| Carl Rogers
Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902, Oak Park, Illinois - February
4, 1987) was perhaps the most influential psychologist in American
history and was instrumental in the development of non-directive
psychotherapy, also known as 'client-centered' or 'Person centered
psychotherapy'.
'Rogerian psychotherapy' became widely influential, embraced for
its humanistic approach. Rogers also made significant contributions
to the field of adult education, with his Experiential theory of
learning. Rogers maintained that all human beings have a natural
desire to learn. He defined two categories of learning: meaningless,
or cognitive learning (e.g., memorizing multiplication tables) and
significant, or experiential learning (applied knowledge which addresses
the needs and wants of the learner).
Rogers' basic tenets were unconditional positive regard, genuineness,
and empathic understanding, with each demonstrated by the counselor.
According to Rogers, these tenets were both necessary and sufficient
to create a relationship conducive to enhancing the client's psychological
well being, by enabling the client to fully experience their phenomenological
field, or self.
Rogers' father was an engineer, his mother a housewife and devoted
Christian. Following an education in a strict, religious and ethical
environment, he became a rather isolated, independent and disciplined
person, and acquired a knowledge and an appreciation for the scientific
method in a practical world. His first career choice was agriculture,
followed by religion. At age 20, following his 1922 trip to Beijing,
China, for an international Christian conference, he started to
doubt his religious convictions; to help him clarify his career
choice, he attended to a seminar entitled Why am I entering the
Ministry?, after which he decided to change career.
After two years he left the seminary and took his M.A. (1928) and
his Ph.D. (1931) from Columbia University's Teachers College. While
completing his doctoral work, he engaged in child study at the Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in Rochester, New York,
becoming the agency's director in 1930.
He was offered a full professorship at Ohio State University in
1940. In 1942, he wrote his first book, Counseling and Psychotherapy.
In it, Rogers suggested that the client, by establishing a relationship
with an understanding, accepting therapist, can resolve difficulties
and gain the insight necessary to restructure his life.
Then, in 1945, he was invited to set up a counseling center at
the University of Chicago. It was while working there, in 1951,
he published his major work, Client-Centered Therapy, wherein he
outlines his basic theory. In 1956 Rogers became the first President
of the American Academy of Psychotherapists. In 1957 he arrived
at the University of Wisconsin. However, following several internal
conflicts at the department of psychology at Wisconsin, Rogers became
disillusioned with academia.
In 1964, Rogers was selected 'humanist of the year' by the American
Humanist Association, and he received an offer to join the staff
of the Western Behavioral Studies Institute (WBSI) for research,
which he accepted and then moved to La Jolla, California. He remained
in La Jolla, doing therapy, speeches and writing until his sudden
death 23 years later.
Rogers and some colleagues are also the founders of 'Group Encounter'
(for young people, managers etc.) and of 'Marriage Encounter' (ME).
Rogers' idea of the 'fully functioning person' involved the following
qualities, which show marked similarities to Buddhist thinking:
- Openness to experience:-The accurate perception of one's feelings
and experience in the world
- Existential living:-Living in the present, rather than the past
(gone) or the future (yet to come)
- Organismic trusting:-Trusting one's own thoughts and feelings
as accurate; do what comes naturally
- Experiential freedom:-To acknowledge one's freedoms and take
responsibility for one's own actions
- Creativity:-Full participation in the world, including contributing
to others' lives
Quotes
"Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone
of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none
of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to
experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer
approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me.
Neither the Bible nor the prophets -- neither Freud nor research
--neither the revelations of God nor man -- can take precedence
over my own direct experience. My experience is not authoritative
because it is infallible. It is the basis of authority because it
can always be checked in new primary ways. In this way its frequent
error or fallibility is always open to correction." Carl Rogers,
from 'On Becoming a Person
"If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing
conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present
system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning
which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-intitiated
learning." Carl Rogers
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