receiving unconditional positive regard the child experiences conditional
positive regard. Instead of acceptance, the developing self experiences
conditions of worth, ways a child must behave to behave to obtain
approval. In Roger's personality theory conditional positive regard is the
cause of poor self image and maladjustment.
 

[lightsun]

Parental criticism and punishment thwarts the developing self and
stunts natural growth. The child now must channel natural growth
energies toward defense mechanisms. He learns to withdraw from,
fight or accept the criticism. Any method he chooses damages his
sense of self worth. He uses elaborate defense mechanisms to
defend against the hurt, anxiety, and tension. Instead of being
genuine the child learns to hide behind masks and play roles or to
simply withhold true feelings. Rogers theorizes that the child may
even in time lose is or her sense of self, conforming and adapting
to the prescriptions of behaviors called conditions of worth to win
external acceptance.

[lightsun]

Negative self concepts, emotional disturbance and mental disorders
are products of conditional positive regard. The person becomes
maladjusted and incongruent as he loses touch with the self inside.
His behaviors on the outside are incongruent with his feelings on the
inside. Humanistic therapies center on assisting the person's honest
self exploration in an atmosphere of unconditional positive regard,
acceptance, respect and empathy in hopes the person can rediscover
the self.
Rogers believes that in a climate of trust and unconditional positive regard,
people can begin to drop their masks, facades, and ego defenses and
become increasingly real and congruent. When they begin to rediscover
their real authentic self the self actualizing tendency will allow them to
grow toward realization of their full potential, a flowering of their sacred
unique self.

[lightsun]

Rogers opposes behaviorists with their use of rewards and
punishments to shape behavior. Rogers argues reinforcements may
lead to conditions of worth, wherein a child believe his worth depends
on his displaying "right" and "proper" attitudes and behaviors.
Children need the approval of others, positive regard, and will distort
perceptions and deny real feelings to conform to outside standards of
behavior. Negative evaluations lead to a negative self concept. A
person begins to doubt his self, his abilities and his worth in the world,
excessive "punishment" indeed.

[lightsun]

The humanistic theory of personality development has led to the
establishment of "free" schools and to courses such as "Parent
Effectiveness Training" that helps parents see their children as
individual special growing personalities with legitimate feelings,
needs and worth. Rather than using control techniques, such
courses teach skills such as empathy, communicating that you
understand the child's feelings, and acceptance of feelings rather
than evaluation and negative judgment.
Critics say humanistic psychology is not a personality theory, but
a philosophy of life. The humanistic view empathizes growth,
freedom, choice creativity other concepts that are difficult to
measure, yet no one can deny the influence of humanistic
psychologists in turning our focus from our animal nature to
our highest human nature, from a Freudian focus on mental
illness to a focus on psychological health and personality growth.

[Lori Anne]

Thank you once again Lightsun!

A number of years ago,  I took a parenting course ~Heart to Heart parenting~ and the Teacher,  whose name was Carol,  a lovely woman who was very compassionate and caring,  used Maslow's writings in a lot of her teachings.  I can really relate to his way.

[lightsun]

Maslow agreed with Rogers, stating in 1968, "To oversimplify the
matter somewhat, it is as if Freud supplied to us the sick half of
psychology and we must now fill it out with the healthy half."
To answer the critics who said that humanistic theories lacked
scientific evidence, Maslow spent his life researching self-
actualized persons and identified personality and behavioral
characteristics of these models of psychological health and well
being.
Maslow found his self-actualized subjects were highly driven by
growth oriented metaneeds. They sought truth and knowledge,
meaning and depth to life and beauty and growth. They actively
pursued fulfillment of their potential and had the following
distinctive characteristics.

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In touch with their self, they were spontaneous, natural, autonomous
and expressed themselves creatively. They possessed empathy for
others and identified with mankind as a whole, often dedicating
their lives to assisting others with problems. They did not distort
reality but perceived reality accurately thing great pleasure in the
basic experiences of life like sunsets. They were at peace with
themselves, others and the world demonstrating great love,
compassion and acceptance towards others.
From his studies of self-actualizing persons Maslow demonstrated
that man can become a fully functioning personality and achieve
his or her unique potential. Perhaps the goal of our existence is growth,
happiness and self fulfillment ; perhaps the meaning in life is the
unfolding of the self.

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Maslow believed that self-actualization was a need, the highest
need in a hierarchy of human needs. Self-actualization needs
are metaneeds or growth oriented needs including uniqueness,
aliveness, playfulness, truth, beauty perfection, creativity, joy and
goodness.
However these growth oriented metaneeds cannot be satisfied
until lower needs are satisfied. The lowest most animalistic needs
are physiological needs for food, water, and physical satisfaction.
The next level in Maslow's hierarchy of needs contains our needs
for safety and security that must be satisfied before we can focus
on higher levels. Threats to one's safety or security can trigger
fear and animalistic responses of aggression. Imagined fears in
places such as dark alleys can also motivate primitive escape
responses.

[lightsun]

The third level of Maslow's hierarchy includes needs we feel for
love and belongingness, human affection and friendships that
give us psychological security and a feeling of connectedness
and worth. The fourth level includes self esteem needs, our
needs for status, recognition, respect and admiration from others.
To feel self pride and self esteem we try to achieve prestige,
status and influence over others.
The four levels of basic needs-physiological, safety, love, self-
esteem-are deficiency needs. Metaneeds, growth oriented
striving, cannot be actualize until the deficiency needs are
satisfied. Maslow believed that the fulfillment of growth
oriented self-actialization needs were crucial to psychological
health and well being. When our metaneeds are not fulfilled
we may become alienated, hostile, depressed, cynical,
manipulative and maladjusted. The key to psychological health
was satisfaction of lower needs so that one could self-actualize
one's potential and fulfill the self. As Maslow stated, "What
a man can be, he must be."