Central to Rogers' personality theory is the notion of self or self-concept.  This is defined as "the organized, consistent set of perceptions and beliefs about oneself."

The self is the humanistic term for who we really are as a person.  The self is our inner personality, and can be likened to the soul, or Freud's psyche.  The self is influenced by the experiences a person has in their life, and out interpretations of those experiences.  Two primary sources that influence our self-concept are childhood experiences and evaluation by others.

According to Rogers (1959), we want to feel, experience and behave in ways which are consistent with our self-image and which reflect what we would like to be like, our ideal-self.  The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, the more consistent or congruent we are and the higher our sense of self-worth. 

A person is said to be in a state of incongruence if some of the totality of their experience is unacceptable to them and is denied or distorted in the self-image.

The humanistic approach states that the self is composed of concepts unique to ourselves. The self-concept includes three components:

Self-worth

Self-worth (or self-esteem) comprises what we think about ourselves. Rogers believed feelings of self-worth developed in early childhood and were formed from the interaction of the child with the mother and father.

Self-image

How we see ourselves, which is important to good psychological health. Self-image includes the influence of our body image on inner personality.

At a simple level, we might perceive ourselves as a good or bad person, beautiful or ugly. Self-image affects how a person thinks, feels and behaves in the world.

Ideal-self

This is the person who we would like