Humanism and Existentialism: Part 3 - Humanistic Psychologists - Carl Rogers

1- Introduction

We live in the prison of our selves, but we must constantly find ways to evade from it.
Culture is being destroyed by institutionalized social communication, that is manipulated to put us horse blinders, that shut our minds for the awareness of our ignorance about ourselves and the wheels of the world, accelerating to control humanity, with mediatic mesmerizing manipulation of the archetypal people's feelings, to induce passiveness and isolationism of the self.

"Every Man must live alone and die alone" - Carl Rogers

When you have a strong feeling of liking yourself, you find big comfort in Loneliness, where we can close the doors to the others and society, and we are separated from the world, to be able to think.
True Solitude is being alone without feeling lonely.
But meanwhile Solitude is killing people in our era, more than never before, but loneliness, when you like yourself can be the revelation of our own uniqueness as space where we meet our deep feelings, creativity and fantasies.
We have to create open spaces for the exercise of the freedom expression of people' feelings and thoughts, to find their own ways, without making a psychological diagnosis, make advice or heal people because only we can find the "cure".

It is indisputable and undeniable that Freud changed the way we see the human being and the world after the 20th century, but he wanted to preserve the respectability of an institutionalized psychoanalysis in the medical practices, so he limited other people that would want to bring new points of view to the club of Vienna.
For him, new ideas out of his dogmas meant expulsion from the cathedral of knowledge of psychoanalysis, and even stigmatization and ostracization, that happened to a lot of members that dared to shake the Graal that Freud wanted to see recognized by the medical and mental institutions, and I'm just going to name some of the "outlawed" like Otto Rank, Carl Jung, and Wilhelm Reich.

But the new ideas out of the box of psychoanalysis didn't die, and today they are taking terrain from the orthodox psychoanalysis, and are being revived and applied in multiple fields of human sciences.
With Humanistic psychology, a new movement emerged after WWII, to focus on the human nature empowered with the capacity of self-actualization, to explore their own road to freedom, to achieve the full potential and development for the fulfillment of a meaningful life.
In the 60's the flower power generation was more sympathetic to these models of humanistic therapy, with the call for freedom to attain the full potentiality of life, where you are the only healer.

2 - Carl Rogers (1902–1987)

“A person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.” - Carl R. Rogers

Abraham Maslow with the concept of self-actualization that was already elaborated by Kurt Goldstein, influences Carl Rogers to unveil the new concept of people being naturally made to grow.
Carl Rogers started new principles centered in the self of the person and the potentialities, focusing the analysis in the client of psychotherapies, not so closed and dark like Freud's views of limitations and rules for practice, that would never admit any other alternative, except the long a painful road that would make you conscious of your childhood problems.

"The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it." - Carl Rogers

For Carl Rogers being yourself is the acceptance of the others as human nature, starting by changing the view of a "patient" to be seen as a "client";, in an equal ground with the therapist, where people can find, analyze, and solve their problems, based and built in a culture of empathy.
He saw the development of the personality by principles to work ourselves, instead of the stages to reach, to develop a high level of consciousness of the amalgam of our self, to find our differentiation an uniqueness.
With regard to development, Rogers described principles rather than stages, where the main issue is the nourishing of the self-concept, and the progress from an undifferentiated self to a being fully aware of the way we see ourselves.

In the phenomenal field is the realm of experience changing by self-actualization and self-determination, centered in the client, an open space where there is freedom of speech with total regard by the therapist, of the standpoints and views of the person.
Rogers and some of his students investigated the problem of self-perception, based on our self-concept and its relation with other variables like the acceptance of others, the feelings towards them, or our defensive behaviors, in the growth of our self-concept.
They found out that people with greater self-acceptance capacity are those that have a higher level of self-awareness and realistic perception of the others, and have insights resulting from their empathy in experiencing with them.

"The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change." - Carl R. Rogers

The insights on Being appears to be strongly related to the capacity to stay out of our conceptions about our selves, and the strength to look at the self from the point of view of others.
In order to see ourselves as others see us, we need to structure the situation from the point of view of the others and transpose it to our inner thinking and feeling.
The concepts of the humanist philosophy, based in the self-balanced equilibrium of cognition and emotions in the person's socialization, that should be attained by a self-taught learning process, driven by well-being, to make us aware that we have to express our psychological needs and feelings, to build a self-image and self-esteem as a basis for a strong self-concept, leading to self-fulfillment.
A person inhabits in an organism aiming for its full potentiality and to attains a high level of ontological security to achieve the "good life" by a series of principles that will change the way people perceive themselves during psychotherapy, to gain self-worth feelings.

"The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination." - Carl Rogers

We must open ourselves to experience by putting down our defenses, have a fulfiling lifestyle for the strengthening of our self-concept, increasing self-security in the choice of the right behaviors, growing freedom of choice by enlarging our range of decisions to play a social role, encounter the gift of creativity in existence in opposition to conformism and passiveness, to be reliable and built an equilibrium for the organismic needs.
He calls a "real self"; the one based in self-actualization, in a body with needs and values, collecting positive feedback and self-esteem to feed the self-concept, in a position that he calls congruency to have an authentic and genuine existence fed by empathy and acceptance of the others with positive regard.

"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change." - Carl R. Rogers

Incongruent people, in spite of looking for positive regard, they have limited potential growth, by their falseness in relation to life, for the reduced self-actualization, to finish in an "ideal self", instead of aiming to find the real one.
Incongruency and Congruency are the flip sides of the coin, defining the psychopathologic axis of the personality traits of an individual.
In life, Incongruency is the hole between the dynamic of the "real self" and the desired "ideal self" that can never be met, accompanied by disregard to the others people's feelings and thoughts and low self-worth.
Incongruence is a sign of strong defense mechanisms like distortion, denial, and repression of what it is felt like a threat, to avoid the truth, reducing its consciousness, that increases the rigidity of the self.

Carl Rogers defined also the basic needs of children for positive development, first the positive regard of unconditional acceptance by the people around them, to create the conditions for the child's positive self-worth with self-security and good feelings about him or herself, exposition to challenges, to like social encounters, and to overcome the failures and times of sadness.
A negative attitude feeds a bad self-concept, reduces the self-esteem and the self-image, while a positive one boosts the force and consistency of the ontological security of our personality.
The self-concept consists of two parts, the self-image, the way a person sees and feel about the body, and the self-esteem, the value that an individual attributes to him/herself.
Self-esteem is a personal judgment of valuation (the value that a person attaches to him/herself) that is expressed in the attitudes that the individual takes upon himself, and the Self-image is related to the way we see the image of the body and it is correlated with the self-esteem.

I leave here the formula about the self-concept that I have already mentioned on Steemit, working with the mirror of the "looking-glass-self" as the evaluation the individual does to him/herself based on the other(s), a concept introduced by Charles Cooley defining the notion of "Looking-Glass-Self," seeing the self-concept largely depending on how the individual interprets the reactions and opinions of the preponderant people in their environment.

"Through the reactions of others we discover what we are." - Charles Cooley

Ronald D. Laing emphasizes the interpretive compound of personal perception, forming the self-concept from what we think are the reactions of others to us. This idea leads us to the notion of the "other internalized".

Self-Concept = f [ (Looking-Glass-Self) x (Self-Image + Self-Esteem)]

Cooley's emphasizes that self-awareness is built by interpersonal relationships, as a result of the process of socialization.
Today the client-centered and non-directive therapy of Carl Rogers, even have applications to the field of political citizen leadership that empower them with a way of being that gives the capacity to educate themselves, in a new process of learning that will give back their rights and social participation.
Carl Rogers created a whole new generation of psychologists with the techniques of “non-directive” counseling and therapy, oriented by quite extensive clear rules, stated in 19 propositions that you can read here.
Rogers also influenced education with the concept of student-centered learning, where the pupil is involved in the choice of his own way in self-learning and follow their perceived capabilities and the potential to grow.

Photo Source: Carl Rogers- Wikipedia

“When the other person is hurting, confused, troubled, anxious, alienated, terrified; or when he or she is doubtful of self-worth, uncertain as to identity, then understanding is called for. The gentle and sensitive companionship of an empathic stance… provides illumination and healing. In such situations, deep understanding is, I believe, the most precious gift one can give to another.” - Carl R. Rogers

The next post is about Erich Fromm that wanted to awake us about our the fear of freedom that blocks our choice for a "good life".