ROGERS: PERSON-CENTERED THEORY

Overview of Client-Centered Although he is best known as the founder of client-centered therapy,

Theory Carl Rogers developed a humanistic theory of personality that grew out of
his experiences as a practicing psychotherapist. Unlike Freud, who was
primarily a theorist and secondarily a therapist, Rogers was a consummate
therapist but only a reluctant theorist. He was more concerned with
helping people than with discovering why they behaved as they did.

Follows an if-then framework

 If certain conditions exist, then a process will occur; if this
process occurs, then certain outcomes can be expected.
 If the therapist is congruent and communicates unconditional
positive regard and accurate empathy to the client, then
therapeutic change will occur.

Biography of Carl Rogers Carl Ransom Rogers (1902-1987)

 Born on January 8, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois, the fourth of six

children born to Walter and Julia Cushing Rogers
 His parents were both devoutly religious, and Carl became
interested in the Bible, reading from it and other books even as a
preschool child.
 He intended to become a farmer, and after he graduated from high
school, he entered the University of Wisconsin as an agriculture
major.
 By his third year at Wisconsin, Rogers was deeply involved with
religious activities on campus and spent 6 months traveling to
China to attend a student religious conference. Unfortunately, he
returned from the journey with an ulcer.
 In 1924, Rogers entered the Union Theological Seminary in New
York with the intention of becoming a minister. While at the
seminary, he enrolled in several psychology and education courses
at neighboring Columbia University.
 In 1927, Rogers served as a fellow at the new Institute for Child
Guidance in New York City and continued to work there while
completing his doctoral degree.
 Rogers received a PhD from Columbia in 1931 after having
already moved to New York to work with the Rochester Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
 In 1936, Rogers invited Rank to Rochester for a 3-day seminar to
present his new post-Freudian practice of psychotherapy. Rank’s
lectures provided Rogers with the notion that therapy is an
emotional growth-producing relationship, nurtured by the
therapist’s empathic listening and unconditional acceptance of the
client.
 He wrote his first book, The Clinical Treatment of the Problem
Child (1939), the publication of which led to a teaching offer from
Ohio State University.
 In 1940, at the age of 38, Rogers moved to Columbus to begin a
new career.
 Pressed by his graduate students at Ohio State, Rogers gradually
conceptualized his own ideas on psychotherapy, not intending
them to be unique and certainly not controversial. These ideas
were put forth in Counseling and Psychotherapy, published in
1942.
 In 1944, as part of the war effort, Rogers moved back to New
York as director of counseling services for the United Services
Organization.
 The years 1945 to 1957 at Chicago were the most productive and
creative of his career. His therapy evolved from one that
emphasized methodology, or what in the early 1940s was called
the “nondirective” technique, to one in which the sole emphasis
was on the client-therapist relationship.
 Wanting to expand his research and his ideas to psychiatry, Rogers
accepted a position at the University of Wisconsin in 1957.
 Disappointed with his job at Wisconsin, Rogers moved to
California where he joined the Western Behavioral Sciences
Institute (WBSI) and became increasingly interested in encounter
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 Interested in encounter groups. Rogers resigned from WBSI when
he felt it was becoming less democratic and, along with about 75
others from the institute, formed the Center for Studies of the
Person.