Carl Rogers profoundly impacted the field of psychotherapy with his person-centered theory of personality. Explain Rogers’ concept of actualizing tendency and discuss what impacts an individual’s ability to realize it?

     Carl Rogers, American psychologist and founder of client-centered therapy, was more concerned with helping individuals instead of trying to discover why individuals behave as they did (Feist & Feist, 2009). Rogers was more concerned with helping an individual grow and develop instead of questioning why an individual developed how he or she did. Rogers developed his humanistic theory of personality from experiences as a practicing psychotherapist. Rogers was a theorists who called for empirical research in support of his both his personality theory and therapeutic approach. Rogers concept of actualizing tendency is the tendency within humans (that only motive individuals possess), animals, and plants to move toward fulfillment and completion of potentials (Feist & Feist, 2009). These motives are the needs of one to satisfy an individual's hunger drive, the expression of deep emotions when an individual feels those emotions, and the acceptance of self, which are the single motive of actualization examples (Feist & Feist, 2009). Actualization involves the entirety of an individual because every individual operates as one complete organism, which includes the individual and his or her intellectual and physiological, emotional and rational, unconscious and conscious (Feist & Feist, 2009). The concept of actualizing tendency is one whereas individuals have a potential to discover the realization of his or her personal abilities when one is provided with a climate of facilitative attitudes, which are psychological. 

Reference

Feist, J., & Feist, G. J. (2009). Theories of personality (7th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.