009- PSY102 Part II, Chapter 9 Rodgers

Humanistic theories emphasize our inborn potential for healthygrowth and development.Psychopathology occurs when our healthypotentials are blocked by pathogenic parenting or other harmfulenvironmental forces.Common symptoms include an inability toknow what one really wants and to enjoy a meaningful life.Rejected Freud's pessimistic view of human nature and argued thatour inner potentials are entirely positive. We have an innate tendencyto develop these healthy capacities (actualization), and we are bornwith the ability to value positively (or negatively) that which willactualize (or not actualize) these potentials. However, we also have apowerful need for our parents'love (positive regard). Psychopathology occurs when parents make their affection andnurturing conditional on the child's personality meeting theirstandards, which causes the child to give up the healthy drive foractualization in order to keep the parents'positive regard.The child therefore introjects the parents'standards,and tries to satisfy these conditions of worth instead of actualizing his or her true potentials.The psychotherapist uses genuineness, empathy,and unconditionalpositive regard to establish a constructive personal relationship withclients,who learn to abandon their conditions of worth and replacethem with their real needs and wishes.Argued that our inner potentials are entirely positive, but are weak and can easily be overwhelmed by pathogenic learning.Sought tointegrate the best aspects of various theories of personality (eclecticism).Human needs form a hierarchy,where we do not try to satisfy (and donot even become aware of) higher-level needs until lower-level needshave at least to some extent been satisfied. The highest-level need (self-actualization) involves fulfillingour healthy innate potentials, leads todifferent kinds of behavior, and is very difficultto achieve. Devised an existential theory of personality that emphasizes thescience of being (ontology):what it means to exist as a distinctivelyhuman organism for one fleeting and random moment in an eternityof time,in one small and random corner of an infinitely vast universe. Personality is a unified whole,the unconscious is very important,and we must have the courage to assert our existence and make our ownchoices despite our anxiety about non being and death.

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As the 20th century progressed toward the halfway point, some psychoanalysts andpsychotherapists encountered a puzzling phenomenon. Social standards had become farmore permissive than in Freud's day,especially with regard to sexuality. In theory, thisgreater liberalism should have helped to alleviate troublesome id-superego conflicts andreduce the number of neuroses. Yet while hysterical neurosis and repression did seem tobe less common than inVictorian times, more people than ever before were enteringpsychotherapy.And they suffered from such new and unusual problems as an inability toenjoy the new freedom of self-expression (or, for that matter, to feel much of anything), andan inner emptiness and self-estrangement. Ratherthan hoping to cure some symptom, these patientsneeded an answer to a more philosophicalquestion: how to remedy the apparent meaning-lessness of their lives.As we have seen, some theorists tried toresolve this pressing issue within a more or lesspsychoanalytic framework (e.g., the Eriksonianidentity crisis, Fromm's conception of escape fromfreedom). However, other noted psychologistscalled into question the basic rationale underlyinganalytic therapy. They pointed out that Freud'sinsights may have applied brilliantly to the Victorianera, when an aura of repulsiveness surrounded thetopic of sexuality and people suffered from themisconception that personality was wholly rationaland conscious. But they argued that constructs likepsychic determinism and the structural model, andFreud's pessimism about human nature, were now aggravating the modern patient's apathyby depicting personality as mechanical, fragmented, malignant, and totally preordained byprior causes.One major critic of Freudian pessimism was Carl Rogers. LikeAdler and some of theneo-Freudians,Rogers was no stranger to the rancorous side of scientific inquiry. In 1939,some 10 years after receiving his doctorate degree in psychology, Rogers's position asdirector of a child guidance clinic was strongly challenged by orthodox psychiatrists-notbecause of any question as to the quality of his work, but on the grounds that nononmedical practitioner could be sufficiently qualified to head up a mental health operation.