Who Is Applying Carl Rogers's Theory In The Black Swan

Introduction

Humans are constructive, goal orientated and capable of change. The environment plays a facilitating or inhibitory role in the individual’s behaviour. These are Carl Rogers’ three core assumptions when conceptualising his humanistic theory of personality. Rogers believes that people are forward looking and driven to fulfil their potential. The entire theory is built on actualising tendency which is an innate potential that allowed to unfold for optimal person development. To gain a better understanding of this theory, this essay will apply the concepts of the theory on a character by the name of Nina starring in The Black Swan. Analysing Nina’s behaviour, we will look at the relationships between organismic valuing process

In one particular scene, against her mother’s wishes, Nina decides to go on a night out with a friend. In response and with the knowledge that Nina has rehearsals the morning after, her mother does not help wake her up on time. Consequently, Nina becomes late for her rehearsal. Based on this, Rogers would argue that there are conditions of worth and conditional positive regard evident. Conditions of worth refers to what the environment requires of an individual to deem them worth of acceptance and love, a phenomenon called conditional positive regard whereby the individual experiences acceptance on

In this sense, Nina would thus build the self-concept based on these conditions of worth rather than on organismic valuing process. The organismic valuing process refers to the individual’s feedback system that advances self actualisation. Here, all experiences are evaluated against the actualising tendency. When this system of evaluation is disturbed by the need for positive self-regard, who we really are becomes distorted. Therefore, due to the switch or disturbance of the evaluation system, Nina might find that there is a mismatch between her real-self on the one hand, and the ideal-self on the other, with the ideal-self inconsistent with actual life experience. The difference becomes a source of anxiety, engaging in defence mechanisms to attempt to temporarily reduce and/or try make sense of ideal-self and real-self. If incongruity too extensive the individual’s defences will not hold and be force in reality. The difficulties Nina experienced in taking up the black swan role and thus embody the character in the same manner as she did the white swan, would be one such experience. The incongruity was so defined that it appeared that Nina suffered neurosis of some sort. Nevertheless, her ability to achieve