Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionIII. Humanistic/Existential
Theories- Rogers:
Person−Centered Theory
© The McGraw−Hill^325
Companies, 2009ismic experience is the source of psychological disorders. Conditions of worth that
we received during early childhood lead to a somewhat false self-concept, one based
on distortions and denials. The self-concept that emerges includes vague perceptions
that are not in harmony with our organismic experiences, and this incongruence be-
tween self and experience leads to discrepant and seemingly inconsistent behaviors.
Sometimes we behave in ways that maintain or enhance our actualizing tendency,
and at other times, we may behave in a manner designed to maintain or enhance a
self-concept founded on other people’s expectations and evaluations of us.
Vulnerability The greater the incongruence between our perceived self (self-
concept) and our organismic experience, the more vulnerable we are. Rogers (1959)
believed that people are vulnerablewhen they are unaware of the discrepancy be-
tween their organismic self and their significant experience. Lacking awareness of
their incongruence, vulnerable people often behave in ways that are incomprehensi-
ble not only to others but also to themselves.
Anxiety and Threat Whereas vulnerability exists when we have no awareness of
the incongruence within our self, anxiety and threat are experienced as we gain
awareness of such an incongruence. When we become dimly aware that the discrep-
ancy between our organismic experience and our self-concept may become con-
scious, we feel anxious. Rogers (1959) defined anxietyas “a state of uneasiness or
tension whose cause is unknown” (p. 204). As we become more aware of the incon-
gruence between our organismic experience and our perception of self, our anxiety
begins to evolve into threat: that is, an awareness that our self is no longer whole or
congruent. Anxiety and threatcan represent steps toward psychological health be-
cause they signal to us that our organismic experience is inconsistent with our self-
concept. Nevertheless, they are not pleasant or comfortable feelings.
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 in-
consistent with it (Rogers, 1959). Because the self-concept consists of many self-
descriptive statements, it is a many-faceted phenomenon. When one of our experi-
ences 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 misin-
terpret an experience in order to fit it into some aspect of our self-concept. We per-
ceive 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 distortion be-
cause most experiences can be twisted or reshaped to fit the current self-concept. Ac-
cording 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 otherwise would cause un-
pleasant anxiety or threat.
Chapter 11 Rogers: Person-Centered Theory 319