Compare the views of Maslow and Rogers on self-actualization and the characteristics of the psychologically healthy person.
Two psychologists who worked in the field of humanistic psychology are Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. Abraham is also known as the humanistic psychology’s spiritual father. He studied a handful of outstanding people to analyze their base of difference from the other normal people. Maslow was enrolled as a psychology professor, the subject, to which he was not familiar with. The course that had to teach did not fascinate him much.
Hence, he turned away from it and got transferred to Wisconsin university. He started with his own childhood stories; how he used to escape from the awful situation by reading books. Hence, he became the first psychologist to study the human’s positive aspects. He determined his work that would be helpful for humans, for developing their personalities and positive attitude towards life.
The term used to describe this situation is self-actualization. Maslow proposed that every individual possess an inborn inclination towards the self-actualization. According to him, the self-actualization in an adult can be developed only when sufficient love is achieved in the childhood. Bad parenting results in loss of self-actualization. This concept of Rogers, however, failed because of less subject size.
Later other experiments were performed and it was observed that the people who are satisfied in their belongingness, love, health and wealth are less likely to develop neurotic disorders. Similar procedures were used by Rogers; however, instead of picking up the outstanding individuals, he used to treat his patients with the similar therapy. He proposed that the responsibilities and the circumstances, to which the person is exposed, deeply influence the personality of that individual.
Rogers focused on the mother-child relationship. According to him if the mother satisfies all the need of love of the child, then the child use to develop in the healthy personality. If the love is conditional, then all the aspects of the child do not get expressed. In this case the child considers himself to be worth only in certain situations and would imbibe the attitude of mother.
The concept of self-actualization that Roger used was person-centered. He defined entirely functioning individuals as actualizing instead of actualized. This is to indicate that the self-development is always a progressing work, depending upon the circumstances and the environment in which th individual grows and work.