What Is Actualizing Tendency?
The basic idea of the actualizing tendency is straightforward. It is a desire present in all living things that pushes the organism toward growth. In the case of humans, we all want to express ourselves creatively and reach our full potential.
Rogers offered the analogy of a potato when explaining this tendency. Have you ever left a potato in your pantry only to discover later that it has grown sprouts? The sprouts are little white nubs taking advantage of the small amount of light available beneath and around the door frame.
Every time you open the door, some light enters, encouraging the seedling to fight for survival. If you were to plant that potato in the soil in the spring, you would soon find green sprouts fighting through the surface, followed by bushy green leaves.
We can see this desire to lean toward growth in everyone, and Rogers believed it true of every organism (Goodreads, n.d.). Organisms have an innate motivation to live in accordance with their true nature. When the organism cannot do this, it experiences incongruence but continues to push toward actualizing (the white nubs) even though the environment is more complicated.
We see this when flowers shoot up between cracks in concrete, when corn stalks grow between road grates, and when a tree grows inside of the stump of another tree. We also see this when people struggle to define who they are amidst being told who they are. Often, it is this struggle that leads a person to seek out therapy.
Just like those flowers growing between the cracks, the actualizing tendency cannot be destroyed unless the organism is destroyed.
Self-Concept and Incongruence
Self-concept is how we see ourselves. When this differs from our experience in the world, the resulting feeling is incongruence. There is a disconnect, which can be large or small, between our self-concept and our experience. This can cause discomfort.
If a person had no interaction with any other living being, then this incongruence would not happen. It is our interaction with others via direct and indirect actions that influences our self-concept. This influence can be positive or negative. When it is in opposition to who we believe we are (our self-concept), then we experience suffering.
This is true even if the influence is positive but, in the person’s mind, unbelievable. If a person spends the majority of their young life being told they are worthless, but then someone comes along telling them they are not, then the person could experience incongruence.
Incongruence often relates to conditions of worth. These are behaviors a person displays because they are expected by others. For example, if you are a woman, you may feel you are expected to smile because it makes you look prettier and more approachable.
What if smiling is not something that interests the woman? What if her natural resting face is a frown? What if she is not concerned with her outward appearance?
Conditions of worth are pieces of paper decoupaged to your surface. They can be placed haphazardly or in some beautiful arrangement, but regardless of how they are placed, they are not you.
They are simply layers of paper. Each paper represents some condition you are told you need to meet so that you feel worthy. They come from parents, friends, bosses, spouses, partners, religion, and media. Before long, the papers overlap, and you no longer see what is hiding beneath.
3 Core Conditions
In 1974, Rogers facilitated a lecture highlighting research on empathy. Some of that research showed that progress through therapy is positively correlated with the level of empathy shown by the therapist.
Here is the first video of the four-part series:
What our readers think
“From Rogers’s perspective, every person strives to be a creative, fully functioning being who desires to reach their potential. This striving is ongoing, motivational, and innate (Rogers, 1963, as cited in Schunk, 2016). The process of pursuing our full potential is what he called the actualizing tendency.”
I’m not sure this is true. Not every person strives to be a creative, fully functional person. Some might want to be a warlord, or a successful drug dealer. Hear me out.
Mearns and Thorne use an example of a child who has been emotionally and/or physically abused by their parent. This child survived by ‘going underground’ as a person, running drug dealing operations, exerting his authority ‘at times with considerable public cruelty’. So. Not a fully functioning person.
I just wanted to add this comment because studying person centred personality theory can be confusing. Hope this helps. 🙂
Thank you for this article this was super valuable for my psychology course!
I’m starting to feel like I’m not from this planet. This is the second fairly major psychology publication in which the author fails to cite or reference anything from the originators of the theories the article is about!! At a minimum, I was expecting to see at least one reference to Rogers’ original work!! But instead, Dale Schunk is cited which hardly a credible source.
First of all, that’s the textbook from an undergrad psych. course….I should know because I took the course as a requirement. Having established as much, I could go on for DAYS about Schunk’s less than credible research and fallacy infested conclusions. Throughout his text are countless instances of secondary and tertiary citations aside from the fact that he cites himself at least 48 times if not more from double or triple citing. I would NEVER use his work as a primary source.
If you’re going to discuss Rogers’, Maslow’s, Freud’s, Jung’s, or anyone else’s theories then why wouldn’t you pull your source material directly from their work? It’s not hard to find. Do the editors prohibit citations from original sources? Why does this seem to be industry standard?
Hi, Brian.
Thank you for your feedback about my research for this article. I strive to provide valid, concise resources within the timeframes I work, and I understand that you feel I failed to do this. If you have additional opinions about my articles, I invite you to contact me directly. As someone who values lifelong learning, I appreciate knowing how I can incorporate other people’s perspectives into my writing. Again, thank you for taking time to share your point of view with me.
Your approach to feedback is unnecessarily aggressive. I appreciate the sentiment behind your comments and don’t disagree with your point of going straight to the source, which, perhaps the author has done previously but in the case of this article, referred to more modern articles that were to hand to inform this short piece. The delivery of your feedback comes across as rude. It’s interesting you felt you had to point out how ‘you should know’ because you have this and that and the other. Just because some references may be used as undergraduate material doesn’t mean they are not valid. Undergraduate material is the foundation for a good solid grounding of knowledge and you build on from that.
I loved your reading your article. It was written so beautifully and I got all the info that I needed in a compact but not depth lacking format. Thank you so much!
Hi Fatmima,
Great to hear you got what you needed from this article. Thanks for reading.
– Nicole | Community Manager
I enjoyed reading your article. It was thoughtfully written.
This is gold, I suppose sometimes especially when one is experiencing hard times, forget their inner strength and Carl rogers confirms this. I provide mental well-being support to a lady who always says she feels she could not to this or that and then finds herself doing the things she thinks could not do.
I Loved reading this article. I am currently coaching a minor who is in foster care. One of the things I said to her is the flower blossoming through the cracks in the concrete. My heart jumped for joy when I read this, it is an absolute confirmation of the resilience of this young person going through incredibly uncertainty at such a young age. Thank you for sharing.
After reading through this and watching the video I didn’t realise that I was more empathetic than I realised. On a different note I’ve had this recurring image in my head of a plant/flowers growing in the most unlikely places. It reminded of Bali. How things can grow and survive. It reminded me of the human spirit that no matter what is thrown at us we do have the ability to adapt and change to reach our potential, we just need to know how to do it. Having people help goes a long way towards this.