growth-motivated or tension-reducing person?
August 30th 2007 20:18
“At a theoretical level, Rogers “growth-motivated person” is quite different from Freud’s “tension-reducing person,” (Nye, 1981, p151)
As Nye suggested, on a theoretical level, it is quite tempting, easy, and sensible (obvious) to say that Freud and Rogers are quite different.
They both have different opinions about human nature and different approaches in their theories and concept of human psychological mechanisms.
Freud believed in a personality based on a tension reducing process.
He “learned to regard the individual as a dynamic system subject to the laws of nature”. (Hall, 4th edition)
He meant by tension reducing that “the ID functions in such manner as to discharge the tension immediately and return the organism to a comfortably constant and low energy level.” (Hall, 4th edition)
He believed that human psychology was in a constant battle between satisfying primitive instincts and adjusting in a strict moralist society.
Rogers, after ignoring the unconscious would suggest later that the “unconscious organismic processes do in fact, and should, guide much of our behaviour.” (Hall)
He would also add that it was not as antisocial and impulsive as Freud would express it.
“They are dependable guides for achieving personal fulfilment and for developing warm interpersonal relations.”
But Rogers mainly concentrated his attention into the self, the whole person and the fulfilment of one’s potentiality.
In other words, Freud believed in a human personality stressed between the urge of the ID to seek pleasure, and to avoid tension, and, the superego moralist power.
In between the ego would try to satisfy both sides.
Rogers’s views of personality are less complex. For him, humans have only one desire: natural personal growth.
The fulfilment is one’s potentialities.
Here there are two interesting and important theories on human personality, maybe quite complementary but without a doubt very different.
As Nye suggested, on a theoretical level, it is quite tempting, easy, and sensible (obvious) to say that Freud and Rogers are quite different.
They both have different opinions about human nature and different approaches in their theories and concept of human psychological mechanisms.
Freud believed in a personality based on a tension reducing process.
He “learned to regard the individual as a dynamic system subject to the laws of nature”. (Hall, 4th edition)
He believed that human psychology was in a constant battle between satisfying primitive instincts and adjusting in a strict moralist society.
Rogers, after ignoring the unconscious would suggest later that the “unconscious organismic processes do in fact, and should, guide much of our behaviour.” (Hall)
He would also add that it was not as antisocial and impulsive as Freud would express it.
“They are dependable guides for achieving personal fulfilment and for developing warm interpersonal relations.”
But Rogers mainly concentrated his attention into the self, the whole person and the fulfilment of one’s potentiality.
In other words, Freud believed in a human personality stressed between the urge of the ID to seek pleasure, and to avoid tension, and, the superego moralist power.
In between the ego would try to satisfy both sides.
Rogers’s views of personality are less complex. For him, humans have only one desire: natural personal growth.
Here there are two interesting and important theories on human personality, maybe quite complementary but without a doubt very different.
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Comment by Harry
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