Congruence, Person-Centred Therapy & the Path to Self-Actualisation

There is a stereotype of the psycholtherapist interviewing the ‘patient’ lying prone on the couch, the therapist stares over his spectacles, notebook in hand and ominously asks, “What is your relationship like with your mother?”

Stereotypes exist for a reason, and perhaps that is how many therapists and counsellors have gone about their business over the years, but Carl Rogers didn’t buy in to that at all. Instead he believed it was ‘congruence’ that was the ideal attributes in the counsellor. This means that, unlike the psychodynamic therapist who maintains a ‘blank screen’ and discloses little of their own experience in a therapeutic context, the Rogerian is keen to allow the client to experience them as they are, there is no pretence, no special status as the therapist prying into your shady inner world. Instead, by being congruent, being as you really are, being honest, there is a more equal relationship.

Carl Rogers (1902-1987) was a humanistic psychologist who started out agreeing with Abraham Maslow’s primary assumptions[2] or hierarchy of needs:

As Rogers career matured, he developed his ideas and added that for a person to grow, they require an environment that can provide them with genuineness, openness, unconditional acceptance, and empathy. Without these ideal elements in place, relationships and healthy personalities will struggle to thrive as they should, just as a tree deprived of adequate water and sunlight would suffer. Rogers believed that when a person finds the balance between the ‘real self,’ the ‘perceived self,’ and ‘ideal version’ of the self, congruence happens naturally. In other words, when congruence is achieved there ceases to be an internal friction or outright war in some cases,  between these different conceptions of oneself. If congruence can be achieved it enables a person to live a life genuinely and with authenticity. With congruence, it is possible to achieve our highest life goals.

“We cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed.” – Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person

The common desire to self-actualise

Rogers strongly believed that humans share a common underlying drive, which is the desire to self-actualise and become the very best that we can be. Further he knew that people will flourish and reach their fullest potential in life, if their environment is healthy, in the same way as a flower will grow if the conditions surrounding it are favourable and without undue environmental pressures.

However, unlike flowers, the potential of human beings is unique. Rogers believed that people are inherently good and creative (similar to the buddhist principle that we all have the buddha nature within us, or the christian idea that we are made in God’s image). People develop a tendency to self-sabotage as a result of poor self-concept or overwhelming external constraints. Rogers observed that for a person to fully self-actualise, they must first have entered a genuine state of congruence.

“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.”
― Carl R. Rogers

Self actualisation, like enlightenment, is an ideal state that we strive toward. Most people will not achieve that state in a consistent manner, but we can all progress toward it. For all of us, life is all about this process, this journey or hero’s journey of discovery. We should not consider this idea as an end or a destination, but rather, as an ongoing process of continuous personal development[3].

The five characteristics of a fully functioning person:

1. Open to Experience – good and bad

The individual embraces both positive and negative life experiences as part of the learning journey. Negative feelings are not denied or repressed but instead, are worked through and understood. They can be useful learning tools on our journey.

2. Existential living

Very much in tune with the buddhist and now popular approach of mindfulness. The Individual should be fully aware and alert in the present moment and disregard the baggage of prejudice, judgement and preconception that burden so many people. To be fully in the present is to fully experience it, whereas so many people are trapped in thoughts of the past or dreams of the future.

3. Embracing Intuition

We all know the injunction to ‘trust your gut’. Instincts, feelings and gut-reactions are acknowledged, evaluated and given full respect. Trusting instinct often allows us to bypass tortuous mental gymnastics that can lead us around in circles. We need to make decisions, make them as wisely as we can but also in some haste when necessary, we need to accept the decisions and embrace the outcomes regardless of whether it was the best decision – you win or learn.

4. Unlimited Creativity

Creative thinking, disruption, a bit of chaos when the time is right are core features of a well-lived life. No-one can play it safe all the time, life will find a way to upet your carefully guarded security. Creativity is the power to adapt and evolve as life’s circumstances change, sometimes unpredictably and drastically. Creativity allows us to open doors to opportunity that we didn’t even know were there.

5. The Fulfilled Life

The fulfilling life is the result of living authentically when our actions are in alignment with our values and priorities. The congruent person says ‘yes’ to those things he wants to say yes to, and ‘No’ to those things he wants to say no to, but will accept mistakes with equinimity.

For Rogers, fully functioning people are well adjusted, wise, well balanced and interesting to know. Such people are can be high achievers, but not necessarily in the ways that you might expect as their wisdom will transcend mere cultural or societal pressures. Most people will agree that this idea represents an ideal picture of ‘the self.’ A person’s ‘ideal self’ might not always be consistent with what they are experiencing in their lives. Hence the reason that an ‘incongruence’ may exist between a person’s ideal self and experience.

“If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding. And we all fear change. So as I say, it is not an easy thing to permit oneself to understand an individual,” – Carl R. Rogers

According to Rogers, most people desire to feel, experience and behave in ways which are consistent with their self-image and in ways that accurately reflect what they would like to be, ‘our ideal-state’. He believed this self-actualising tendency as ‘the most profound truth about man’ [4].

The path to congruence

The process of eroding that descrepancy can be different in everyone. Self-image can suffer terribly either through bad experience or simply a harsh self-judgemental habit. Ideal-self can sometime reflect false desires that do not in reality accord with a person’s values. We can be completely mistaken in both!

The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, and the more authentic those images, the more consistent and congruent we become. Incongruence is merely a discrepancy between a person’s present state and their desired state.

Rogers believed that the therapeutic process was one of freeing a person and removing the obstacles that impede natural growth. This allows them to become independent and self-directed. He saw this as the result of the healthy and enabling relationship between therapist and client:

To achieve this, the therapist has to display congruence in that relationship – providing an utterly genuine experience of themselves to the client. It is not a prerequisite that the therapist is entirely congruent all of the time, as this would be beyond most people, but they can achieve it in that therapeutic relationship.

“When a person realises he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, “Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it’s like to be me” – Carl R. Rogers

There is transformative power in being heard, but an even greater power in being heard by someone you know to be authentic and congruent. We are all masters at creating our own obstacles, but the empathetic counsellor can help us see what we are doing to sabotage ourselves and they can help free us from the prisons of our own making.

We are all fellow travellers on this journey. It is the easiest thing to take wrong turns and end up mired in life’s swamp. Person centred therapy offers an effective method of navigating those hard paths and getting back on the right road.

References:

1. Rogers, C. R. (1961). On Becoming a person: A psychotherapists view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.
   (n.d.) Assumptions of Maslow’s Theory. Retrieved from: http://www.qsstudy.com/business-studies/assumptions-maslows-theory
2. Pescitelli, D (1996). An Analysis of Carl Rogers’ Theory of Personality. Retrieved from: http://pandc.ca/?cat=carl_rogers&page=rogerian_theory
3. Rogers, C.R. (1965). A humanistic conception of man. In R.E. Farson (ed.) Science and human affairs. California: Science and Behavior Books Inc.