Motivation and emotion/Tutorials/Growth psychology/Fully functioning person

Fully functioning person: Compare and contrast Maslow's characteristics of self-actualisation with Carl Rogers' fully functioning person. According to Rogers, optimal development results in a process rather than static state. Rogers describes this as the good life, where the organism continually aims to fulfill its full potential. He listed the characteristics of a fully functioning person (Rogers 1961): as:


 * 1) A growing openness to experience – moving away from defensiveness and having no need for subception (a defence that involves unconsciously applying strategies to prevent a troubling stimulus from entering consciousness).
 * 2) An increasingly existential lifestyle – living each moment fully – not distorting the moment to fit personality or self-concept but allowing personality and-self concept to emanate from the experience. This results in excitement, daring, adaptability, tolerance, spontaneity, and a lack of rigidity and suggests a foundation of trust. "To open one's spirit to what is going on now, and discover in that present process whatever structure it appears to have" (Rogers, 1961)
 * 3) Increasing organismic trust – trusting one's own judgement and ability to choose behaviour that is appropriate for each moment. Not relying on existing codes and social norms but being open to experiences and trusting one's sense of right and wrong.
 * 4) Freedom of choice – not being shackled by the restrictions that influence an incongruent individual; able to make a wider range of choices more fluently. Belief that one plays a role in determining one's behaviour and so feel responsible for one's own behaviour.
 * 5) Creativity – feeling more free to be creative. Also more creative in the way one adapts to one's circumstances without feeling a need to conform.
 * 6) Reliability and constructiveness – can be trusted to act constructively. An individual who is open to all his/her needs will be able to maintain a balance between them. Even aggressive needs will be matched and balanced by intrinsic goodness in congruent individuals.
 * 7) A rich full life – the life of a fully functioning individual is rich, full and exciting; they experience joy and pain, love and heartbreak, fear and courage more intensely. Rogers' description of the good life: "This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life."