CHAPTER TWELVE



CHAPTER TWELVE

OUTLINE

Carl Rogers

1 The Life of Carl Rogers

1 Carl Rogers was born in 1902 in Illinois. The family had six children and the parents were very strict and religious. Carl escaped into books from a rigid family life and to not feel so lonely. Rogers later broke from his parents’ religious beliefs and went to several colleges were he eventually trained in clinical and educational psychology. Roger’s taught at a number of universities as well as an academic clinician. Rogers was also a resident fellow at the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in California where he applied his client-centered therapy to world wide peace problems through tension reduction.

2 The Self and the Tendency Toward Actualization

1 Rogers early research reinforced the importance of the self in the formation of the personality. Rogers suggested that the factors of family environment and social interactions would correlate most strongly with delinquent behavior, however; the factor that most accurately predicted later behavior was self-insight. Rogers believed the focus of counselors should be trying to modify children’s self-insight. He believed people are motivated by an innate tendency to actualize, maintain, and enhance the self. This drive toward self-actualization is part of a larger actualization tendency, which encompasses all physiological and psychological needs. This tendency begins in the womb and is responsible for maturation. This process takes determination and may include struggle and pain. The governing process throughout the life span, as Rogers envisioned it, is the organismic valuing process. We evaluate all life experiences through this process.

3 The Experiential World

1 Rogers wanted to know how we perceive and react to our multifaceted world of experience, by saying that the reality of our environment depends on our perception of it, which may not always coincide with reality.

4 The Development of the Self in Childhood

1 Ideally, according to Rogers; the self is a consistent pattern, an organized whole. All aspects of the self strive for consistency.

2 As the self emerges, infants develop a need for what Rogers called positive regard. This need includes acceptance, love, and approval from other people, most notably from the mother during infancy. However, if positive regard for the infant persist when an infant has undesirable behaviors, the condition is called unconditional positive regard. Since the mother’s love for the child is granted freely and fully, it is not conditional or dependent on the child’s behavior. In time, positive regard will come more from other people, a condition Rogers called positive self-regard.

3 Conditions of worth evolve from this developmental sequence of positive regard leading to positive self-regard. Positive self-regard is Roger’s version of the Freudian superego, and it derives from conditional positive regard. Children may feel they are worthy only under certain conditions. The internalize their parents’ norms and standards, they view themselves as worthy or unworthy, good or bad, according to the terms the parents defined.

4 Sometimes children will have a distorted concept of their experiential world and may come to evaluate experiences or accept or reject them, by what others think of them. This tendency can lead to incongruence between the self-concept and the experiential world, the environment as we perceive it.

5 Characteristics of Fully Functioning Persons

1 According to Roger’s, the fully functioning (self-actualizing) person has the following characteristics: (A) this person is aware of all their experiences, (B) they live fully and richly each moment, (C) they trust in themselves, where no information is threatening; all information can be perceived, evaluated, and weighed accurately, (D) a fully functioning person feels a sense of freedom to make choices without constraints or inhibitions, (E) they are creative and live constructively and adaptively as environmental conditions change, and (F) the fully functioning person may face difficulties as they learn to grow as they are actualizing. Actualizing refers that the self is always in progress, striving. growing, spontaneous, and challenged and stimulated instead of settling for the familiar.

6 Assessment in Roger’s Theory

1 In the technique of person-centered therapy. Rogers explored the client’s feelings and attitudes toward the self and toward other people. He focused on subjective experiences, rather than unconscious experiences. The therapist learns about the client in what the person communicates about their experiences. Clients are accepted as they are and the therapist gives them unconditional positive regard and offers no judgments about their behavior or advice on how to behave.

2 Roger’s used his person-centered therapy in groups, where he believed a greater number of people could learn about themselves and how they relate to or encounter others. His approach to encounter groups was very popular during the 1960’s and 1970’s. a typical group ranged from 8 to 15 people, and the group facilitator was to establish an atmosphere where the group members could express themselves and focus on how others perceive them. Through these group encounters, Roger’s believed most of the participants would become more fully functioning.

3 Rogers did not use psychological tests to assess personality, nor did he develop any tests.

7 Research in Roger’s Theory

1 Rogers believed that person-centered interviews, which rely on clients’ self-reports, were of greater value than experimental methods. Rogers did not use laboratory methods to collect data about personality, although he did use data to attempt to verify and confirm his clinical observations. Rogers used the tape recorder to film therapy, which could be played back to examine what he described as “the molecules of personality change.”

2 Rogers used the Q-sort technique to study how the self-concept changes during a course of therapy. Clients would sort through a large number of statements on cards that were about the self-concept. The client would ask themselves; what is my perceived self concerning whom I am now, and what is my perceived self in terms of an ideal self, that is, the person I would most like to be?

3 Additional studies include work with college students and Roger’s proposition that fully functioning persons are open to all experiences, whereas psychologically unhealthy persons erect defenses to protect themselves against experiences that threaten their self-image. Another study of 56 mothers explored the relationship between self-acceptance and the extent to which they accepted their children as they were, rather than as they desired them to be. Other studies also supported Roger’s belief that parental behavior affects a child’s self-image. Studies were also conducted on Roger’s suggestion that incongruence between the perceived self and the ideal self indicates poor emotional adjustment. Roger’s found broad application for his therapy as a treatment for emotional disturbances and also as a means of enhancing the self-image.

Lecture Topic 12.1

This lecture could be on the topic of conditions that a person would need in childhood to become fully-functioning and self-actualizing as an adult. The instructor could brainstorm ideas, along with the students; concerning the ideal parental skills needed to produce these kinds of adults. What is the ideal environment in which a child is able to challenge their environment and make the choices in their lives which would lead them to become self-actualized as an adult? Rogers has been criticized by some to be so open to the “goodness” and the “common sense” of a person to make good choice that this model for children who are struggling for maturity may not be the best model to take full advantage of the theories of Carl Rogers. Children, when faced with choices beyond their maturity level, may very well make acrimonious choices which may negatively affect their lives and the lives of others. This is in direct conflict with Roger’s theory of a person, who is left alone with their own choices, will make the best possible choices for their lives. The instructor can infer other theories of personality in contrast to the theory of Rogers in whether or not a child can adequately make good choices in their lives.

Lecture Topic 12.2

Roger’s theories were very popular during the 1960’s and 1970’s. The instructor may wish to address the social issues of the day, which may have increased the popularity of Humanistic psychology as theorized by Maslow and Rogers. A film documentary about the so-called perfect community of Woodstock, where no one was arrested for a violent crime and the start of communes that used the techniques of Roger’s and the theories of self-actualization of Maslow could be profiled. The drug culture of the times, and the racial riots attempting equality for those who felt their voice was not being heard. The protest of the Vietnam War and the expression of free choices to do what you want, do nothing, or express yourself through music, free love, or radical political movements. Questions could be asked the students, in terms of did the popularity of Rogers and Maslow and their theories of ‘human potential” and “self-actualization instigate this movement or whether these theories were just popularized by the movements of the 1960’s and the 1970’s. The contrast could be drawn with students in the measuring of whether or not the Humanistic Movement of psychology is as active or not today as in those time frames and why or why not?

Lecture Topic 12.3

The instructor may want to use Case Study 17 and Case Study 18 from Donna Ashcraft’s Personality Theories Workbook to further the students understanding of the use of Roger’s principals of self-concept and the awareness of one’s ideal self. The students could use these case studies by reviewing them in small groups and make several Q-sort cards to explain where the person is in terms of their “self-actualizing” process. These case studies could also be used as a quiz or part of an exam to perceive and understand the application of Roger’s client-centered therapy.

Student Project 12.1 Students may want to log on to the INFOTRAC On-Line Library to research this topic. The following topical helps are in the Student Web Links section of INFOTRAC: Assuring Your Mental Health Self-Help Home Page or Strategies for Stress Management 

Carl Rogers was known for his work as a therapist. The following two articles from INFOTRAC will help the student to understand Carl Rogers and how others perceive his work. Students may want to use these two articles to write their own version or critique of what they believe concerning client-centered therapy:

Journal of Counseling and Development, Wntr 2004 v82 i1 p116(9)

Carl Rogers's life and work: an assessment on the 100th anniversary of his birth. (Profile) Howard Kirschenbaum.

Record number A113856980

Journal of Counseling and Development, Spring 2003 v81 i2 p178(7)

An analysis of how Carl Rogers enacted client-centered conversation with Gloria. (Research). (counseling research) Scott A. Wickman; Cynthia Campbell.

Record number A102341131

Student Project 12.2

The following web resources may encourage students to formulate ideas and opinions on the theories of Carl Rogers, self-actualizing, and client-centered therapy.

This web site contains assorted articles explaining and defending Client-Centered Therapy:



This web site contains a critical review of Roger’s theories:



The following is the official web site for the Association for the Development of the Person Centered Approach (ADPCA):



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