Once the self begins to emerge, the tendency toward self-acualization appears. This life-long, continuing process is the most important goal in a person's life. Self-actualization is the process of becoming oneself, of developing one's unique psycholo...
Once the self begins to emerge, the tendency toward self-acualization appears. This life-long, continuing process is the most important goal in a person's life. Self-actualization is the process of becoming oneself, of developing one's unique psychological characteristics and potentialities. Self-actualization will be aided or hindered by experience and by learning resulting from linear epistemology. This study describes on the model of self-growth group counseling based on circular epistemology as follows:
1. Self is conceptual construct possesed by all persons, which controls one's beliefs, thinkings, emotions, and behaviors, decides the quantity and quality of one's life, and is integrated and harmonized with mind, collective unconsciousness, and universe through continuing extension of self.
2. Self is formed and strengthened by the process of complex interactions with significant others(mother, father, siblings etc.). One's appearance of self is decided by appearance of one's own family. Family is the matrix of its members' psychosocial development. Therefore, one's positive self is related to one's own healthy family functioning by circular epistemology, and one's negative self, to one's own unhealthy family functioning by epistemology biased to linear.
3. Negative self lives limitedly as much with defensive behaviors distorting realities of person, relations, and family system owing to linear epistemology. On the other hand, Positive self lives in self-actualization as much with congruent behaviors accepting realities of person, relations, and family system owing to circular epistemology.
4. Growth is self-actualizing changes. Person possesed negative self does not have motivation in self-actualization, so can not experience self-actualizing changes. Self-growth is the process of experience and learning providing structured procedures for changing self negative to positive in personal, relational, familial levels.
5. Self-growth can exist in appropriate conditions validatfing one's own self-worth, communicating congruently this validations, being applied flexible family rules, exchanging openness, balancing free and stability, emphasizing responsibility, equilibrium of thinking, feeling, sensing, intuiting, and taking risks.
6. Self-growth is the process of experience and learning being provided experiencing field and procedures with previously stated conditions. Steps of experience and learning are self-exploration→self-understanding→self-accepting→self-openning. These effective learning processes can occur sequentially in the level of person, relations, and family. The level of person, the level of relations, and the level of family go to the person-growth program, the relation-development program, and the family functioning program repectively.