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The theorists of this chapter emphasize that people have an intrinsic tendency toward self-actualization. Self-actualization is the tendency to develop your capabilities in ways that maintain or enhance the self. This tendency promotes a sense of congruence, or integration, within the person. Its effectiveness is monitored by the organismic valuing process. People also have a need for positive regard, acceptance and affection from others. Positive regard may be unconditional, or it may be conditional on your acting in certain ways. These conditions of worth mean that the person is held "worthy" only if he or she is acting in the desired manner. Conditions of worth, which can be self-imposed as well as imposed by others, can cause you to act in ways that oppose self-actualization. Self-determination theory focuses on the difference between behavior that's self-determined and behavior that's controlled in some fashion. People enjoy activities more if they feel they're doing them from intrinsic interest instead of extrinsic reward. People whose lives are dominated by activities that are controlled are less healthy than people whose lives are self-determined. Many theorists of this group assume that people have free will. This is a very hard idea to test, but people do seem to think they have free will. Studies of reactance show that people resist threats to freedoms they expect to have. Other research questions whether will is illusory, though. Behavior that opposes the actualizing tendency creates disorganization in the sense of self. Disorganization can be reduced by two kinds of defenses. You can distort perceptions of reality to reduce the threat, or you can act in ways that prevent threatening experiences from reaching awareness, for example, by ignoring them. Use of these defenses is seen in the fact that people blame failures on factors outside themselves while taking credit for successes. People also engage in self-handicapping strategies, creating esteem-protective explanations for the possibility of failure before it even happens. Use of self-handicapping is paradoxical because it increases the likelihood of failure. Maslow elaborated on the idea of self-actualization by proposing a hierarchy of motives, ranging from physical needs (most basic) to self-actualization (at the top). Basic needs are more demanding than higher needs, which (being more subtle) can affect you only when the lower needs are relatively satisfied. Maslow's intermediate levels appear to relate to the need for positive regard, suggesting why it can be hard to ignore the desire for acceptance from others. Existential psychologists point out that with freedom comes the responsibility to choose for yourself what meaning your life has. The basic choice is to invest your life with meaning or to retreat into nothingness. When people are reminded of their own mortality, they try harder to connect to cultural values. Even if you try to find meaning, you can't escape existential guilt. No life can reflect all the possibilities it holds, because each choice rules out other possibilities. This view on personality uses many assessment techniques, including both interviews and self-reports. Regarding content, it emphasizes the self-concept, self-actualization, and self-determination. One way to assess self-concept is the Q-sort, in which a set of items is sorted into piles according to how much they apply to oneself. Different "sorts" can be compared with each other for additional information. From this perspective, problems derive from incongruity. Large incongruity is reflected as neurosis; when even more extreme, the result is psychosis. Therapy is a process of reintegrating a partly disorganized self. For reintegration to occur, the client must feel a sense of unconditional positive regard. In client-centered therapy, people are led to refocus on their feelings about their problems. The (nonevaluative) therapist simply helps clients to clarify their feelings. In this viewpoint, the processes of therapy blend into those of ordinary living, with the goal of experiencing continued personal growth.
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