Ch.6, Rogerian Theory Applications Flashcards
Self-Experience Discrepancy:
distortion between actual experience and the self’s awareness of experience
Difference between how Freud and Rogers treated clients
Freud: treated patients as clients needing to be diagnoses
Rogers: treated patients as having expertise and being curative, a responsible individual
Fantasy:
denies any experience that does not fit with the self
Reflection:
therapists do not guide the flow if events, instead they merely summarize or reflect back to the client their understanding of what the client has just said; makes the client feel thoroughly understood by the therapist
Three conditions needed for effective therapy:
genuineness/congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathetic understanding
Unconditional Positive Regard:
therapist communicates a deep and genuine caring for the client
Empathetic Understanding: refers to the ability of therapist to perceive the client’s experiences
Human Potential Movement:
people have potentialities; basic feature of personality functioning is that people have a capacity to move forward and realize their inherent potentials
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
physiological, safety, belongingness, esteem=self-actualization
Maslow said that people are basically good or neutral rather than evil; everyone possesses impulse toward growth and fulfillment of potential
Maslow views are important because he suggested the need for psychological AND biological needs, focused his study on people with high levels of self-actualization that were healthy (no need to restrict study to the abnormal or distressed)
Development of Comprehensive Classification scheme:
identify criteria that would cause a psychological characteristic to be called a strength and use the criteria to identify a list of strengths
Three distinct neural bases of empathy:
ability to share experiences with others; if you witness someone experiencing pain, the same areas in the brain responsible for pain should light up in your own brain with empathy, and ability to understand the individual’s point of view “mentalizing” (parietal and temporal lobes)
Prosocial Motivation in Empathy:
feelings that motivate a person to aid or share positive experiences with others (medial prefrontal cortex)
Flow:
refers specifically to positive states of consciousness with a perceived match between personal skills and environmental challenge, a high level of focused attention,
Existentialism
Concerned with phenomenon that are inherent in the nature of being alive/existing
Personal meaning
Rogerian theory was existentialist in that he discussed loneliness and the search for human meaning/existence
Terror Management Theory, Existentialism
consequence of combining two factors, people’s desire to live that is the same as animals and their awareness of the inevitability of death (uniquely human)
Rogerian view of holism
Rogers believed that personality could not be split into parts
Authenticity:
extent to which people behave in accord with their self as opposed to behaving in terms of roles that foster self-presentations; one must look at inner feelings and not just behaviors to appreciate this
Personality Systems Interaction Theory
Functional differences between systems, not just the content of those systems like Rogers emphasized
Four personality systems that have distinct functional properties
Analytical Thinking System
mental system that processes things in a logical, linear manner
Holistic Thinking/Feeling System:
parallel processing system, large numbers of processes occur at the same time, occurs outside of consciousness, enable the mind to automatically combine multiple thoughts/feelings about the self into an integrated whole produced by th4e right hemisphere of the brain
Intuitive Behavior Control System: p
playing an instrument that you know well does not require paying attention to every step ACTIVATED WITH POSITIVE EMOTION
Discrepancy Detection System
recognizes when something has gone wrong ACTIVATED WITH NEGATIVE EMOTION
How does PSI theory explains why Rogers thought his presence was causing the therapy to work
people who seek therapy are generally experience negative emotions, therefore a supporting therapist would reduce these emotions
Rogerian Scientific Bases
Rogers had much more scientific bases/methods/open science than Freud (though only used explicit measures which may limit data/ participant’s responses)
Systematic, testable, and comprehensive elements of Rogers
Systematic: extremely systematic and well-thought out, but composed much less formal theoretical works (involves quantity problems0
Testable: many elements such as holistic self are, but the universal motivation for self actualization cannot be tested
