The Self and the Tendency toward Actualization

Rogers early research reinforced the importance of the self in the formation of the personality. He investigated the child’s background and had the child rated on factors he believed would influence behavior that are the family environment, health, intellectual development, economic circumstances, cultural influence, social interactions and level of education but all of these factors are external. He also investigated a potential internal influence that is bellow-

Self:
In Rogers' view, the self is the central ingredient in human personality and personal adjustment. Rogers suggested that the factors of family environment and social interactions would correlate most strongly with delinquent behavior, however; the factor that most accurately predicted later behavior was self-insight. Rogers believed the focus of counselors should be trying to modify children’s self-insight.

Tendency toward Actualization:
According to Rogers, Actualization tendency is the basic human motivation to actualize, maintaining and enhance the self. He believed people are motivated by an innate tendency to actualize, maintain, and enhance the self. This drive toward self-actualization is part of a larger actualization tendency, which encompasses all physiological and psychological needs. This tendency begins in the womb and is responsible for maturation. This process takes determination and may include struggle and pain. The governing process throughout the life span, as Rogers envisioned it, is the organismic valuing process. We evaluate all life experiences through this process.


The Experiential World
In the developing his theory, Rogers weighed the impact of the experiential word in which we operate daily. This provides a frame of reference or context that influences our growth. Rogers wanted to know how we perceive and react to our multifaceted world of experience, by saying that the reality of our environment depends on our perception of it, which may not always coincide with reality.

The notion that perception is subjective is an old one and not unique to Rogers. The idea called phenomenology, argues that the only reality of experience. In Roger’s view, the most important point about our world of experience is that it is private and thus can only be known completely to each of us.