Goal-setting and Self-directed Behavior Change
3other ego psychologists began to reinterpret psychoanalytic theory placing increasing emphasis on the power of ego processes in the rational direction and control of one's behavior.More recently Wiitc (1959) has detailed the research evidence for pro-active, competence motivation in human beings -- motives urging men and animals to ignore safety and security, and to take on new, difficult, and challenging tasks.Of these theorists it is perhaps Carl Rogers who has been most influential in applying the new growth-oriented theory of man to the practice of behavior change .He created a new theory and method of psychotherapy --client-centered therapy (1951).As the name implies, in client-centered therapy the client is the active and curative agent in the therapeutic relationship.The therapist's job is to create in a non-directive way the therapeutic conditions which will facilitate self- inquiry and personal growth in the client.By emphasizing man's creative and problem solving abilities and his grov;th potential the pro-active theorists imply that self-directed change is not only theoretically possible but that it occurs as a natural life process.These two conflicting models of man pose something of a dilemma, for we cannot accept one and discard the other without doing an injustice to tlie data.Research evidence and common sense observations can be marshalled to support both theories --man is passive and controlled by his environment as well as creative and self-directing.the noted ethologist Konrad Lorenz (1963) suggests, however, that this dilemma is an illusion.There is no contradiction, he maintains, between the fact that man's beliavior is governed by causal stimulus-response type laws and the fact that man strives toward goals and can modify his behavior by an act of will."The appreciation of the fact that life processes are directed at aims or goals, and the realization of the other fact that they are, at the same time, determined by causality, not only do