Personal Growth in Rogerian Perspective

Puzzled process of development

Personal Development is a long process of human puzzling. Many different stages of our life create something new. It exists every time something important or useful occurs in the rest of our being. In this post I will touch base on the Rogerian Theory and I will continue with the Introduction to Humanistic and Existential approaches.

According to Carl Rogers, the essence of personal growth is the “Self” where he believes the person changes during their life and creates their personality during their existence by experiences and self-concept (self-image, self-worth or self-esteem, and ideal self).

Since an individual’s self-image is depicted as how we see ourselves, we make an opinion about our body image or perceive our self as wise or obtuse because we are influenced by parents, a member of family, friends, social media and other factors in the human environment. The self-image could be very important for another factor such as self-esteem and self-worth, where we find what we are thinking about ourselves. This believing system aroused and formed in childhood, could stay indefinitely throughout adulthood. Next aspect of the Rogerian school is the ideal self, where we imagine who we would like to be, according to our ambitions and aims in life. The ideal self is not persistent, as the typical self-consistently changes and it depends on circumstances in life and could vary from person to person.

We see what we believe.

The emotional state as a core of self-concept can be individual and have personal meaning. It could possibly have happened personally at some stage, as it is projected as not what we want to see or how others see us. For instance, Johari Window shows the deeper examination of our own self and how others perceive us and how we pervade ourselves.

According to Person-Centred Therapy (PCT), Rogerian believes that the individual and the unique experience of humans as letting them be the human and the expert on his life with the person perception. As stated before, when two people observe the same pigeon, they have two different experiences and two feelings. Two people look at the same object through the window and will have different perceptions as well as spotting different objects in the same direction of view. Considering the growth and personal development, we cannot forget about self-awareness, where we have to ask ourselves “Who am I?” and explore the power of the big “Why”?

An outstanding value in the process of development we hold is an initial core condition such as empathy, where we learn how to understand others more genuinely and adequately.

Unconditional positive regard is utilised in the therapeutic process and is not dependent on the client’s personality or behaviour. As theories of counselling provide the therapist with a conceptual framework, others will ask how and which way it can work. That will allow those to think systematically about human development and the therapeutic process.

As a grown person, we accept others unconditionally without bias and prejudice. For instance, I still offer help no matter what condition the client will present. A typical example of conditional behaviour would be where the parent prefers where their children are calm and gentle in other ways the guardians start to be conditional towards the kids. In other words “if you behave nicely and you be good i will be love you more” That should not happens during the session and client must receiving an “unconditional positive regard” and following Rogers’ path the psychotherapist will be following the teaching principles when showing evidence of high-quality openness and a genuine person. Finally, during a demonstration as part of Carl Rogers ‘person-centred therapy (PCT) session with Gloria, the observer will note how Gloria has shown significant evidence of how we can develop during a psychotherapist session, using only one type of therapy, following Rogers’ thoughts in the humanistic sciences.

“I feel more comfortable the way you are talking to me in a low voice, and I don’t feel you will be so harsh on me.”

Gloria.