Carl Rogers in the context of "Self-actualization"

Personality describes the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional patterns that make up a person’s unique adjustment to life. Personality is relatively stable, but can change over time due to experiences and developmental processes. Although there is no consensus definition of personality, most theories in personality focus on traits, motivation, skills, and identity.

Research in personality psychology generally attempts to explain the characteristics of a person that underlie differences in behavior. Personality characteristics are related to many life outcomes, such as work and relationship success, to mental health, well-being and longevity. Over time, psychologists have taken many different approaches to study personality, which can be organized across dispositional, biological, intrapsychic (psychodynamic), cognitive-experiential, social and cultural, and adjustment domains. The various approaches used to study personality today reflect the influence of the first theorists in the field, a group that includes Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Gordon Allport, Hans Eysenck, Abraham Maslow, and Carl Rogers.

Positive psychology is the scientific study of conditions and processes that contribute to positive psychological states (e.g., contentment, joy), well-being, positive relationships, and positive institutions.

Positive psychology began as a new domain of psychology in 1998 when Martin Seligman chose it as the theme for his term as president of the American Psychological Association. It is a reaction against past practices that tended to focus on mental illness and emphasized maladaptive behavior and negative thinking. It builds on the humanistic movement of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, which encourages an emphasis on happiness, well-being, and purpose.

Albert Ellis (September 27, 1913 – July 24, 2007) was an American psychologist and psychotherapist who founded rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT). He held MA and PhD degrees in clinical psychology from Columbia University, and was certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP). He also founded, and was the President of, the New York City-based Albert Ellis Institute. He is generally considered to be one of the originators of the cognitive revolutionary paradigm shift in psychotherapy and an early proponent and developer of cognitive-behavioral therapies.

Based on a 1982 professional survey of American and Canadian psychologists, he was considered the second most influential psychotherapist in history (Carl Rogers ranked first in the survey; Sigmund Freud was ranked third). Psychology Today noted that, "No individual—not even Freud himself—has had a greater impact on modern psychotherapy."

Person-centered therapy (PCT), also known as person-centered psychotherapy, person-centered counseling, client-centered therapy and Rogerian psychotherapy, is a humanistic approach to psychotherapy developed by psychologist Carl Rogers and colleagues beginning in the 1940s and extending into the 1980s. Person-centered therapy emphasizes the importance of creating a therapeutic environment grounded in three core conditions: unconditional positive regard (acceptance), congruence (genuineness), and empathic understanding. It seeks to facilitate a client's actualizing tendency, "an inbuilt proclivity toward growth and fulfillment", via acceptance (unconditional positive regard), therapist congruence (genuineness), and empathic understanding.

In psychology, self-compassion is extending compassion to one's self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering. American psychologist Kristin Neff has defined self-compassion as being composed of three main elements – self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.

• Self-kindness: Self-compassion entails being warm towards oneself when encountering pain and personal shortcomings, rather than ignoring them or hurting oneself with self-criticism.
• Common humanity: Self-compassion also involves recognizing that suffering and personal failure is part of the shared human experience rather than isolating.
• Mindfulness: Self-compassion requires taking a balanced approach to one's negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. Negative thoughts and emotions are observed with openness, so that they are held in mindful awareness. Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which individuals observe their thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them. Conversely, mindfulness requires that one not be "over-identified" with mental or emotional phenomena, so that one suffers aversive reactions. This latter type of response involves narrowly focusing and ruminating on one's negative emotions.

Self-compassion in some ways resembles Carl Rogers' notion of "unconditional positive regard" applied both towards clients and oneself; Albert Ellis' "unconditional self-acceptance"; Maryhelen Snyder's notion of an "internal empathizer" that explored one's own experience with "curiosity and compassion"; Ann Weiser Cornell's notion of a gentle, allowing relationship with all parts of one's being; and Judith Jordan's concept of self-empathy, which implies acceptance, care and empathy towards the self.