Describe how the idea of the self became the core of Rogers's theory of personality

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

ANS: William Kell, one of Rogers's students, attempted to predict the behavior of delinquent children. Rogers predicted that the factors of family environment and social interactions (external factors) would correlate most strongly with delinquent behavior, but he was wrong. The factor that most accurately predicted later behavior was self-insight.
He was surprised to learn that family environment did not relate highly to later delinquent behavior. Two years later, Helen McNeil replicated the study using a different group of subjects and got results similar to those of Kell. A person's level of self-insight was the single most important predictor of behavior.
This time, faced with such an accumulation of data, Rogers accepted the findings and, on reflection, came to appreciate their significance.
Counselors traditionally focus on external factors such as a poor family environment and alter the circumstances by removing children from a threatening home situation and placing them in foster care. Instead, they should be trying to modify the children's self-insight. That realization was important to Rogers personally.
Thus, the idea of the self became the core of Rogers's theory of personality, as it had become the core of his own life.