The Development of the Self in Childhood

As infants gradually develop a more complex experiential field from widening social encounters, one part of their experience becomes differential from the rest. Ideally, according to Rogers; the self is a consistent pattern, an organized whole. All aspects of the self strive for consistency.

Positive Regard:
As the self emerges, infants develop a need for what Rogers called positive regard. This need includes acceptance, love, and approval from other people, most notably from the mother during infancy. Infant fined it satisfying to receive positive regard, but if mother doesn’t offer it then the infant’s innate tendency toward actualization and development of the self concepts.

However, if positive regard for the infant persists when an infant has undesirable behaviors, the condition is called unconditional positive regard. According to Rogers, Unconditional positive regards is the approval granted regardless of a person’s behavior. In Roger’s person-center therapy offers the client unconditional positive regard.

In time, positive regard will come more from other people, a condition Rogers called positive self-regard. In other word, positive self regard is the condition under which we grant ourselves acceptance and approval.

Conditions of Worth:
Conditions of worth evolve from this developmental sequence of positive regard leading to positive self-regard. Positive self-regard is Roger’s version of the Freudian superego, and it derives from conditional positive regard. Children may feel they are worthy only under certain conditions. The internalize their parents’ norms and standards, they view themselves as worthy or unworthy, good or bad, according to the terms the parents defined.

Children thus learn to avoid behavior that otherwise might be personally satisfying. Therefore, they no longer function freely. They inhibit their development by living within the confines of their conditions of worth.

Incongruence:
Incongruence is a discrepancy between a person’s self-concept and aspects of his her experience. Sometimes children will have a distorted concept of their experiential world and may come to evaluate experiences or accept or reject them, by what others think of them. This tendency can lead to incongruence between the self-concept and the experiential world, the environment as we perceive it.
Experiences that are incongruent with our self-concept become threatening and are manifested as anxiety. On the other hand, our level of psychological adjustment and emotional health is a function of the congruence between our self concepts and experience. Psychologically healthy people are able to perceive themselves and they are open to new experience because nothing threatens their self-concept.