Abstract
Over the centuries, many scholars from East and West, from diverse fields of specializations and research have contributed their ideas to explore the basics of human personality and its potentials. The debate of freewill vs determinism of behavior has been ongoing. The present study specifically, qualitatively, and contrastively analyzed the theorization of Muhammad Iqbal and Carl Rogers on self and forces having pivotal role in human nature development. The commonality of the emphasis that they both laid on ‘self’ had instigated the researcher to compare and contrast their conceptualizations. For both, ‘self’ is the most important component of human personality and their whole theorization revolved around this one concept. Iqbal developed his conceptualizations through intuition and contemplative thought process, carrying the influence of Islamic principles while Roger’s theory came out of his clinical experiences. Both acknowledge positive human nature and share similar views on education and freewill of human beings however, differences in their conclusions can be attributed to the fact that Iqbal was a reformer whose solutions relate to society as whole while Rogers, being a psychotherapist, focused professionally on psychotherapy and process of personality change. The contrastive analysis also pointed to the fact that both Iqbal and Rogers have theorized their ideas on personality taking into consideration their contemporary society’s demands and challenging conditions