Carl Roger's Person-Centered, Humanistic Theory

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In this essay Carl Roger’s person-centered, humanistic theory will be discussed in relation to the movie ‘The black swan’. Nina’ s personality will be outlined by looking at Rogers key concepts in his theory, namely: the actualizing tendency, the self concept, the organismic valuing process, conditions of worth, conditional and unconditional positive regard, congruence and incongruence. Nina’s relationship with her Mom, Lilly and Thomas will be looked at in relation to how it has shaped her personality and if Nina moves towards any actualization.

Roger defines self-concept by putting it into 4 categories namely self worth, self-image and ideal self (Roger, 1902). Self worth is our confidence in our own abilities (Roger, 1902). This is developed at early childhood through our interactions with our parents, as self worth is shaped by how other people see us (Roger, 1902). In the movie Nina doesn’t really believe in herself because although she went to talk to Thomas to give her the part, as soon as he said no she said okay and turned to leave the room. This means that when Thomas said she isn’t good enough she believed him, as she gave up easily. As we can see …show more content…

It also includes our body image, which can influence our inner personality (Roger, 1902). Self-image can affect how people think, feel and behave in the world (Roger, 1902). Throughout the movie Nina is trying to be “perfect” this can already show us that she doesn’t have a good self-image and she isn’t happy with herself, as she is constantly trying to be “better”. We saw instances of Nina throwing up, which contributes to her body image we also saw this when Nina didn’t want to eat cake. When a man from the bar asked who she is, she said a dancer rather then her name. This shows us that Nina doesn’t see herself as anything else but a dancer, which indicates she doesn’t truly know who she