Roger\'s Theory of the Development of Personality

Carl Roger's Theory Of Personality Development

In Rogerian therapy the therapist enters into the client's "phenomenological world" and in mirroring this world the therapist does not disagree nor point out contradictions, nor delve into the unconscious (http://www.wynja.com/personality/rogerst.html).Therapy focuses on immediate conscious experience, a process of freeing a person by removing obstacles thus allowing normal growth and development to take place and thereby the client becomes independent and self-directed (http://www.wynja.com/personality/rogerst.html).The therapist must be "congruent, have unconditional positive regard for the client as well as show empathic understanding...and to be completely genuine," by communicating back to the client an understanding of feelings and personal meanings as they are experienced (http://www.wynja.com/personality/rogerst.html).The core tendency is to actualize one's inherent potentialities, although this potential exists in all living organisms, humans possess the additional form of self-actualization (http://oldsci.eiu.edu/psychology/Spencer/Rogers.html).According to Rogers, "of basic importance is the fact that one's inherent potentialities are genetically determined, while the self-concept is socially determined" (http://oldsci.eiu.edu/psychology/Spencer/Rogers.html).The important influences are conditional positive regard, conditions of worth, incongruence, unconditional positive regard, and congruence (http://oldsci.eiu.edu/psychology/Spencer/Rogers.html).

Alfred F. Carlozzi and Kay S. Ells Bull hypothesized in a 1995 study that empathy is positively related to creativity and expressiveness and inversely related to dogmatism (Carlozzi, Bull 1995). The participants were 56 graduate students, 41 women and 15 men, enrolled in counseling and education psychology, the average age was 33.7 years (Carlozzi, Bull 1995). The Affective Sensitivity Scale, Form E-A-2 was used to measure empathy, by measuring an "individual's ability to detect and describe the immediate affective state of another in a given situation" (Carlozzi, Bull 1995). It included a "color film of 28 scenes and a test booklet containing 57 multiple-choice items with three alternative statements in each item" (Carlozzi, Bull 1995). Respondents were to select statements that most accurately identified the feelings of individuals in each scene which were taken from a variety of real-life interactions (Carlozzi, Bull 1995). Affective Sensitivity Scale total scores were obtained by totaling the number of correct responses; sensitization to the type of activities considered creative were provided with a transparency that listed 40 types of creative activities in seven categories: "artistic, literary, performing arts, inventions, design, crafts, and managerial/teaching" (Carlozzi, Bull 1995).

The results provided support for the hypotheses that empathy (affective sensitivity) is "positively related to creativity and is inversely related to dogmatism," but does not support the hypothesized positive relationship between empathy and expressiveness (Carlozzi, Bull 1995).The findings suggest that "more creative individuals are more empathic that less creative individuals...the sensitivity that creative people manifest toward environmental stimuli may include affect experienced by other people in their environment" (Carlozzi, Bull 1995). Moreover, it supported the hypothesis that less dogmatic or more open-minded individuals are more empathic than dogmatic or closed-minded persons, due to the fact that open-minded individuals are "less likely to distort incoming messages, their perceptions of affective messages communicated by others may be more accurate" (Carlozzi, Bull 1995).

Since empathy is considered a necessary condition for effective counseling, these findings are particularly relevant to counselors and counselor educators and therefore such personal qualities as "creativity and open-mindedness should be considered in the training and supervision of counselors" (Carlozzi, Bull 1995). Moreover, the researchers suggest that the assessment of such variables could "be part of an educational process designed to provide counselor candidates with information regarding their potential to internalize and effectively use the empathic skills taught in many training programs," and educational strategies and supervisory methods that nurture these qualities could increase the potential of trinees to develop the capacity to empathize (Carlozzi, Bull 1995).