Authenticity and Congruence

Authenticity is not simply trainable and learnable through concrete instruction, but requires engagement with the societal conditions around you and with the conditions within you as an individual. To experience "Who am I?" means not to deceive yourself and others. It means to be yourself – not to play a role that you are not.

If you do not know what is going on with you, how you feel inside, what kind of person you are, you cannot present yourself outwardly in any particular way. The self-image includes the knowledge about yourself – self-esteem indicates the satisfaction with the perceived characteristics. Together, both form the self-concept. It is shaped by both personal interpretations and feedback from the environment.

Nietzsche's Concept of Authenticity

Nietzsche divides authenticity into three main criteria:

• An authentic person never lies to themselves.
• An authentic person does not tarnish themselves and never acts in a lowly manner.
• An authentic person is someone who is allowed to make promises – thus can take responsibility.

If he is a painter, he never lies with his brush; if he is a philosopher, he does not lie in his thinking. A person does not tarnish themselves if they never do anything that is foreign to their character. And only people with a long memory can take responsibility for their words and actions. The person who takes care of themselves in these three ways is noble.

Congruence

Congruence is understood as the alignment of verbal and nonverbal elements in communication. In a person who is congruent, the content of the message aligns with the body language and the auditory sub-properties of the message. All communicative aspects – such as words, tone, and body language – fit together and convey the same message. Incongruence, on the other hand, means a contradiction, for example between what is said and the behavior.

Congruent people have conflicting inner parts integrated within themselves: Their beliefs, strategies, and behaviors are in alignment. Congruence is one of the Satir categories in contrast to the four types of incongruent communication. The goal of NLP's change techniques is to restore congruence in certain situations. The goal of self-regulation techniques in NLP is to create a congruent personality.

In contrast to congruence stands incongruence. Nonverbal language either confirms the verbal message or contradicts it, as people provide, as soon as they communicate with each other, information about a specific content and at the same time about their mutual relationship. Thus, every communication also includes something about the relationship between sender and receiver.

If the verbal content of a message were always commented on congruently, every interpersonal relationship would be clearly defined. In everyday life, however, people often provide confirmations that define a relationship in a certain way, and contradict this definition in the same breath through other behavior that denies it.

A little thought-provoking impulse to conclude

For many people, authenticity and congruence mean the same thing. But do we not first need to know who we are in order to express it accurately? Or – in relation to the preceding context – must one not first be authentic in order to act congruently?