The Symbolic Growth Experience

Abstract

The Symbolic Growth Experience (SGE) refers to those significant moments in life when we create personal meaning by symbolizing our immediate experience in the interest of heightened awareness and personal growth. As we perceive the symbolic dimensions of our immediate experience, we become creative agents in our own learning and growth. Using the SGE as a paradigm, the present article explores its significance for the development of a humanistic-existential theory of learning with a major emphasis on the creation of meaning. Traditional psychology treats learning as change in behavior. Learning from a perceptual orientation is defined as the discovery of meaning. (Combs, Richards, & Richards, 1976, p. 197) Genuine learning and growth are self-initiated responses to life, expressions of one's voice, experience, desire, preference, feeling. (Moustakas, 1974, p. 81) By significant learning I mean learning which is more than an accumulation of facts. It is learning which makes a difference in the individual's behavior, in the course of action he chooses in the future, in his attitudes and in his personality. It is a pervasive learning which is not just an accretion of knowledge, but which interpenetrates with every portion of his existence. (Rogers, 1961, p. 280)