Carl Rogers: Humanistic Psychology and Person-Centered Therapy

Introduction

Carl Rogers was probably the most important psychologist and psychotherapist of the twentieth century apart from Sigmund Freud, and his humanistic, person-centered approach has been applied to many fields outside of psychology, including education, business, nursing, medicine, and social work. Many of the basic textbooks in all of these fields reflect his influence, including the concept of learner-centered education and the use of the term "clients" instead of "patients." He wrote over 100 academic books and articles, the most famous being On Becoming a Person (1961), which clearly describes his main ideas and is summarized below.

Originally trained for the ministry and then in Freudian psychoanalysis, Rogers gradually broke with that school of psychology as a result of his work with abused children and his study of phenomenology and existentialist psychology. Central to his theory was the development of a healthy self-concept that was open, expressive, and spontaneous rather than rigid and defensive, and the goal of therapy or education was to assist the client in becoming a fully functioning and self-actualized adult. Teachers and therapists were not supposed to be authoritarian figures who had all the answers, but mentors and guides who encouraged growth and openness to new experience.

Biography and Background

Rogers was born in Chicago in 1902 and from an early age was known for being precociously intelligent, learning to read and write before he went to school. His parents were deeply religious, and he was raised with strict moral and ethical views. At the University of Wisconsin, he first studied agriculture, then religion, and considered becoming a missionary to China — but he then began to have doubts about his religious vocation and the truth of Christian doctrines. He received his master's degree in education from Columbia University in 1928 and his doctorate in psychology three years later. His early research involved child abuse, and his first book was The Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child in 1939. Even at this early stage, Rogers was developing his humanistic and client-centered approach based on the psychotherapeutic model of Otto Rank.

In his second book, Counseling and Psychotherapy (1942), Rogers began to express doubt about the standard theoretical model of Freudian analysis, including its rigid stages of development, and concluded that the best method of treating patients was simply to listen to them with patience and understanding and to let them determine their own course and speed of treatment (Kramer, 1995).

From 1940 to 1945, Rogers taught at Ohio State, and then at the University of Chicago from 1945 to 1957, where he established a student counseling center to test his humanistic theories. His next books, Client-Centered Therapy (1951) and Psychotherapy and Personality Change (1954), were based on the results he achieved with students using this approach. While at the University of Wisconsin from 1957 to 1963, he wrote his most famous book, On Becoming a Person (1961), in which he argued that the best type of psychotherapy relied on "the client for the direction of movement" (Rogers, 1961). From 1963, Rogers served as director of the Center for Studies of the Person in La Jolla, California, where he remained until his death at age 85.

Rogers' Theory of Humanistic Psychology and Personality Development

Rogers wrote over 100 books and scholarly articles on humanistic psychology and won numerous awards and honors, including a nomination for the Nobel Prize. Politically, his views were leftist and progressive, and he was an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism in the 1950s, although he also conducted classified research for the CIA's MK Ultra program during that period (Demanchick & Kirschenbaum, 2008). Rogers believed that his humanistic theories could improve cross-cultural communication and world peace, and in his later years he traveled frequently to conflict zones including South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Latin America.

Rogers called his version of therapy "client-centered" and was in fact the first psychologist to use the term client instead of patient. In his framework, growth and development are based on self-esteem and self-actualization, not on navigating the rigid stages of Freudian development. This process could be facilitated by an understanding therapist who, through reflection and unconditional acceptance, helps clients better understand what they are thinking and feeling. Instead of imposing their own theories and models on clients, therapists follow an inductive method and allow clients to speak and direct their own therapy. This was a truly revolutionary development in psychology and psychotherapy, and an innovation that is now used throughout the world. Rogers initially called this approach "non-directive therapy" before adopting the term "person-centered approach," which he believed could be applied far beyond the treatment of psychological problems — to nursing, social work, education, and cross-cultural relations.

In Client-Centered Therapy and Freedom to Learn, for example, Rogers applied this approach to education, arguing that it should be learner-centered rather than teacher-centered. Just as clients in therapy direct their own treatment, in learning "a person cannot teach another person directly; a person can only facilitate another's learning" (Rogers, 1951). Each student will learn differently based on their own experience, personality, and desires, and the learning process is always enhanced when it generates feelings of self-esteem. Learning must be relevant to the student on a personal level, making them more open to change — especially in a relaxed and non-threatening environment. Classrooms should therefore leave students with a sense of freedom and the ability to express themselves, rather than having teachers impose knowledge through lectures. Teachers should also recognize that they do not know everything and can, in turn, learn from their students. Rogers was confident that his ideas could be tested and proved scientifically and "consistently stood for an empirical evaluation of psychotherapy" (Cornelius-White, 2007).

Conclusion

Rogers' influence in education, management theory, social work, and psychology has been so widespread that it would be impossible to measure, particularly in the United States. His humanistic psychology reached its apex in the 1960s and 1970s as traditional Freudianism went into eclipse, and it seemed to blend naturally with the counterculture, civil rights movements, feminism, and the radical and libertarian thought of the era. It has fared less well during the conservative period of the last thirty years, with the renewed emphasis on traditional religion and morality, law and order, and a general revival of authoritarian thought. Biological, genetic, and Social Darwinian explanations for human behavior, deviance, and social problems have also revived, as they typically do in conservative periods.