For Rogers, what constitutes an incongruent person? In your answer, include a discussion of the organismic valuing process, the need for positive regard, and conditions of worth.
Carl Ransom Rogers was an American psychologist, who proposed theory of humanistic approach to psychology along with others. He along with few others is considered as the psychotherapy research’s founding father. He possessed person-centered approach for understanding personality and human relationships. He studied on various domains of psychotherapy and counseling.
Carl Rogers brought into light the concept of incongruence in 1950s. Rogers defined congruence as the matching of the similarities between experience of people and being aware of that.
A person’s real identity may not remain consistent with the happenings in his life and the experiences felt by him. Hence, a noticeable difference may be observed between a person’s ideal self and actual life experiences. This was stated as incongruence. When the person achieves the common bridge between his ideal self and actual experience, and no considerable difference could be found, this state may be termed as a state of congruence. It is considered to be a stable and consistent stage.
If the person is capable to merge his ideal self and actual experience into one, it may be stated as Organismic valuing process. The person is now successful in acquiring experience based talent and discovers the real self. This is how he enters the path of satisfaction and enlightenment.
If the person receives the warmth, love and sympathy and acceptance from his childhood only, he gets a positive regard. This creates fewer troubles for him and he may achieve incongruence. However, a child is provided with these provisions only on conditions of worth.
To achieve love and acceptance, they need to accept the values of their elders. These values slowly replaces the organismic values and hence their real ideal is lost somewhere. Therefore to achieve incongruence, one must have positive regard without any condition of worth, so that organismic values can be achieved, finally achieving incongruence.