CARL ROGERS:
PERSON-
CENTERED
THEORY
Mary Ivie C. Arlan, RPm
“How can I help this
person grow and
develop?”
More concerned with helping people than with
discovering why they behaved as they did
GET TO KNOW CARL ROGERS
• January 8, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois, the fourth of six children born to Walter and
Julia Cushing Rogers –
• From his parents, he also learned the value of hard work—a value that, unlike
religion, stayed with him throughout his life.
• Rogers had intended to become a farmer, and after he graduated from high school,
he entered the University of Wisconsin as an agriculture major. However, he soon
became less interested in farming and more devoted to religion.
• When he graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Rogers intended to become a
minister, but he gave up that notion and completed a PhD in psychology from
Columbia University in 1931.
GET TO KNOW CARL ROGERS
• In 1940, after nearly a dozen years working as a clinician, he took a position at Ohio
State University. Later, he held positions at the University of Chicago and the
University of Wisconsin.
• In 1964, he moved to California where he helped found the Center for Studies of
• Rogers received many honors during his long professional life. He was the first
the Person.
president of the American Association for Applied Psychology and helped bring that
organization and the American Psychological Association (APA) back together. He
served as president of APA for the year 1946–1947 and served as first president of
the American Academy of Psychotherapists. In 1956, he was cowinner of the first
Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award presented by APA. This award was
especially satisfying to Rogers because it highlighted his skill as a researcher, a skill he
learned well as a farm boy in Illinois (O’Hara, 1995).
GET TO KNOW CARL ROGERS
• He was shy and social inept but he got married to Helen Elliott and
had 2 children.
• He died in 1987 at age
85.
• Basic Assumptions
–Formative Tendency
PERSON – –Actualizing Tendency
• The Self and Self-Actualization
CENTERED
–The Self-Concept
–The Ideal Self
• Awareness
THEORY –Levels of Awareness
–Denial of Positive Experiences
• Becoming a Person
• Barriers to Psychological Health
–Conditions of Worth
–Incongruence
–Defensiveness
–Disorganization
- 2 BASIC
The tendency within all humans (and other animals and plants) to move
ASSUMPTIONS
toward completion or fulfillment of potential
- the only motive people possess
- Maintenance – fulfillment of basic needs + the tendency to resist change and to
Formative Tendency
seek the status quo
Ex. People fight against new ideas; they distort experiences that do not quite
A tendency for all matter, both organic and inorganic, to evolve from
fit; they find change painful and
simpler to more complex forms growth frightening
- Enhancement - need to become more, to develop, and to achieve growth -
curiosity, playfulness, self-exploration, friendship, and confidence that one can
Actualizing Tendency
achieve psychological growth.
- Organismic Valuing Process - The process by which we judge experiences in
terms of their value for fostering or hindering our actualization and growth
SELF-CONCEPT IDEAL
The Self and Self- SELF
Actualization
• Includes all those aspects of one’s being and one’s • view of our self as we would like it to be or what we
experience that are perceived in awareness (not would aspire to be.
always accurately) the individual
• Organismic experiences may be beyond person’s
Actualization
awareness or simply not owned. Self-Actualization
• An established self-concept finds change difficult
-A sense
organismic experiences
of self during tendency
infancy, once established, to actualize
allows a person the self-
to strive toward
-actualization. The establishment
refers to the whole person of the self happens when our experiences
self as perceived in becomes
personalized and regarded as “I” or “me” experiences.
- both conscious/unconscious awareness
physio for cognitive
The tendency to actualize the self as perceived in awareness
The self has two subsystems:
1. Self-concept
2. Ideal self
DENIAL OF POSITIVE EXPERIENCES
Awareness
• Difficulty accepting genuine compliments and positive feedback, even when
deserved. (EX. Maslow’s Jonah Complex)
• Compliments, even those genuinely dispensed, seldom have a positive influence
• People are aware of both their self-concept and their ideal self,
on the self-concept
although of the recipient.
awareness need not be accurate.
• They may be distorted because the person distrusts the giver, or they may be
• the symbolic representation (not necessarily in verbal symbols) of
denied because
some the recipient
portion does not feel deserving of them; in all cases, a
of our experience
compliment
• Withoutfrom another also
awareness the implies the right
self-concept andof that
the person to criticize
ideal self would or not
exist
condemn, and thus the compliment carries an implied threat.
BECOMING A PERSON
An individual must make contact—positive or negative—with another person.
This contact is the minimum experience necessary for becoming a person.
- Positive Regard - a need to be loved, liked, or accepted by another person.
- Positive Self-Regard - the experience of prizing or valuing one’s self.
- Receiving positive regard from others is necessary for positive self-regard, but
once positive self-regard is established, it becomes independent of the
continual need to be loved
BARRIERS TO
PSYCHOLOGICAL
HEALTH
PSYCHOTHERAPY
Client-centered therapy is deceptively simple in statement but
decidedly difficult in practice. Briefly, the client-centered
approach holds that in order for vulnerable or anxious people
to grow psychologically, they must come into contact with a
therapist who is congruent and whom they perceive as
providing an atmosphere of unconditional acceptance and
accurate empathy. But therein lies the difficulty. The qualities
of congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathic
understanding are not easy for a counselor to attain.
THE PERSON OF
TOMORROW
1. More adaptable. Less conforming. More likely to survive.
2. Open to experiences and accurately symbolized them. Trust in
their OWN organismic selves. (own decision criterion)
3. Live fully in the moment. Existential living. Appreciation of the
present moment.
4. Harmonious relations with others. Authentic set.
5. More integrated. Congruent. Don’t need to please others.
6. Basic trust of human nature. Social interest. Helpful.
7. Greater richness in life.
CRITIQUES OF ROGERS
Rogers' person-centered theory is one of the most
carefully constructed of all personality theories,
and it meets quite well each of the six criteria of a
useful theory. It rates very high on internal
consistency and parsimony, high on its ability to be
falsified and to generate research, and high
average on its ability to organize knowledge and to
serve as a guide to the practitioner.
CONCEPT OF HUMANITY
Rogers believed that humans have the
capacity to change and grow —provided that
certain necessary and sufficient conditions are
present. Therefore, his theory rates very high
on optimism. In addition, it rates high on free
choice, teleology , conscious motivation, social
influences, and the uniqueness of the
individual.
