Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionIII. Humanistic/Existential
Theories- Rogers:
Person−Centered Theory
(^322) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
certain aspects of their selves, such as experiences of dishonesty, when such experi-
ences are not consistent with their self-concept.
Thus, once people form their self-concept, they find change and significant
learnings quite difficult. Experiences that are inconsistent with their self-concept
usually are either denied or accepted only in distorted forms.
An established self-concept does not make change impossible, merely diffi-
cult. Change most readily occurs in an atmosphere of acceptance by others, which
allows a person to reduce anxiety and threat and to take ownership of previously re-
jected experiences.
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 in-
dicates incongruenceand an unhealthy personality. Psychologically healthy indi-
viduals 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 awarenessas “the symbolic representation (not necessarily in verbal sym-
bols) of some portion of our experience” (p. 198). He used the term synonymously
with both consciousness and symbolization.
Levels of Awareness
Rogers (1959) recognized three levels of awareness. First, some events are experi-
enced below the threshold of awareness and are either ignoredor denied.An ignored
experience can be illustrated by a woman walking down a busy street, an activity that
presents many potential stimuli, particularly of sight and sound. Because she cannot
attend to all of them, many remain ignored.An example of deniedexperience might
be a mother who never wanted children, but out of guilt she becomes overly solici-
tous to them. Her anger and resentment toward her children may be hidden to her for
years, never reaching consciousness but yet remaining a part of her experience and
coloring her conscious behavior toward them.
Second, Rogers (1959) hypothesized that some experiences are accurately
symbolizedand freely admitted to the self-structure. Such experiences are both non-
threatening and consistent with the existing self-concept. For example, if a pianist
who has full confidence in his piano-playing ability is told by a friend that his play-
ing is excellent, he may hear these words, accurately symbolize them, and freely
admit them to his self-concept.
A third level of awareness involves experiences that are perceived in a dis-
tortedform. When our experience is not consistent with our view of self, we reshape
or distort the experience so that it can be assimilated into our existing self-concept.
If the gifted pianist were to be told by a distrusted competitor that his playing was
316 Part III Humanistic/Existential Theories