Person-centred Therapy

It seems to me that at bottom each person is asking. ‘Who am ، really?How can I

get in touch with this real self underlying all my surface behaviour?How can I

become myself?’

Carl Rogers

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever felt that you would like to find yourself and be more truly your own

person? Are you able to experience your feeLings and act autonomously, or are you still

mainly a creation of your parents and of the influence of significantothers in your back

ground? Carl Rogers was the originator of an approach to counselling and therapy that

aimed to help clients fulfil their unique potential and become their own persons. His

approach was partly an attempt to get away from the interpretive psychodynamic thera

pies described in the previous two chapters. In addition, Rogers was trying to emancipate

people from the overbearing influence that parents of his time often had on the thoughts,

feelings and actions of their offspring. In the early part of the twentieth cenmr when

Rogers was growing up. parents exercised much more power in the home than they do

now at the start of the twenty-first century. Rogers’ person-centred therapy challenged

authoritarian tendencies in both therapy and parenting and championedthe rights of

clients to discover their own directions.

On 11 December 1940, Rogers gave a presentation at the University of Minnesota

entitled ‘Some newer concepts in psychotherapy’ which is the single event most often

identified with the birth of client-centered therapy (Raskin and Rogers, 2000). In 1974,

Rogers and his colleagues changed the name from ‘client-centred’ to ‘person-centred’.

They believed that the new name would more adequately describe the human values and

the mutuality underlying their approach apd would apply to contexts other than coun

selling and psychotherapy. However, Thorne observes: ‘Rogers never completely

jettisoned the term “client-centred therapy”. He uses client-centred and person-centred

interchangeably when talking about counselling and psychotherapy but always employs

the term “the person-centred approach” when referring to activities outside the one-to-

one therapy situation’ (B. Thorne, personal communication, 15 March 1994).

Rogers regarded himself as having one seminal idea. The central hypothesis of the

person-centred approach is that every person has within himself or herself ‘vast resources

for self-understanding, for altering his or her self-concept, attitudes, and self-directed

behaviour — and that these resources can be tapped only ifa definableclimate of facilita-

Perwn-centred Therapy 79

tive psychological attitudes can be provided’ (Rogers, 1986a, p. 197). Empathy, congru

ence and unconditional positive regard are the three therapist-offered faciliative

conditions that Rogers regarded as necessary and sufficient for therapeutic change

(Rogers, 1957).

This chapter is drawn mainly from Rogers’ writings. However, he encouraged col

leagues and associates to develop it and, consequently, regarded his theory as a group

enterprise (Rogers, 1959). In addition, Rogers was influenced by psychologists like

Combs, Snygg and Maslow. I incorporate the ideas of Rogers’ collaborators when it adds

to or clarifies his position.

CARL ROGERS (1902-87)

Carl Ransom Rogers was born in Illinois, America, the fourth of six children. His father

was a civil engineer and contractor who had a successful construction business. A rather

sickly boy, Rogers lived his childhood in a close-knit family in which hard work and a

highly conservative, almost fundamentalist Protestant Christianity were almost equally

revered. Rogers was a shy boy who was teased a lot at home. Included among reasons for

the teasing were that he was rather a bookworm and extremely absent-minded; in fact,

his family called him ‘Professor Moony’ after a famous comic-strip character (Cohen,

1997).

When Rogers was 12 his parents bought a farm and this became the family home.

Rogers regarded his parents as masters of the art of subtle, loving control. He shared little

of his private thoughts and feelings with them because he knewthese would have been

judged and found wanting. Until Rogers went to college he was a loner who read inces

santly and who adopted his parents’ attitude toward the outside world, summed up in

the statement: ‘Other persons behave in dubious ways which we do not approve in our

fmi1y’ (Rogers, 1980, P. 28). Such dubious ways induded playing cards, going to the

cinema, smoking, dancing, drinking and engaging in other even less mentionable activi

ties. He was socially incompetent in other than superficial contacts and, while at high

school, had only two dates with girls. He relates that his fantasies during this period were

bizarre and would probably have been classified as schizoid bya psychological diagnosti

cian.

Rogers entered the University of Wisconsin to study agriculture, but later changed to

history feeling that this would be a better preparation for his emerging professional goal

of becoming a minister of religion. His first real experience of fellowship was in a group

there who met in a YMCA class. When he was 20, Rogers went to China for an interna

tional World Student Christian Federation Conference and, for the first time,

emancipated himself from the religious thinking of his parents, a fundamental step

towards becoming an independent person. Also, at about this time Rogers fell in love,

and, on completing college, married Helen Elliott, who was an artist. This marriage

lasted until she died in 1979.

In 1924, Rogers went to Union Theological Seminary, but after two years moved to

Teachers College, Columbia University where he was exposed to the instrumentalist

philosophy of John Dewey, the highly statistical and Thorndikean behavioural

80 Theorj and Practice of Counselling & Therapy

approaches of Teachers College, and the Freudian orientation of the Institute for Child

Guidance where he had an internship. Along with his formal learning, he was starting to

understand relationships with others better, and was beginningto realize that, in close

relationships, the elements that ‘cannot’ be shared are those that are the most important

and rewarding to share.

Rogers received his MA from Columbia University in 1928 and then spent twelve

years in a community child guidance clinic in Rochester, New York. In 1931, he received

his PhD from Columbia University and in 1939 published his first book, entitled The

Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child. During this period Rogers felt that he was

becoming more competent as a therapist, not least because his experience with clients

was providing him with valuable learning and insights which contributed to a shift from

diagnosis to listening. Furthermore, such a relationship approach met his own needs,

since, stemming from his early loneliness, the therapy interview was a socially approved

way of getting really close to people without the pains and longer time-span of the

friendship process outside therapy.

In 1940, Rogers accepted a position as a Professor of Psychology at Ohio State Univer

sity and two years later published Counseling and Psychotherapy, the contents of which

were derived primarily from his work as a counsellor rather than as an academic psychol

ogist. After initial poor sales, the book became we11 known because it offered a way to

work with veterans returning from the Second World War. From 1942, Rogers had

undertaken consuLtancies relating to the war effort, includingtraining counsellors. After

leaving Ohio State University, Rogers spent a very brief spellas director of counselling for

the United Services Organisation, a servicemen’s welfare organization. From 1945 to

1957 Rogers was Professor of Psychology and executive secretary of the university coun

selling centre at the University of Chicago, where non-directive, or client-centred

therapy as it came to be called, was further developed and researched. In 1951, Rogers

published Client-Centered Theupy, which contained a theoretical statement as well as a

series of chapters related to client-centred practice.

In 1957, Rogers was appointed Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the Univer

sity of Wisconsin, where he examined the impact of the client-centred approach on

hospitalized schizophrenics. In 1959, Rogers published by far the most thorough state

ment of his theoretical position (Rogers, 1959), and in 1961 On Becoming a Person, one

of his most commercially successful books, came out. From 1962to 1963 Rogers was a

fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford Univer

sky. In 1964 he went to the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute at La Jolla, California,

as a resident fellow. Then, in 1968, with some colleagues, Rogers formed the Center for

Studies of the Person at La Jolla, where he was a resident fellow until his death. During

the latter part of his career Rogers developed a great interest in the application of person-

centred ideas to group work, community change, and preventing ‘nuclear, planetary

suicide’ and ran many large-scale workshops around the world (Kirschenbaum and Hen

derson, 1990). In addition, as Rogers grew older, having earlier firmly rejected his

Christian past, he realized he had underestimated the mysticalor spiritual dimension in

life.

From the age of 13 Rogers had viewed himself as a scientist. He was a committed

Person-centred Therapy 81

researcher and pioneered the use of tape recorders to study counselling and therapy

processes. In 1956 he received the American Psychological Association’s Award for Dis

tinguished Scientific Contributions. Rcgers was also an authorwith a deep commitment

to clear and cogent communication. When he was 75, he observed: ‘Yet there is, I

believe, a much more important reason for my writing. It seemsto me that I am still —

inside — the shy boy who found communication very difficult ininterpersonal situations

. . .‘ (Rogers, 1980, p. 80). As well as those already mentioned, his books include:

Freedom to Learn; Encounter Groupr, Becoming Partners Carl Rogers on Personal Power,

and A Way ofBeing. A chronological bibliography of Rogers’ books and articles published

in the period 1930 to 1980 is printed at the end ofA Way ofBeing.

Although the years since 1940 were very successful for Rogers and his ideas, they also

contained professional and personal struggles. Two professional struggles were those with

psychiatry and with behavioural psychology; Rogers fought for psychologists, as con

trasted with psychiatrists, to be allowed to practise psychotherapy and to have

administrative responsibility over ‘mental health’ work. Also,he constantly highlighted

the philosophical and practical issues involved in a humanistic or person-centred as

against a behavioural view of human beings.

On a more personal level, Rogers continued striving to become a more real, open and

growing person. He struggled, with varying degrees of success,with some personal crises

and difficulties. During his Chicago period, with counselling help, he worked through a

crisis arising from a ‘badly bungled therapeutic relationship’(Rogers, 1980, p. 39) with ‘a

particularly demanding and highly disturbed female client’ (Thorne, 1992). In the

1 970s, Rogers frced the strains of his wife’s long illness — from 1972 she was intermit

tently in a wheelchair and in 1979 she died. In the last yearsof her life, there was much

pain in his relationship with Helen. Nevertheless Rogers movingly talks of how he was

able to express his appreciation and love for her two days before she died (Rogers, 1980).

Toward the end his life Rogers was increasingly aware of his ‘capacity for love, my sen

suality; my sexuality’ (Rogers, 1980, p. 96) and wished to have loving relationships

outside of marriage. In August 1975, Rogers met and fell in love with a much younger

divorcee called Bernice Todres, but the relationship was neversexually consummated. In

December 1979 chis only intermittently satisfactory and episodic relationship finally

ended. In the 1970s Rogers was drinking heavily, consuming over 12 oz of vodka a day,

which contributed to his putting on weight. At one stage, his daughter Natalie was so

worried about his drinking that she is said to have suggested he book himself into a de

tox clinic (Cohen, 1997).

Rogers was a complex mixture of high intelligence, high energy, ambition, competi

tiveness, Protestant work ethic, strength, vulnerability, charisma, idealism, altruism,

self-centredness, caring, shyness, sensitivity; warmth, and ability to touch others deeply.

Arguably, as his career developed, Rogers allowed the need to become and maintain the

; professional persona of Carl Rogers to get in the way of hisbecoming a more highly

developed person. Clearly very conscious of his place in the history of American coun

selling and therapy, Rogers left the United States Library of Congress 140 boxes of his

papers, as well as tapes and films of his work.

Even as an old man, Rogers was still prone co blame his parents for making him feel

82 Theory and Practice of Counselling é Therapy

that he did not deserve to be loved (Cohen, 1997). A wounded theorist, he was influ

enced by his own early emotional deprivations to design a counselling approach to

overcome their effects and hence to meet his own companionshipand growth needs.

Other sources of learning included his clients and the stimulus provided by younger col

leagues. Rogers daimed that serendipity or ‘the faculty of making fortunate and

unexpected discoveries by accident’ had also been important (Rogers, 1980, p. 64).

Rogers enjoyed gardening and finding the right conditions for plants to grow. As with

plants, so with people. While regarding the following saying from Lao-Tse as an oversim

plification, Rogers considers that it sums up many of his deeper beliefs about human

growth.

Iflkeep from meddling with people, they take care ofthemselves,

1ff keep from commandingpeople, they behave themselves,

1ff keep from preaching atpeopk they improve themselves,

1ff keep from imposing on people. they become themselves.

THEORY

I ha ve fo rmed some phi losop hi cal impressions ofthe life and goal toward which the

individual moves when he ؟fi’ee.Carl Rogers

BASIC CONCEPTS

In 1951 Rogers presented his theory of personality and behaviour as the final chapter of

Client-Centred Thera» Eight years later, in an edited publication entitled Psychology: A

Study of Science, he presented an updated version which he regarded as his major and

most rigorous theoretical statement and ‘the most thoroughly ignored of anything I have

written’ (Rogers, 1980, p. 60). Later, with collaborators, Rogers restated his theory but

did not alter it (for instance, Raskin and Rogers, 2000). Rogers thought that this and any

theory should be a stimulus for further creative thinking rather than a dogma of truth.

Perceptual or subjective frame of reference

Combs and Snygg (1959) state that, broadly speaking, behaviourmay be observed from

either the point of view of outsiders or the point of view of the behavers themselves. It is

sometimes stated that the former is viewing behaviour from theexternal frame of refer

ence while the latter is viewing behaviour from the internal, subjective or perceptual

frame of rَ&rence. Rogers writes of his fundamental belief in the subjective, observing

that ‘Man lives essentially in his own personal and subjectiveworld, and even his most

objective functioning, in science, mathematia, and the like, is the result of subjective

purpose and subjective choice’ (Rogers, 1959, p. 191). It is this emphasis on the subjec

tive, perceptual view of clients which has led to the term ‘client-centred’. The perceptions

of clients are viewed as their versions of reality

Person-centred Therapy 83

Later, Rogers was again to stress that the only reality peoplecan possibly know is the

world which they individually perceive and experience at this moment. The notion that

therc is a ‘real world’, the definition of which can be agreedupon by everyone, is a luxury

that the human race cannot afford, since it leads to false beliefs, like faith in technology,

which have brought our species to the brink of annihilation. His alternative hypothesis is

that there are as many realities as there are people. Furthermore, people are increasingly

‘inwardly and organismically rejecting the view of one single,culture-approved reality’

(Rogers, 1980, p. 26).

. Actualizing tendency

The actualizing tendency is the single basic motivating drive.It is an active process repre

senting the inherent tendency of the organism to develop its capacities in the direction of

maintaining, enhancing and reproducing itself. The actualizingtendency is operative at

ail times in all organisms and is the distinguishing feature of whether a given organism is

alive or dead. The organism is always up to something. In addition, the actualizing

tendency involves a development toward the differentiation of organs and functions.

Rogers observes, from his experiences with individual and group counselling and from

his attempts to provide students in classes with ‘freedom to learil, that ‘the most impres

sive fact about the individual human being seems to be the directional tendency toward

wholeness, toward actualisation of potentialities’ (Rogers, 1977, p. 240). Furthermore,

he cited support for the actualizing tendency both in his observations of the natural

world, for instance the behaviour of seaweed and of children learning to walk, and in

empirical research, be it on sea urchins, rats, human infants and brain-damaged war

veterans. The cornerstone of both Rogers’ therapeutic and his political thinking was that,

because of their actualizing tendency, people move towards self-regulation and their own

enhancement and away from control by external forces.

The actualizing tendency is basically positive. It represents Rogers’ trust in the wisdom

of the organism and its constructive directional flow toward the realization of each indi

vidual’s full potential. People have the capacity to guide, regulate and control themselves,

provided certain detinable conditions exist. The person-centred approach posits a

unitary diagnosis that all psychological difficulties are caused by blockages to this actual

izing tendency and, consequently, the task of therapy is to release further this

fundamentally good motivating drive. Maslow (1970) reiterates this assessment of

people’s basic nature when he writes that the human being doesseem to have instinct

remnants and that clinical and other evidence suggests that those weak instinctoid ten

dencies are good. desirable and worth saving.

Often, however, people appear to have two motivational systems, their organismic

actualizing tendency and their conscious self. Maslow (1962) writes of the basic conflict

in humans between defensive forces and growth trends and observes that the actualizing

tendency may involve both deficiency and growth motivations. However, given a certain

emotional environment, growth motivations will become increasingly strong.

84 Theory and Practice of Counselling d Therapy

Organismic valuing process

The concept of an organismic valuing process is central to the idea of a real or true and

unique self: A person’s organismic valuing process relates to the continuous weighing of

experience and the placing of values on that experience in terms of

its ability to satis the ’ي�actualizing tendency For instance, the behaviour of infants indicatesthat they prefer

those experiences, such as curiosity and securit» which maintain and enhance their

organism, and reject those, such as pain and hunger, which do not. This weighing of

experience is an organismic rather than a conscious symbolic process.The source of the

valuing process or values placed on the various experiences seems clearly to be in the

inf:ants, who react to their own sensory and visceral evidence. As people grow older, their

valuing process is effective in helping them to achieve self-actualizing to the degree that

they are able to be aware of and perceive the experiencing which is going on within them

selves.

Experience and experiencing

Rogers uses the term ‘sensory and visceral experience’ in a psychoiogical rather than a

physiological sense. Perhaps another way of stating sensory and visceral experience is the

undergoing of facts and events, which are potentially available to conscious awareness, by

the organism’s senso.-/ and visceral equipment. People may be unawareof much of their

experiencing. For instance, when sitting, you may not be aware of thesensation on your

buttocks until your attention is drawn to it. Another example is thatyou may not be

aware of the physiological aspects of hunger because you are so fascinated by work or

play. However, this experience is potentially available to conscious awareness. The total

range of experience at any given moment may be called the ‘experiential’, ‘perceptual’ or

‘phenomenal’ field. Rogers stressed that physiological events such asneuron discharges or

changes in blood sugar are not induded in his psychological definition of experience.

The verb ‘experiencing means that the organism is receiving the impact of any

sensory or visceral experiences that happen at the moment. Experiencing a feeling

includes receiving both the emotional content and the personal meaning or cognitive

content ‘as they are experienced inseparably in the moment’ (Rogers, 1959, p. 198).

Experiencing a feeling fully means that experiencing, awareness and expression of the

feeling are all congruent. .

. Perception and awareness

Perception and awareness are virtually synonymous in person-centred theory. When an

experience is perceived, this means that it is in conscious awareness, however dimly,

though it need not be expressed in verbal symbols. Another way of stating this is that

‘perceiving’ is ‘becoming aware of stimuli or experiences’. Rogers viewed all perception

and awareness as transactional in nature, being a construction from past experience and a

hypothesis or prediction of the future. Perception or awareness may or may not corre

spond with experience or ‘reality’. When an experience is symbolized accurately in

awareness, this means that the hypothesis implicit in the awareness will be borne out if