302 Part III Humanistic/Existential Theories
Defensiveness
In order to prevent this inconsistency between our organismic experience and our
perceived self, we react in a defensive manner. Defensiveness is the protection of
the self-concept against anxiety and threat by the denial or distortion of experiences
inconsistent with it (Rogers, 1959). Because the self-concept consists of many
self-descriptive statements, it is a many-faceted phenomenon. When one of our
experiences is inconsistent with one part of our self-concept, we will behave in a
defensive manner in order to protect the current structure of our self-concept.
The two chief defenses are distortion and denial. With distortion, we mis-
interpret an experience in order to fit it into some aspect of our self-concept. We
perceive the experience in awareness, but we fail to understand its true meaning.
With denial, we refuse to perceive an experience in awareness, or at least we keep
some aspect of it from reaching symbolization. Denial is not as common as distor-
tion because most experiences can be twisted or reshaped to fit the current self-
concept. According to Rogers (1959), both distortion and denial serve the same
purpose—they keep our perception of our organismic experiences consistent with
our self-concept—which allows us to ignore or block out experiences that other-
wise would cause unpleasant anxiety or threat.Disorganization
Most people engage in defensive behavior, but sometimes defenses fail and behav-
ior becomes disorganized or psychotic. But why would defenses fail to function?
To answer this question, we must trace the course of disorganized behavior,
which has the same origins as normal defensive behavior, namely a discrepancy
between people’s organismic experience and their view of self. Denial and distor-
tion are adequate to keep normal people from recognizing this discrepancy, but
when the incongruence between people’s perceived self and their organismic expe-
rience is either too obvious or occurs too suddenly to be denied or distorted, their
behavior becomes disorganized. Disorganization can occur suddenly, or it can take
place gradually over a long period of time. Ironically, people are particularly vul-
nerable to disorganization during therapy, especially if a therapist accurately inter-
prets their actions and
also insists that they face
the experience prema-
turely (Rogers, 1959).
In a state of disor-
ganization, people some-
times behave consistently
with their organismic
experience and some-
times in accordance with
their shattered self-con-
cept. An example of the
first case is a previously
prudish and proper
woman who suddenly
begins to use languageBehavior can become disorganized or even psychotic when one’s
defenses fail to operate properly. © Zigy Kaluzny/Getty Images