CARL
ROGERS
(1902-1987)
Personal Life
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Born on January 8,1902,Illinois, grew up in a deeply
religious and financially secure family.
Attended the university of Wisconsin as an agriculture
major; later switched to the Clinical Psychology program,
Columbia University. Received his Ph. D in 1931.
Wrote his first book in 1942, ‘Counselling and
Psychotherapy’
Moved to University of Chicago where he published his
major work, ‘Client Centered Therapy: Its Current
Practice, Implications and Theory.’
Approach
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He believed that the person must be understood from
the perspective of his/her ‘phenomenal field’
By the term phenomenal field, he meant the entire
panorama of a person’s experience, the person’s
subjective appreciation of reality.
This reality of our environment depends on our
perception of it, which may not always coincide with
reality.
To learn about another’s person’s phenomenal field,
the psychologist must listen carefully to his/her
subjective report of experience, thereby achieving
empathy with him/her.
The roots of behavior are in the phenomenal field,
believes Roger.
Structure of Personality
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Roger’s theory is based on two constructs:THE ORGANISM:- It is the locus of all experience. Experience
includes everything potentially available to awareness. This totality of
experience includes the ‘phenomenal field’.
THE SELF:- The human organism’s phenomenal field includes all
experience available at a given moment , conscious and
unconscious. As infants gradually develop a more complex
experiential field from widening social encounters, one part of their
experience becomes differentiated from the rest. This separate part,
defined by the words I, me, and myself, is the self or self-concept.
It develops through interactions with others and involves
awareness of being and functioning. Based largely on the social
evaluations the person has experienced.
The self concept is also our image of what we are, what we should be,
and what we would like to be.
Roger’s Personality theory
(Self Theory)
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Roger’s theory is a clinical one, based on years of
experience dealing with his clients. His theory was based on
19 propositions. Before I go on to that, let us consider a few
important concepts:The entire theory is built on a single “force of life” he calls
the “actualizing tendency”. It can be defined as the builtin motivation present in every life-form to develop its
potentials to the fullest extent possible.
This tendency is directional, constructive and present in
all living things. The actualizing tendency can be
suppressed but can never be destroyed without the
destruction of the organism.
Roger’s Personality theory
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Organisms know what is good for them, that is, they
value certain things but not others. This is called
“organismic valuing”. Through this process, we
evaluate all life experiences by how well they
serve the actualizing tendency.
We instinctively value is positive regard, Rogers
umbrella term for things like love, affection,
attention, nurturance, and so on.
Another thing that we value is positive self-regard,
that is, self-esteem, self-worth, a positive selfimage. We achieve this positive self-regard by
experiencing the positive regard others show us over
our years of growing up. Without this self-regard, we
feel small and helpless, and again we fail to become
all that we can be!
Roger’s Personality theory
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Positive regard- includes love, acceptance, and
approval from other people. Getting positive regard is
essential for the individual’s innate tendency towards
actualization and development of the self concept.
If positive regard persists despite the individuals’
undesirable behaviors, the condition is called
unconditional positive regard.
Overtime, this conditioning leads us to have positive
self- regard as well. Positive self-regard is reciprocal
in nature. When people receive positive regard and
develop positive self-regard, in turn they may provide
positive regard to others.
Roger’s Personality theory
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Conditions of worth- When significant others in the
person’s world provide positive regard that is conditional
, rather than unconditional, the person introjects the
desired values, making them his/her own , and acquires
conditions of worth.
Children believe they are worthy only under certain
conditions, the ones that brought parental positive regard
and then personal positive self-regard. Having
internalized their parents’ norms and standards, they
view themselves as worthy or unworthy, good or bad,
according to the terms their parents defined
The self concept then becomes based on these
standards of value rather than on organismic evaluation.
The Fully-functioning Person
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Rogers, like Maslow, was interested in describing
the healthy person. His term is "fullyfunctioning," and involves the following qualities:Openness to experience. This is the opposite of
defensiveness. It is the accurate perception of
one's experiences in the world, including one's
feelings. Feelings are such an important part of
openness because they convey organismic
valuing. If you cannot be open to your feelings,
you cannot be open to actualization.
Existential living. This is living in the here-andnow. The present is the only reality we have.
The Fully-functioning Person
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Organismic trusting: We should allow ourselves to be
guided by the organismic valuing process. By this,
Rogers meant trust your real self, and you can only know
what your real self has to say if you are open to
experience and living existentially!
Experiential freedom: Rogers says that the fullyfunctioning person acknowledges that feeling of freedom,
and takes responsibility for his choices. He knows his future
depends on his own actions and not present
circumstances, past events, or other people
Creativity: Fully functioning persons are flexible and seek
new experiences and challenges. They do not require
predictability, security, or freedom from tension. They feel
obliged by their nature to contribute to the actualization of
others.
The Development of
Personality
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Organism and self, despite inherent tendency to
actualize themselves, are subject to strong
influences from the environment, especially the
social environment.
The aspect of your being that is founded in the
actualizing tendency, follows organismic valuing,
needs to receive positive regard and self regard,
Rogers calls, the “ real self ”.
On the other hand, to the extent that our society is
out of synch with the actualizing tendency, and we
are forced to live with conditions of worth that are
out of step with organismic valuing and receive only
conditional positive regard and self regard, we
The Development of
Personality
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develop instead an ‘ideal self’.
By the term ‘ideal’, Rogers means something which
is not real, that is always out of reach, the standard
we can’t meet.
This gap between the real self and the ideal self,
the ‘I am’ and the ‘I should’ is called incongruity.
The greater the gap the more the incongruity.
The more the incongruity the more the suffering.
In fact, incongruity is essentially what Rogers means
by neurosis. Being out of synch with your own self.
Client Centered Therapy
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Unlike Maslow, Roger began his study of
human nature with troubled personalities.
He distinguished between directive and
non-directive counseling.
Directive counseling-The essence of the
directive counselor’s effort is information
gathering and dispensing. In this type of
counseling, flow of communication b/w client
and counselor tends to be one way: from
counselor to client.
Client Centered Therapy
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Non-directive counseling- the counselor
attempts to respond to the emotional content
of the client’s statements rather than to the
cognitive or informational aspects of the
situation.
Roger originally called his theory nondirective because he felt that the therapist
should not lead the client, but rather be there
for the client while the client directs the
progress of the therapy.
Client Centered Therapy
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Roger believed that it is the client who knows
what hurts, what directions to go, what
problems are crucial, and what experiences
have been deeply buried.
As he became more experienced, he realized
that the therapists guide clients even in subtle
ways. He also realized that clients look to
therapists for guidance.
So he changed the name to client centered
therapy.
Client Centered Therapy
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He defined three key qualities of a client centered
therapist :Genuineness :- the therapist needs to share his/her
feelings honestly. By modeling this behavior, the
therapist can help teach the client to also develop this
important skill.
Unconditional positive regard :- the therapist must
accept the client for who they are and display support
and care what the client is facing or experiencing.
Empathetic understanding :- the therapist needs to be
reflective, acting as a mirror of the client’s feelings.
Criticism
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A chief criticism that many psychologists
make Rogers’ theory is that it is based upon
a naive type of phenomenology. He has
been criticised for ignoring the unconscious.
Psychoanalysts object that unconditional
positive regard, even if it could be
consistently maintained by the therapist,
would not be sufficient to overcome
repression in the patient.
Criticism
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A third criticism of Rogers is that he claimed
Rogerian methods can be applied to each
and every problem. However, there is no
evidence that biological problems like
schizophrenia or autism respond well to the
Rogerian approach. Rogers also noted that
certain clients, such as those who entered
therapy expecting practical advice, were
likely to become disillusioned by nondirective
therapy and drop out quickly.
Criticism
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Finally, Rogerian therapy is sometimes
reduced to the sterile technique of "echoing"
what a client says. Rogers recommended
that a Rogerian therapist repeat or
paraphrase a client's thoughts, in order to
insure comprehension was taking place. That
is actually a valuable technique, but it can be
silly if it is done too often or too automatically.