ild and mother as crucial to the child's developing self-concept, Sullivan feels that the "self" is essentially social in origin. He sees the concept as arising from two sources: (1) the feelings that the child experiences during his contacts with others; and (2) his own reflection on the appraisals and/or the perceptions of others regarding him.
Of the humanistic theories of self-concept, perhaps the most comprehensive is that of Carl Rogers (1959). Like Sullivan, Rogers views the child as attaching meaning to his experiences and perceptions through reflection on their import. Rogers states that humans attach meaning to everything they experience; and that the totality of this meaning and perception comprises a person's phenomenological field. On the other hand, the particular perceptions and meanings that are specifically related to the individual are said to comprise the child's sense of self.
The foregoing clearly shows how humanistic theory postulates that the thoughts, perceptions and feelings which a child has in correspondence to his interaction with others and the environment operate to produce the self-concept. What remains to be explained is how the self-concept can then operate to produce experience.
With respect to the operation of self-concept toward the production of experience, Rogers (1959) has noted that as a child develops his/her self-concept, others such as the parents impose conditions of worth which, in order to feel positive toward self, the child strives to attain. However, this process of striving means that the sense of self-worthiness must be restricted to only those ideas, those thoughts, and those experiences which significant others such as the parents have proclaimed as giving merit and value to the sense of self.
In other words, in Rogers' view, conditions of worth can operate as blinders on a horse, causing the person to avoid behaviors and experiences that might lead him or her to thi...