Rereading of the Rogerian theory of personality on the body self-image and self-esteem phenomena

Abstract

Carl Rogers developed a personality theory that can serve as a lens for understanding various clinical phenomena. Considering studies that correlate body self-image and self-esteem problems, this article aims to carry out a reinterpretation of the Rogerian personality theory about these phenomena. In this sense, the aspects are presented that: (1) organize the personality by the relationships between experience, consciousness, phenomenological field, behavior, self (real and ideal), self-actualization tendency, self-image and self-esteem; (2) disorganize the personality and generate self-image and self-esteem problems, from reactions to threat, conditional evaluations, regulations based on the ideal-self, incongruences and psychological maladjustment; (3) reorganize the personality into a self-image and self-esteem based on direct organismic experiences, regulations based on a real self-linked to the self-actualization tendency, and expressed by a fully functioning, openness to experience and the process of being what one is. It concludes pointing to empirical studies on the subject.