Rogers personality theory the self is the humanistic

Rogers’ Personality Theory
The self is the humanistic term for who we really are as a person. The self is our
inner personality, and can be likened to the soul, or Freud's psyche. The self is
influenced by the experiences a person has in their life, and out interpretations of those
experiences. Two primary sources that influence our self-concept are childhood
experiences and evaluation by others.
According to Rogers (1959), we want to feel experience and behave in ways
which are consistent with our self-image and which reflect what we would like to be like,
our ideal-self. 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.
The humanistic approach states that the self is composed of concepts unique to
us. The self-concept includes three components:
Self-esteem - What we think about ourselves. Rogers believed feelings of self-worth
developed in early childhood and were formed from the interaction of the child with the
mother and father.
Self-image  how we see ourselves, which is important to good psychological health.
Self-image includes the influence of our body image on inner personality. At a simple
level, we might perceive ourselves as a good or bad person, beautiful or ugly. Self-
image has an effect on how a person thinks, feels, and behaves in the world.
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Ideal self  the person who we would like to be. It consists of our goals and ambitions in
life, and is dynamic – i.e. forever changing. The ideal self in childhood is not the ideal
self in our teens or late twenties etc.
There are four major factors that influence self-esteem according to Argyle (2008), he
believes that there were four major factors that influence the self-esteem of a person,
and the four factors are:
The Reaction of Others  If people admire us, flatter us, seek out our company, listen
attentively and agree with us we tend to develop a positive self-image. If they avoid us,
neglect us; tell us things about ourselves that we don’t want to hear we develop a
negative self-image.
Comparison with Others  If the people we compare ourselves with (our reference
group) appear to be more successful, happier, richer, better looking than ourselves we
tend to develop a negative self-image BUT if they are less successful than us our image
will be positive.
Social Roles  Some social roles carry prestige e.g. doctor, airline pilot, TV. Presenter,
premiership footballer and this promotes self-esteem. Other roles carry stigma. E.g.
prisoner, mental hospital patient, refuses collector or unemployed person.
Identification  Roles aren’t just “out there.” They also become part of our personality i.e.
we identity with the positions we occupy, the roles we play and the groups we belong to.