Carl Rogers

1
Carl Rogers

• Born in suburb of Chicago (Oak Park) in 1902
• Strict, controlling, religious parents
• Childhood spent in solitary pursuits
• 2 years at the Union Theological Seminary
• Ph.D clinical psychology from Columbia University
  Teachers College in 1931

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Rogers Client-Centered TherapyAssumptions
about Human Nature

• Internal Frame of Reference
• Persons behavior - understood from this frame of
  reference
• Human beings are innately good.
• Need for unconditional positive regard from
  others.
• Humans are purposive goal-directed.

3
Rogers Client-Centered TherapyAssumptions
about Human Nature

• Core of human life resides in SELF-EXPERIENCE
• Value of life is in PRESENT
• Basic Human Need - Deep Human Relationship
• Internal Rationalities - people do the best
  possible thing if conditions are present

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Development of Personality

• Self-Concept picture or image people have of
  themselves.
• Self-Experience all that is occurring within
  the organism that is potentially available to
  awareness.
• Ideal-Self the self-concept the person would
  like to possess.
• Incongruence the difference between the
  self-concept and the self-experience.
• Actualizing Tendency
• the inherent tendency of the organism to
  develop all its capacities in ways that serve to
  maintain or enhance the organism..
• (Rogers, 1961)

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Case Example
Person Smith
Self-Concept How I see me
Self-Experience How I really am
Lonely Angry Fearful Smart Manipulative Compulsive
Joyful Insecure Lonely Honest Trustworthy Smart
Incongruence
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Psychopathology

• No dividing line between normality and
  psychopathology.
• Avoid diagnostic labels
• ..such categories as pseudoscientific efforts
  to glorify the therapists expertise and depict
  the client as a dependent object.. (Rogers,
  1951)
• Defense responding to experiences that threaten
  the self-concept (distortion, denial)
• Neurosis Powerful conditions of worth in
  self-concept. Incongruent with totality of
  experience.
• Psychosis Person is badly hurt by life, needs
  corrective influence of a deep interpersonal
  relationship.

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Case Example Therapy Begins
Person Smith
Self-Concept How I see me
Self-Experience How I really am
Joyful Insecure Lonely Honest Trustworthy Smart
Lonely Angry Fearful Smart Manipulative Compulsive
Moving toward Congruency
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Therapeutic Procedures

• No Couch
• No use of interpretation
• No investigation of clients past
• No dream analysis
• Client must perceive three characteristics in the
  therapist
• Genuine therapist in touch with his/her own
  personal experience
• Empathic attuned to the clients feelings and
  beliefs
• Unconditional positive regard Non-judgmental,
  non-possessive respect and caring for clients
  self-concept and feelings

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Mechanism of Change

• Abandon the defensive facades that protect
  incongruent self-concept.
• Accept anxiety-provoking aspects of
  self-experience.
• Move from incongruence to congruence.
• Establishing a constructive interpersonal
  relationship with therapist.

10
Criticisms

• Completely optimist and simplistic view of human
  nature.
• Three therapeutic conditions are necessary but
  insufficient.
• Implies therapist must be congruent.
• Diagnosis is also important.
• Avoids confrontation--therapy needs to be
  confrontational.

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Research

• Conducted on three characteristics genuineness,
  empathy, and unconditional positive regard.
• Some studies found these related to constructive
  change in therapy, other studies have found no
  relationship (Epstein, 1980)
• Self-concept has also been studied. Research
  supports notion that therapy is usually related
  to increased self-acceptance (Wylie, 1984)