A Critical Introduction to Psychology

Critical Perspectives on Personality and Subjectivity 191

inherently optimistic rather than pessimistic. One of the most remarkable
aspects of humanistic psychology is that many of its insights were
conceived or inspired by considering experiences from humanity’s darkest
hours during World War II. As Dumont (2010) notes, Kurt Goldstein
became convinced that a human being’s primary motivation was to
actualize their individual capacities through his study of German war
veterans (p. 64). The theme of a self-actualizing tendency pervading all
living things runs throughout the work of Goldstein, Maslow and Rogers.
However, it is worth noting that the term ‘self-actualizing tendency’ is
used somewhat differently by Rogers and Maslow. Rogers makes a
distinction between the general actualizing tendency of an organism and a
narrower self-actualizing tendency. Rogers (1959) defines the actualizing
tendency as “the inherent tendency of the organism to develop all its
capacities in ways which serve to maintain or enhance the organism” (p.
196). Rogers describes moments where one’s self-concept is incongruent
with one’s current experience, leading to a state of contradiction between
the organism’s actualizing tendency and a countervailing tendency to
actualize one’s socially conditioned self-concept. Rogers thus (1959)
states:

In a manner which will be described in the theory of personality a

discrepancy frequently develops between the self as perceived, and the

actual experience of the organism...What is commonly called neurotic

behavior is one example, the neurotic behavior being the product of the

actualizing tendency, whereas in other respects the individual is

actualizing the self. Thus the neurotic behavior is incomprehensible to the

individual himself, since it is at variance with what he consciously

“wants” to do, which is to actualize a self no longer congruent with

experience. (p. 203, emphasis added)

Rogers’ distinction between the organism’s actualizing tendency and a
countervailing tendency to self-actualize might be read through a
psychoanalytic lens, namely as indicating a conflict between the
prerogatives of the id to actualize the organism’s baser motives/needs and
the ego/superego’s countervailing tendency to present a socially acceptable