Personality Case

PERSONALITY

In my view, personality provides the most useful approach for understanding one's self and others. Other theories, such as the psychoanalytic theory, are too much focused on abnormalities in personality. I like the humanistic perspective because it is concerned with healthy personalities and how people can achieve their ultimate goals in life. The humanistic theory of personality was developed by the American psychologists Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) and Carl Rogers (1902-1987). Maslow and Rogers introduced several important concepts relating to personal self-improvement, including self-actualization, the hierarchy of needs, unconditional personal regard and the ideal self. I have found these concepts to be influential in the way I view myself and my relationships with others in the home, workplace and society.

The humanistic theory is focused on what makes personalities healthy as opposed to what makes them dysfunctional. This is because the humanistic view is concerned with helping people improve themselves. In this regard, Maslow "believed that only by studying emotionally healthy, achieving people can we really begin to understand our true nature and potential" (Hoffman, 1988, p. 80). In his book Motivation and Personality, Maslow introduced the concept of self-actualization. According to Maslow (1954), self-actualization refers to "people's desire for self-fulfillment, namely, the tendency for them to become actualized in what they are potentially" (p. 22). In other words, self-actualization is the state of being that occurs when a person becomes what she wants to become and is capable of becoming. This is a very positive view of the human personality.

Maslow's view of personality is also concerned with the things that motivate people to do their best. Maslow (1954) developed a theory of human motivation, known as the hierarchy of needs. According to this theory, people have six basic needs, which can be depicted in the form of a pyramid-shaped hierarchy. When each of the lower needs is satisfied, the individual is able to move up the pyramid toward the achievement of the higher needs (Hoffman, 1988, p. 80). At the bottom of the pyramid one finds the lowest and most basic needs, known as the physiological needs. This level is concerned with such needs as food, water, clothing and shelter. If a person has satisfied these needs, he can turn his attention to the next level of needs, which are the safety needs. The safety needs are concerned with such things as being protected and having job security. The next order of needs is the social needs, which include belongingness and love. The next level is concerned with the esteem needs. At this level, people are motivated by the desire to achieve such things as status and recognition. At the top of the pyramid is the need for self-actualization.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs has been found useful for motivating people in the workplace. It is understood that employees have different personalities, which are related to their position on the hierarchy of needs. Once an employee has achieved job security and a steady income, she is no longer motivated by a desire for money. She becomes motivated by a higher need, such as the need for recognition from her employers. The hierarchy of needs also shows the typical process in the development of human personality. Personalities gradually change from being focused on meeting basic needs to being focused on an interest in achieving self-actualization, or the fulfillment of one's potential in life.

In order to fully comprehend the humanistic theory of personality, we need to also consider the contributions made by Carl Rogers. Rogers described the structure of personality as consisting of two major elements: "organismic experiencing" and the "self." According to Rogers, organismic experiencing includes "all sensory experiences, conscious and unconscious," and the self refers to "that portion of organismic experiencing that becomes differentiated and contains the sense of 'I' and 'me'" (Fernald, 2000, p. 172). Although Rogers, like Maslow, emphasized the positive and healthy aspects of the personality, he noted that problems can occur in the