Have you ever asked yourself, “Who am I?”? Is the answer that you get satisfactory or not up to the standard? This is a humanistic psychology concept given by Humanist Carl Rogers, the “ideal self” and the “real self”.
They are domains of our personality and are pretty self-explanatory,
The ideal self is the person we want to be, the person we aim to be. The ultimate ‘perfect’ versions of ourselves.
The real self, is who we truly are. The person we have become over the course of time, carved by our hardships, struggles, parenting, and socio-cultural environment.
Everyone’s goal in life is to achieve their ideal self and be the best versions of themselves. So naturally, we strive towards it. This is when congruence comes into the picture.
Congruency
Congruence is the alignment of our real self with our ideal self. This alignment can differ in degrees.
When there is a high degree of alignment and your real self, if not completely, at least satisfactorily aligned with your ideal self it results in congruence. You feel happy and experience much more positive emotions.
If the amount of your real self personality and ideal-self personality is not enough, it will result in anxiety, depression and dissatisfaction.
Eg. My ideal self principle is honesty. Let’s say, I have not done my homework, when my teacher asks me about it and I tell them honestly that I forgot, even though I might get reprimanded for my careless behavior, I will at least have a sense of mental peace. My real self and ideal self will also have a greater congruence. However, if I lie and tell them that I left my book at home, then maybe I will be excused but the constant guilt will lead to anxiety. As well as incongruence.
Therefore, it is extremely important to maintain congruence/alignment.
Having an extreme version of the ideal self leads to detrimental mental health. Thus having a clear self-concept is necessary, accepting the real self is necessary. Rogers has emphasized personal growth and personality development.
Ways for personality development are
Self-worth
How do you perceive yourself as a person, do you respect yourself, are you understanding of yourself? All these criteria will come under self-worth.
Having a good sense of self-worth is important to both our mental health and will increase the likelihood of us achieving our goals and ambitions in life.
People with a high sense of self-worth are seen to strive for their goals, work hard and face challenges in life positively. Thus there is high scope of personal growth and congruence.
However, people with a low sense of self-worth give up in difficult situations, avoid challenges, are defensive and cannot accept painful situations in life. This leads to incongruence and an increase in the likelihood of developing mental health issues.
Unconditional positive regard
Unconditional positive regard can also be called unconditional love. This applies to people around you.
When the people around you accept you completely for who you are and do not put external pressure to be a certain way to be loved, that’s when the chances of self-actualization are extremely high. Thus it is very important for the environment a person grows in to be filled with unconditional positive regard.
Conditioned positive regard, is when there are preconceived conditions provided for someone to be loved. They have to consistently work towards fulfilling the set conditions to receive the love they yearn for. In this case, their ‘ideal self’ is a standard set by others. Thus creating an extreme environment around the individual.
The good life
These are more like principles that a person should follow, to reach a state Roger’s called “fully-functional”:
Openness to experience - regardless of whether the experience is negative or positive the person should be ready to work through it.
Existential living- Living in every moment. Enjoying it to the fullest.
Increasing trust in oneself- A person should trust their judgment, gut feeling, and the ability to choose situation-appropriate behavior.
Freedom of choice- Even if there are incongruencies in their personality domain, they trust their choices and make choices fluently.
A rich life- They do not constrict themselves. They make sure to experience every single emotion to its fullest and live a fulfilling life.
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