Understanding personality often means understanding recurring patterns in thoughts, emotions, and relationships. Why are some people especially sensitive to criticism, feel overlooked quickly, or constantly try to appear strong, helpful, or in control? In everyday life, such patterns often look contradictory. Yet they are frequently rooted in understandable psychological processes.
A particularly useful way to understand this is Rainer Sachse's model of double regulation of action. It describes how basic needs, early learning experiences, internal schemas, and later compensatory strategies interact. This makes it easier to understand how personality patterns develop, why people repeatedly run into certain interpersonal problems, and why behavior often has more to do with protection than with “bad character.”
This article offers a clear and practical introduction to the model.
- How to understand personality through needs and personality patterns
- What is meant by the level of needs and the game level
- How unmet needs develop into schemas
- What compensatory patterns are
- What an example based on the need for recognition looks like
Understanding personality: what does it mean here?
Here, personality does not simply mean traits such as introverted, creative, or disciplined. It refers more to stable patterns in how people see themselves, what they expect from others, what they experience as threatening, and how they try to remain psychologically stable.
This is exactly where the model of double regulation of action becomes helpful: personality is understood as an interplay of motives, schemas, and action strategies.
Many problematic personality patterns are not random. They can often be read as understandable responses to hurt or chronically unmet needs.
The model of double regulation of action explained simply
The model distinguishes between two levels that operate at the same time.
1. The authentic motive level or level of needs
This level is about basic psychological needs. These include, for example:
- feeling welcome
- safety and security
- protection, reliability, and dependability
- love and affection
- appreciation, praise, and recognition
- attention and being noticed
- empathy and understanding
- autonomy, self-determination, and freedom
- assertiveness and the sense of being effective
- an environment that is as non-threatening and non-abusive as possible
These needs are not optional extras. They are central to psychological development. When they are sufficiently met, people are more likely to develop trust, experience themselves as valuable, and handle relationships with flexibility.
2. The inauthentic game level
When important needs are not met reliably over time, people often develop strategies to deal with that lack. These strategies are no longer aimed directly at the need itself, but at securing it indirectly, avoiding hurt, or controlling other people's reactions.
At this level, patterns emerge such as trying to please, appearing overly strong, hiding weakness, demanding recognition, withdrawing, controlling, or unconsciously pushing others into certain roles.
The game level is therefore not “inauthentic” in the sense of being fake on purpose. It is better understood as a protective level. People act there in ways that help them avoid psychological pain or gain indirect access to need fulfillment.
How do personality patterns develop?
According to the model, people learn what to believe about themselves, about others, and about relationships in several different ways.
These learning processes can happen through:
- insight and conscious conclusions
- trial and error
- model learning by observing others
- praise and punishment in the sense of operant learning
- associative learning in the sense of classical conditioning
If, for example, a child repeatedly experiences that needs for closeness, protection, or recognition are not answered reliably, what remains is not only disappointment. Stable beliefs may also form, such as “Something is wrong with me,” “Others are not reliable,” or “I have to do something specific in order to have value.”
Understanding needs, schemas, and compensation
One of the model's key ideas is this: frustrated needs give rise to schemas. These schemas then shape how people interpret situations and how they act.
Self-schema
The self-schema describes what a person believes about themselves. If the need for recognition has been chronically hurt, a self-schema might be: “I am not worthy of recognition.”
Relationship schema
The relationship schema describes expectations toward others. In the same example, it might be: “Other people do not give me recognition.”
Compensatory self-schema
This is where rules develop about how one has to be in order to gain security or recognition after all. A typical example would be: “I have to behave in a way that gets me recognition.”
Compensatory relationship schema
This level concerns implicit rules for other people. For example: “Other people must give me recognition.”
A person with a strong need for recognition may appear highly achievement-oriented, helpful, or well adapted on the outside. Yet behind that is often not only ambition, but the deep fear of not being valuable without visible performance.
What are image and appeal?
In the model, image describes the picture a person creates of themselves in other people's minds. This does not have to be consciously planned. Some people, for example, come across as especially competent, especially needy, especially moral, or especially independent because exactly that image protects them.
Appeal is the mostly unconscious invitation for others to behave in a certain way. It may sound like: “See me,” “do not hurt me,” “admire me,” “do not leave me alone,” or “do not contradict me.”
This is how interpersonal patterns stabilize. Other people respond to the displayed image and the implicit appeal, often without noticing that they are becoming part of a recurring relational pattern.
The core problem: personalization
An important point in the model is that people often do not attribute other people's behavior to the other person or to the situation. Instead, they interpret it as being about themselves.
Then statements such as the following become common:
- “The other person is stressed right now” turns into “I am unimportant”
- “The feedback was mixed” turns into “I am not enough”
- “Someone is pulling away” turns into “Something is wrong with me”
This is exactly how old schemas get activated again and again. People then experience not only the current situation, but also the old meaning they automatically give to it.
A clear example: the need for recognition
The example from your presentation can be translated into everyday language quite well.
| Level | Typical content |
|---|---|
| Central need | I want recognition, appreciation, and to be seen. |
| Self-schema | I am not worthy of recognition. |
| Relationship schema | Other people do not give me recognition. |
| Compensatory self-schema | I have to perform, please, or be perfect to get recognition. |
| Compensatory relationship schema | Other people should value, notice, and affirm me. |
In everyday life, this can look very different. Some people constantly strive for praise. Others react with hurt or resentment when they do not feel sufficiently noticed. Others again appear very self-confident while being deeply dependent on receiving recognition.
The visible behavior is the compensation. The underlying issue is the need.
If you want to understand a recurring pattern, do not ask only, “Why do I behave like this?” Often the more helpful question is: “Which need am I trying to protect or finally meet through this?”
Why this matters for personality-related problems and relationships
The model of double regulation of action helps explain why certain personality styles seem so stable. People are not simply repeating “wrong behavior.” They are following internal rules that once made sense or at least reduced psychological strain.
This also explains why insight alone is often not enough. Even if someone understands that a pattern is unhelpful, that does not mean the underlying need, old fear, or compensatory schema has already changed.
Personality-related difficulties can therefore often be understood more clearly as:
- chronically hurt needs
- self-schemas and relationship schemas that grew from them
- compensatory rules and protective strategies
- interpersonal patterns that keep confirming those schemas
How personality patterns can change
Change usually does not begin by simply suppressing compensatory behavior. It is more helpful to understand the internal logic of the pattern.
- Identify the central need
- Name the self-schema and relationship schema
- Understand the compensation and the implicit rules
- Examine how this influences other people
- Create new experiences with oneself and with relationships
The goal is not to stop having needs. The goal is to regulate needs more directly, more flexibly, and less through rigid protection patterns.
When you notice a recurring conflict, ask yourself: Which need is touched here? What do I believe about myself in that moment? What do I expect from others? And what do I do to compensate for the tension that arises?
Conclusion
If you want to understand personality, it is not enough to look only at visible behavior. You also have to look at the structure behind it. This is exactly what Rainer Sachse's model of double regulation of action makes possible: it connects needs, learning experiences, schemas, and compensations into one coherent picture of personality and personality patterns.
That also makes difficult or rigid patterns easier to understand. Behind them there is often not malice or lack of willpower, but protective attempts that once made sense and now often create problems.
For that reason, it can be relieving to view personality not morally, but functionally: What is this pattern protecting, and which need lies underneath it?
Sources
- Sachse, R. (2019). Personality disorders: guide for psychological psychotherapy (3rd updated and expanded edition). Goettingen: Hogrefe Verlag.
- Source of the model presented here: Sachse, R. Model of double regulation of action, based on the work listed above.
- Copyright notice: The ebook is protected by copyright. © 2004, 2013, and 2019 Hogrefe Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Merkelstrasse 3, 37085 Goettingen, Germany, hogrefe.de. Ebook ISBN (PDF) 978-3-8409-2906-9, ISBN 978-3-8017-2906-6.