Humanistic Case

Humanistic:

The Humanistic Theory focuses on self and personal growth. The belief is that people naturally good, but environmental factors influence bad behaviors (Cervone & Pervin, 2010). Rogers's believed that if a person is mentally healthy, he or she is more likely to live a happy and fulfilling life. Respect and acceptance by others is a need most individual's desire (Cervone & Pervin, 2010). According to Rogers's, personality development occurs in different ways. When an individual develops a positive self-image, he or she is more likely to higher self-esteem, better attitude, and a positive outlook on life (Cervone & Pervin, 2010). Individuals with negative self-concepts are more likely to develop negative behaviors and display defense mechanisms, which can adversely influence personality development.

.A person who has a humanistic personality disorder may present this in different ways. Rogers feels that one must learn self-consistency. A person may change the way that they act from situation to situation surprising even themselves with their behavior. They may see themselves as very outgoing but then find themselves being quiet and shy in a certain situation, and then later wonder why they acted differently than they normally do. This is called incongruence. When someone is incongruent in a situation they may go through a process called subception.

This means that although the person knows about the situation they also know they may react differently to it than they usually do and then the person may unconsciously become defensive to the situation. They may do this through distortion or through denial of the situation. An example of a person distorting a situation would be if that person is extremely athletic and yet they lose a football game. They may blame the loss on anything other than themselves, such as the coach made bad calls, or the other team cheated. To deny the situation would be for the person to pretend the loss never happened or perhaps the game itself never happened. A person will do this because according to their self-consistency they are athletic and shouldn't lose a game, therefore they have to come up with a reason for the loss or deny it all together to preserve their self-consistency. (Cervone, 2010).

Roger's theory explains a full range of personality instead of just one area. Rogers believed that all humans are organisms that change with each experience in their lives. He also believed that a person who is healthy will have a healthy happy life. Those that are not healthy will have more personality problems. Roger did fail to recognize what self was, in fact when defined what is self he would become vague about the definition. It is confusing considering that Rogers humanistic emphasis's on one person. Rogers only talks about two types of people. This may be because of the theory is secondary to the