Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionIII. Humanistic/Existential
Theories- Rogers:
Person−Centered Theory
(^326) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
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 be-
tween people’s organismic experience and their view of self. Denial and distortion
are adequate to keep normal people from recognizing this discrepancy, but when the
incongruence between people’s perceived self and their organismic experience is ei-
ther too obvious or occurs too suddenly to be denied or distorted, their behavior be-
comes disorganized. Disorganization can occur suddenly, or it can take place gradu-
ally over a long period of time. Ironically, people are particularly vulnerable to
disorganization during therapy, especially if a therapist accurately interprets their ac-
tions and also insists that they face the experience prematurely (Rogers, 1959).
In a state of disorganization, people sometimes behave consistently with their
organismic experience and sometimes in accordance with their shattered self-
concept. An example of the first case is a previously prudish and proper woman
who suddenly begins to use language explicitly sexual and scatological. The second
case can be illustrated by a man who, because his self-concept is no longer a gestalt
or unified whole, begins to behave in a confused, inconsistent, and totally unpre-
dictable manner. In both cases, behavior is still consistent with the self-concept,
but the self-concept has been broken and thus the behavior appears bizarre and
confusing.
Although Rogers was even more tentative than usual when he first put forth
his views of disorganized behavior in 1959, he made no important revisions in
this portion of his theory. He never wavered in his disdain for using diagnostic la-
bels to describe people. Traditional classifications such as those found in the Di-
agnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition(DSM-IV)
(American Psychiatric
Association, 1994) have
never been part of the
vocabulary of person-
centered theory. In fact,
Rogers always remained
uncomfortable with the
terms “neurotic” and
“psychotic,” preferring
instead to speak of “de-
fensive” and “disorgan-
ized” behaviors, terms
that more accurately con-
vey the idea that psycho-
logical maladjustment is
on a continuum from the
slightest discrepancy be-
tween self and experi-
ence to the most incon-
gruent.
320 Part III Humanistic/Existential Theories
Behavior can become disorganized or even psychotic when one’s
defenses fail to operate properly.