“So I am a chameleon.”
“We all are. But the social-cognitive perspective asks: what are your expectancies? What do you believe will happen if you act differently at the grocery store? If you buy the expensive cheese? If you smile at a stranger? If you cry in aisle four?”
She had come to him because her life had stopped making sense. A year ago, she had divorced her husband of fifteen years—a kind, predictable engineer named Zoran. Six months ago, she had quit her tenured teaching position. Last week, she had dyed her hair bright red and bought a motorcycle. Her friends whispered about a midlife crisis. Her ex-husband called it a breakdown. But Ana felt, for the first time, terrifyingly awake.
“This is the humanistic view,” Lovro said when she showed him a photograph of the painting. “Carl Rogers said every person has an actualizing tendency—a drive to grow toward their full potential. But we often live according to conditional positive regard: we only love ourselves when we meet others’ expectations. You became the responsible Ana because that Ana earned approval. But your true self—the artist, the feeler, the woman who throws plates—was waiting for unconditional acceptance.”
“Albert Bandura would agree,” Lovro said. “Personality is not just traits or hidden drives. It is a continuous interaction between your thoughts, your behaviors, and your environment. You have learned, over decades, that certain situations demand certain selves. The classroom demanded the strict teacher. The dinner table with Zoran demanded the agreeable wife. The grocery store demands the frugal, efficient woman.”