Theories of Personality 9th Edition

298 Part III Humanistic/Existential Theories

The Ideal Self

The second subsystem of the self is the ideal self, defined as one’s view of self as

one wishes to be. The ideal self contains all those attributes, usually positive, that

people aspire to possess. A wide gap between the ideal self and the self-concept indi-

cates incongruence and an unhealthy personality. Psychologically healthy individuals

perceive little discrepancy

between their self-concept

and what they ideally

would like to be.

Awareness

Without awareness the

self-concept and the

ideal self would not

exist. Rogers (1959)

defined awareness as

“the symbolic represen-

tation (not necessarily in

verbal symbols) of some

portion of our experi-

ence” (p. 198). He used

the term synonymously

with both consciousness

and symbolization.

Incongruence between the ideal self and the perceived self can result in conflict and unhappiness.

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