Congruence and Incongruence

Congruence describes a state in which the person’s self-concept and experiences, including thoughts, feelings, and behavior, are in harmony. That is, the person is integrated, whole, or genuine. Rogers believed that congruence represents an optimal state of functioning and a primary quality of mental health. Incongruence represents a state of discord between the self-concept and experience. Rogers (1959) described this state as one of “tension and internal confusion” (p. 203) because people cannot reconcile the discrepancy between their thoughts, feelings, or actions and the way they perceive themselves. For example, a person who views himself or herself as having high integrity will likely experience distress when realizing that he or she frequently engages in dishonest behavior. When a person is in a state of incongruence but is unaware of it, the person becomes vulnerable to experiencing anxiety, threat, and disorganization or confusion about the sense of self. At such moments the person may feel a wave of uncertainty or insecurity about who they are and experience being out of sorts, troubled by some vague concern, or “off center.”

Psychological Adjustment and Maladjustment

In Rogers’s theory, optimal psychological adjustment “exists when the concept of the self is such that all experiences are or may be assimilated on a symbolic level into the gestalt of the self-structure. Optimal psychological adjustment is thus synonymous with complete congruence of self and experience, or complete openness to experience” (1959, p. 206). Rogers believed that if persons were nondefensively receptive to all experiences, they would likely make good decisions, achieve high levels of adjustment, and function well. In short, a person who is psychologically adjusted is congruent and integrated and functions well because he or she has taken in and assessed all experiences and information that may be relevant to living effectively.

On the other hand, “psychological maladjustment exists when the organism denies to awareness, or distorts in awareness, significant experiences, which consequently are not accurately symbolized and organized into the gestalt of the self-structure, thus creating an incongruence between self and experience” (Rogers, 1959, p. 204). Thus, maladaption is essentially a state of incongruence between one’s self and one’s experience. The person is likely to experience threat when “an experience is perceived . . . as incongruent with the structure of the self” (p. 204). Consequently, the person cannot integrate some experiences or corresponding actions with the self because they don’t fit. For example, a man confidently entering a talent show (seeing himself as talented) may get feedback from credible judges that he has little or no talent. The person is thrown into a state of threat and disillusionment because he cannot reconcile the disheartening feedback with a view of himself as talented. He may be inclined to deny or distort such threatening information in an attempt to maintain the integrity of the self as perceived. Thus, after a period of time, the man who received feedback that he was not talented may revise the view of self by denying that the judges were fair or competent in perceiving the person’s “real” talent. By doing so, he remains maladjusted because his decisions are based on incomplete or distorted information.