Carl Rogers



Brandi L. Johnecheck

The Art Institute of Portland & The Art Institute Online

About the Man

  • Born 1902 in a Chicago suburb to a warm, but strict Protestant family, the fourth of six children. Contact with other people was minimized and he was described as shy and sensitive as a child.
  • Spent his adolescence raising chickens, lambs, pigs, and calves with his brothers on a farm his family bought, with encouragement from their dad to raise animals for profit.
  • Studied agricultural science at the University of Wisconsin, attended a World Student Christian Federation conference, attended the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and finally studied psychology at Columbia University.
  • Began work for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children before completing his doctorate in 1912. He also worked at Ohio State University, the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin, and was a member of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla, California, before helping to start the Center for the Studies of the Person in La Jolla.
  • Received various awards and honors while remaining very active in the field until his death in 1987.
  • Writings include: "The Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child," "Counseling and Psychotherapy," "Client-Centered Therapy," "On Becoming a Person," "Freedom to Learn," "Carl Rogers on Encounter Groups," "Becoming Partners: Marriage and Its Alternatives," "Carl Rogers on Personal Power," "A Way of Being," and "Freedom to Learn for the 80s."

Notes

Carl Rogers, born 1902 in a Chicago suburb to a Protestant couple, the fourth of six. Father was a successful civil engineer and contractor. Family was warm, but strict: “no alcoholic beverages, no dancing, no card playing or theater-going, and very little contact with other people. [...]even carbonated beverages had a faintly sinful aroma, and I remember my slight feeling of wickedness when I had my first bottle of ‘pop.’” Focus on “hard work, responsibility for one's actions, and the importance of personal success.”
Spent his adolescence raising chickens, lambs, pigs, and calves with his brothers on a farm his family bought, with encouragement from their dad to raise animals for profit. Started his interest in scientific agriculture and the scientific method.
Studied agricultural science at the University of Wisconsin, but his professional goals changed shortly after due to meeting other good, sincere people with different beliefs than his own while attending a World Student Christian Federation conference in Peking, China.
Shortly after graduating UofW, he married his childhood sweetheart, Helen, who described him as “shy, sensitive, and unsocial” and that he preferred books to play or sports as a child, and who he’d bought his first car and regularly drove 25 miles on rough
roads to visit. They moved to New York City and Rogers enrolled in the Union Theological Seminary; there, disappointed with other students about not having expression, they petitioned for a seminar without a formal instructor. It was granted, and he found it gratifying and “thought himself right out of religious work.” Having enjoyed a few psychology courses, he moved across the street to Columbia University. He worked as a psychologist in the Child Study Department of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children before completing his doctorate in 1912, during which time he developed his approach, and which lead to his book, The Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child. He later became a professor at Ohio State University, and wrote Counseling and Psychotherapy. Shortly after, he established a counseling center at the University of Chicago, and wrote Client-Centered Therapy, then On Becoming a Person.
In 1957, Rogers returned to the University of Wisconsin, which he found too restrictive on the students and called for reform, for “freedom and a supportive environment.” Shortly after, he resigned. “In 1963, Rogers became a member of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla, California. In 1968, he left the institute to help form the Center for the Studies of the Person in La Jolla.”
Other books include: Freedom to Learn , Carl Rogers on Encounter Groups , Becoming Partners: Marriage and Its Alternatives , Carl Rogers on Personal Power , A Way of Being , and Freedom to Learn for the 80s. Additionally, among his rewards and honors: “He served as president of the American Psychological Association in 1946–1947. In 1956, he received the first Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award presented by the American Psychological Association, which also honored him with its Distinguished Professional Contribution Award in 1972.”
“Carl Rogers died of a heart attack in La Jolla, California on February 4, 1987, at the age of 85. His last few years were spent productively: he attended numerous international workshops, at which he demonstrated to psychologists and other mental health workers, educators, and politicians how various concepts and propositions from his person-centered approach could be utilized to ease world tensions and promote peace.”

About the Theory

Among the main ideas in Rogers' theory is the idea that people are basically good and that they have a natural drive to grow and improve themselves, called self-actualization. His theory has some support from studies of rats preferring more complex spaces over simpler ones, humans seeking stimulation and even hallucinating when in featureless rooms long enough, and babies seeming to choose to eat food that keeps them healthy. Rogers believed this drive was both biological and psychological.
Another detail is, similar to Kelly, Rogers believed that a person's behavior depended on his or her interpretation of events - a subjective reality, based on how the person perceives something rather than how it really is.
He also defined the traits of a healthy person, which he came to call an "emerging person":
  1. They are honest and open.
  2. They are indifferent to material comforts and rewards.
  3. They are caring persons.
  4. They have a deep distrust of cognitively based science and a technology that uses that science to exploit and harm nature and people.
  5. They have a trust in their own experience and a profound distrust of all external authority. 
    6.

Notes

“The subjective experiencing of reality serves as the basis for all the individual's judgments and behavior. It is this phenomenological, inner reality, rather than external, objective reality, that plays the key role in determining the person's behavior.”
“Conscious experience, or awareness, is the aspect of the phenomenal field that can be symbolized—that is, verbalized or imagined. Unconscious experience, in contrast, is experience that cannot be verbalized or imagined by the person.”
“Within each of us, according to Rogers, is an innate motivation called the self-actualizing tendency—an active, controlling drive toward fulfillment of our potentials that enables us to maintain and enhance ourselves. Rogers based this concept primarily on his varied and prolonged experience with troubled individuals in therapy. He noticed in them ‘a growth tendency, a drive toward self-actualization. … It is the urge which is evident in all organic and human life—to expand, extend, become autonomous, develop, mature. … This tendency may become deeply buried under layer after layer of encrusted psychological defenses. … but it is my belief that it exists in every individual, and awaits only the proper conditions to be released and expressed.’” 
“In support of this concept, he cited experiments showing that even rats prefer an environment offering more complex stimuli over one offering less complex stimuli. Human beings similarly seek new experiences and avoid environments that are lacking in stimulation. Experiments have shown that, when people are suspended weightless in a soundproof tank of water, they soon experience aversive hallucinations. To Rogers, these studies, together with his clinical experience, suggested that there is a directional tendency in each of us to grow, to seek new and varied experiences.”
“The actualizing tendency has both a biological and a psychological aspect. The biological aspect includes drives aimed at the satisfaction of basic survival needs—the need for water, food, and air. The psychological aspect involves the development of potentials that make us more worthwhile human beings. In Rogers's judgment, we are all basically good. The actualizing tendency is, thus, selective and directional; it is a constructive tendency.”
A fully-functioning person:
“1. They are open to experience. Fully functioning people are nondefensive individuals who are open to all their feelings—fear, discouragement, pain, tenderness, courage, and awe. They are fully aware of their experiences and accept them, rather than shutting them out. 
2. They are characterized by existential living. Fully functioning people live their experiences as they occur in the present, without trying to superimpose preconceived meaning on them. They are open and flexible, deal with the experience as it is, and discover its meaning for themselves.
3. They trust their organisms. Fully functioning people do what feels right. This does not mean they are inevitably right in their choices, but rather that they make their own choices, experience the consequences, and correct them if they are less than satisfying.
4. They are creative. Creative products and creative living emerge when individuals are open to new experiences, able to trust their own judgments, and willing to take risks if they feel good about a new venture.
5. They live richer lives than do other people. Fully functioning people live the good life, not in the sense of happiness, contentment, security, and bliss—although they experience each of these feelings at appropriate times—but a life that is exciting, challenging, meaningful, and rewarding. Not a life for the fainthearted, it involves taking risks, experiencing pain occasionally, and facing challenges courageously.”
…generated the emerging person (“corporate executives who have given up the rat race to live a simpler life; young people who 
have given up the rat race to live a simpler life; young people who have defied many of the current cultural values and formed a counterculture; priests and nuns who have rejected the dogma of their churches to live more meaningful lives; African Americans, Chicanos, women, and others outside of the dominant culture who have shed their passivity and begun to live more assertive and positive lives. ”):
1. They are honest and open. They reject the sham and hypocrisy of government, Madison Avenue, parents, teachers, and clergy. They are open about their sexual relationships and open in their dealing with others. These humanistically oriented people are opposed to highly structured, inflexible bureaucracies. They believe that institutions exist for human beings and not vice versa.
2. They are indifferent to material comforts and rewards. Blue jeans replace expensive clothes; sleeping bags replace Holiday Inns; and natural foods replace fine cuisine. Emerging people are not power-hungry or achievement-hungry. They are not concerned with status but prefer to relate to people in informal, egalitarian ways.
3. They are caring persons. They have a deep desire to help others, to contribute to society. They are suspicious of people in the helping professions—therapists, social workers, and drug counselors, for example—who earn their livelihood by offering help for pay and very frequently hide behind a professional facade. Instead, emerging people voluntarily help others in crisis. They share
food and lodging without question. Their caring is gentle, subtle, and nonmoralistic. When they help others down from a bad drug trip, for example, they do not preach to them.
4. They have a deep distrust of cognitively based science and a technology that uses that science to exploit and harm nature and people. Emerging people have an intuitive belief that significant discoveries involve feelings. They also respect the environment and do not want to see technology used to destroy it. For example, they oppose nuclear arms and the profound disregard for human life of political leaders who continue to advocate the construction of increasingly destructive weapons (Rogers, 1982). Emerging persons can support the use of technology, but only when it is used wisely to promote human welfare.
5. They have a trust in their own experience and a profound distrust of all external authority. Neither the Pope nor the President nor intellectuals can convince emerging persons of anything that is not borne out by personal experience. They do not obey laws just for the sake of obeying; they obey when it feels right for them to do so. They will deliberately disobey the law and accept the consequences when the law seems unjust or immoral.”
(continued)

“Rogers believed that people have the capacity for change within themselves and will change in constructive ways if the therapist creates the appropriate conditions for growth. These conditions are:
1. The client and the therapist are in psychological contact; that is, each makes an impact on the phenomenological field of the other.
2. The client is in a state of incongruence and feels anxious about it.
3. The therapist is congruent [genuine] in the relationship.
4. The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client.
5. The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client's internal frame of reference.
6. The client perceives the therapist's unconditional positive regard and the therapist's empathic understanding.”

“Rogers believed that people have the capacity for change within themselves and will change in constructive ways if the therapist creates the appropriate conditions for growth. These conditions are:
1. The client and the therapist are in psychological contact; that is, each makes an impact on the phenomenological field of the other.
2. The client is in a state of incongruence and feels anxious about it.
3. The therapist is congruent [genuine] in the relationship.
4. The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client.
5. The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client's internal frame of reference.
6. The client perceives the therapist's unconditional positive regard and the therapist's empathic understanding.”

Terms to Know

  • self-actualization – “The achievement of one's full potential through creativity, independence, spontaneity, and a grasp of the real world.” “The process of establishing oneself as a whole person, able to develop one's abilities and to understand oneself.”
  • conditions of worth – “Stipulations upon which our sense of self-worth depends; they are associated with the belief that we are only worthwhile if we perform behaviors that others think are good and refrain from actions that others think are bad.”
  • congruence – Harmony that exists when there is no discrepancy between a person's experiencing and his or her self-concept.
  • emerging persons – “People of the future whose interpersonal relationships are characterized by honesty, cooperation, and concern for others; who avoid sham, facades, and hypocrisy; and who welcome change and opt for growth even when it is painful to do so.”
  • organismic valuing process – “Innate bodily mechanism for evaluating which experiences are right or wrong for the person.”
  • social self – “A self-concept based largely on the expectations of others.”
  • true self – “A self-concept that is based on our actual feelings about our experiences.”
  • unconditional positive regard – “Total caring or prizing of the person for what he or she is, without any reservations or conditions of worth; in therapy, the therapist's complete acceptance of the client's expression of negative as well as positive feelings.”

Personality Development


According to Rogers, infants and adults have different valuing processes. 

For infants, it is an organismic valuing process, with the simple goal of "satisfying their need for self-actualization as they perceive it." If something will have a positive (assumably long-term) effect, then it is good, and the infant wants it; if it will have a negative effect or in unnecessary (such as food when the infant is no longer hungry), then it is bad and will be refused. 

Adults, on the other hand, have a far more complex valuing process in which more considerations are made about each choice, including personal taste. Rogers also believed that specific details of a person's system would change over time.

Ideally, the individual becomes an "emerging" or "fully-functional" person.

Notes

Infants “operate from an internal frame of reference, unencumbered by the evaluations of others. He also believed that [...] their behavior is directed toward the goal of satisfying their need for self-actualization as they perceive it. Thus, infants engage in an organismic valuing process, in which they use their actualization tendency as a criterion in making judgments about the worth of a given experience. Experiences that help promote actualization are good, or positively valued; experiences that hinder actualization are bad, or negatively valued. In support of this view, Rogers cited the example of an infant who values food when hungry but rejects it when satiated.” Issues with study and theory; not proven for humans, unsupported in other animals.
“In adults, the valuing process is much more complex than it is in infants. At this point in the developmental process, the adult is making much more complicated judgments about a variety of experiences relating to issues in art, politics, career, ethics, personal relationships, and so forth. Value judgments in these areas often change. A painting we found satisfying last year may be abhorrent to us now. Judgments about friends, acquaintances, politicians, doctors, teachers, clergy, parents, and others do not remain constant. [...] Yet, in Rogers's view, adults, after listening to what others think, must ultimately trust the wisdom of their own bodies if they are to grow constructively.”
Emerging person, fully-functional person

Pathological Behavior

In Rogers' theories, the primary cause of an unhealthy mind is some form of interference with self-actualization, which generally comes in externally (to the social self) as some sort of pressure to not follow what one's own body and mind (the true self) actually desire. “When the social self is incongruent with the person's true self, we are likely to distort our true feelings by repressing, denying, or distorting them. Under these conditions, progress toward self-realization is hindered.” Things such as fear, defensiveness, and ignorance are not part of the basic human nature, but instead stem from faulty socialization; and things such as self-harm only result from "the most perverse circumstances." 

When there is an incongruence, the individual tends to feel like something is wrong, which triggers defensive behavior. If there is enough of a difference and the defense doesn't work, "the result is a profound state of disorganization that may be labeled psychotic."

Rogers also believes that a healthy individual can imagine or verbalize their experiences fully and accurately, while an unhealthy individual cannot and tends to distort or repress experiences.

Notes

“Conscious experience, or awareness, is the aspect of the phenomenal field that can be symbolized—that is, verbalized or imagined. Unconscious experience, in contrast, is experience that cannot be verbalized or imagined by the person. Healthy individuals, in Rogers's view, are those who can symbolize their experiences accurately and completely; unhealthy people distort or repress their experiences and are unable to symbolize them accurately and sense them fully.”
“Organisms do not, according to Rogers, develop their capacity for nausea or self-destruction except under the most perverse circumstances. Instead, they develop their innate goodness, but only if society acts toward them in a helpful, encouraging way. Although Rogers was clearly optimistic about human nature, he was nevertheless keenly aware that human beings are sometimes immature and antisocial and that they sometimes act out of fear, ignorance, and defensiveness. Such behavior, however, is not in accordance with their basic natures, according to Rogers, but is the result of faulty socialization practices. Thus, society can facilitate or hinder movement toward self-actualization.”
“When the social self is incongruent with the person's true self, we are likely to distort our true feelings by repressing, denying, or distorting them. Under these conditions, progress toward self-realization is hindered.”

Methods of Assessment


Though Rogers disliked formal assessment techniques (likely feeling that standardization was too inflexible for assessing the human mind), there were a few techniques which he employed:
 
  • the Chodorkoff study, to measure organismic experiencing
  • a Q-sort, to measure the discrepancy between a person's actual and ideal selves
  • video and audio recording, to better study and understand the interaction between therapist and client, and to be less reliant on memory and be able to look back accurately

Notes

“Rogers believed that assessment of the individual's personality must be based on an exploration of the person's feelings and attitudes toward himself or herself and others. It is the client who subjectively interprets experiences and who provides the therapist with valid information about his or her functioning. Rogers recognized that this phenomenological extremism has its limitations. The therapist can gain only that experiential information about the client that the client is able or willing to articulate. Moreover, clients may purposely distort reports to the therapist to win approval. Despite these limitations, Rogers believed that his person-centered approach provides a meaningful way to understand the individual's personality. When the therapist provides a supportive and nonthreatening milieu for the client, distortions and evasions are minimized. The therapist also actively tries not to prejudge the client by fitting him or her into a preconceived theoretical structure. Under these conditions, the therapist can gain an accurate understanding of the unique strengths and weaknesses of the client, with the goal of enabling the client to move toward self-realization.”
“Rogers argued against the clinical use of formal assessment techniques, [but] he was forced to rely on measurement procedures to test his theory.” “Chodorkoff study, [...] judges’ ratings were used to assess the person's organismic experiencing.”

“Rogers was also a pioneer in developing a technique for assessing the nature of the interactions between client and therapist, and in showing how these data are related to the therapeutic outcome. [...]  involves the use of video and audio tape recordings of the therapeutic process [to] provide a more accurate, comprehensive, and available set of data for analysis and interpretation than do written records of therapy sessions made by the therapist from memory.”
“Rogers also conducted research on the impact of person-centered therapy using the Q-sort [designed to measure these discrepancies between actual and ideal selves]. According to Rogers, a person's self-concept should change over the course of therapy. He believed that the initial discrepancies between the way in which clients actually view themselves and the way in which they would like to view themselves are reduced by effective counseling.”

Types of Therapy


The primary focus of Rogers' methods were on helping the client achieve self-actualization. To do this, the therapist must be sure to provide an atmosphere that will allow the issues to be resolved, which largely requires the therapist to be open, non-judgmental, and positive. The therapist then must determine how and why there is an incongruence between the social self and the true self, and help the client to understand this as well. Once the client recognizes and understands the problem, he or she can begin working it out with gentle guidance from the therapist.

Notes

“Rogers believed that people have the capacity for change within themselves and will change in constructive ways if the therapist creates the appropriate conditions for growth. These conditions are:
1. The client and the therapist are in psychological contact; that is, each makes an impact on the phenomenological field of the other.
2. The client is in a state of incongruence and feels anxious about it.
3. The therapist is congruent [genuine] in the relationship.
4. The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client.
5. The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client's internal frame of reference.
6. The client perceives the therapist's unconditional positive regard and the therapist's empathic understanding.”

References


  • Ryckman, R. M. (2008). Chapter 13: Rogers’s person-centered theory. In Theories of personality (9th ed.). Thomson/Wadsworth.
  • self-actualization. (n.d.). Dictionary.com unabridged. Retrieved May 01, 2013, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/self-actualization
  • self-actualization. (n.d.). Collins English dictionary - complete & unabridged 10th edition. Retrieved May 01, 2013, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/self-actualization
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