ABSTRACT
Individuals have a need for positive regard (Point 19) – in particular from ‘significant others’, that is important people in the immediate environment such as parents and other principal carers. As the self develops, there is also a need for positive self-regard which Merry (2002: 25) indicates as being necessary to ‘develop a sense of trust in the accuracy and reliability of our own inner experiencing’. That is to say that positive self-regard allows individuals to trust their own perceptions and evaluations of the world as they experience it. In terms of person-centred theory, this position is having an ‘internal locus of evaluation’. However, the need for positive regard from others, especially those to whom the individual looks for care, protection and nurture, is so strong that this internal evaluation of experience can be easily overwhelmed if love and acceptance is withheld or threatened to be withheld – that is if they become ‘conditional’. So, in order to gain and maintain the positive regard of others, the individual disregards or inhibits the expression of aspects of inner experiencing that conflicts (or seems to conflict) with the needs and opinions of others because to do otherwise would risk the withdrawal of love and acceptance. When this happens, individuals rely on the evaluations of others for their feelings of acceptance and self-regard. They develop an ‘external locus of evaluation’, distrusting inner experiencing even to the point of abandoning it altogether. In this way, individuals learn that they are
as they conform to the demands, expectations and positive evaluations of others. In this way ‘conditions of worth’ are acquired. In order to maintain a feeling of being valued and accepted, individuals seek or avoid experiences according to how well they fit with their conditions of worth. Experiences that match these conditions of worth (and therefore the self-concept) are perceived accurately and accepted; ones that do not are perceived as threatening and are distorted or denied (‘distortion’ and ‘denial’ are the two ‘defence mechanisms’ described in classic person-centred theory – see Rogers 1959: 227). This leads to ‘incongruence’ (Point 16) between the self and experience and in behaviour. (Note: there are other propositions as to causes of incongruence, see Point 35.) It is the process of defence that leads to some expressions of emotional or psychological distress. Rogers (1959: 228) lists these as including:
However, sometimes the process of defence is unable to operate successfully. This can lead to a state of disorganisation (see Rogers 1959: 229). It is postulated that this may lead to acute psychotic breakdown. Thus incongruence arising from conditions of worth can be seen as the root of emotional and psychological distress. The client’s incongruence, leading to feelings of vulnerability or anxiety, is the second of Rogers’ (1959: 213) ‘necessary and sufficient conditions’ for constructive personality change (Point 13).
