Abnormal Psych Carl Rogers\' Person-Centered

Abnormal Psych

Carl Rogers' person-centered theory is based on the assumption that human beings are essentially good. How would Rogers approach extreme cases of misanthropy, such as terrorism or sociopathy?

Rogers would have claimed that in all cases of extreme misanthropy, the individual held and then acted upon distorted views. Although Rogers would have admitted that each individual case is different, he would have acknowledged the universal human need for empathy and unconditional love. Misanthropes and psychopaths must, according to Rogers, have reacted to fear and anxiety and turned those emotions into violent behaviors. Even if Rogers could not have successfully treated a sociopath or a terrorist, he would have avowed the relevance of person-centered therapy as being the only way to perpetuate compassion for the human experience.

Freud believed in a deterministic view of the psyche. Human beings are basically slaves to internal drives and instincts. Freud proposed multiple levels of consciousness including the unconscious, pre-conscious, and conscious. The unconscious contains the instincts that human beings are unaware of on a conscious level but which to a large degree determine feelings and behaviors. The pre-conscious is the level where such suppressed and unconscious motives start to bubble to the surface, or the conscious level. Anything human beings are aware of is at the conscious level. The three levels of consciousness are parallel with the three parts of the human being: id, ego, and superego. The id is the emotionally driven part of the human being that only seeks immediate gratification and operates based on unconscious impulses. The ego is the conscious mind aware of the self, and the super ego is the list of social norms. Because the super ego seeks to restrict and control impulses, it can create anxiety within the ego as it mitigates between id and superego.

3. Freud's theories focus almost exclusively on negative emotions. How might Freud address the positive emotions associated with the human experience including love and compassion?

Freud was concerned with negative emotions and their possible origins. When addressing positive emotions, Freud might have assumed that individuals who were raised in ideal environments and who did not develop sexual hang-ups were more likely to experience positive emotions than anxiety. Freud might also claim that positive emotions were the result of working through neuroses in psychotherapy, but his overall view of the human condition remained bleak.

4. The DSM-IV-TR is the latest version of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The tome outlines categories of mental illnesses, offering criteria that practitioners can use to diagnose clients such as symptoms. The DMS-IV-TR is useful but has many limitations. First, it creates a standard of labeling individuals and can lead to stigma or pigeonholing. Second, it does not acknowledge differences that might exist between different cultures that could affect the way mental illnesses are viewed.

5. A large number of prison inmates are clinically diagnosed with mental illnesses and receive treatment in prison. In a sense, prisons have become part of the mental health care system. What affect is this having on the mental health care system and what if anything should be done about it?