SUMMARY OUTLINE I. Overview of Rogers's Person-Centered Theory
Although Carl Rogers is best known as the founder of client-centered therapy,
he also developed an important theory of personality that underscores his approach
to therapy. II. Biography of Carl Rogers
Carl Rogers was born into a devoutly religious family in a Chicago suburb in
1902. After the family moved to a farm near Chicago, Carl became interested
in scientific farming and learned to appreciate the scientific method. When
he graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Rogers intended to become a minister,
but he gave up that notion and completed a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia
University in 1931. In 1940, after nearly a dozen years away from an academic
life 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 the Person. He died in 1987 at age 85.
III. Person-Centered Theory
Rogers carefully crafted his person-centered theory of personality to meet his
own demands for a structural model that could explain and predict outcomes of
client-centered therapy. However, the theory has implications far beyond the
therapeutic setting.
A. Basic Assumptions
Person-centered theory rests on two basic assumptions: (1) the formative tendency,
which states that all matter, both organic and inorganic, tends to evolve from
simpler to more complex forms, and (2) an actualizing tendency, which suggests
that all living things, including humans, tend to move toward completion, or
fulfillment of potentials. However, in order for people (or plants and animals)
to become actualized, certain identifiable conditions must be present. For a
person, these conditions include a relationship with another person who is genuine,
or congruent, and who demonstrates complete acceptance and empathy for
that person.
B. The Self and Self-Actualization
A sense of self or personal identity begins to emerge during infancy, and, once
established, it allows a person to strive toward self-actualization, which is
a subsystem of the actualization tendency and refers to the tendency to actualize
the self as perceived in awareness. The self has two subsystems: (1) the self-concept,
which includes all those aspects of one's identity that are perceived in awareness,
and (2) the ideal self, or our view of our self as we would like to be or aspire
to be. Once formed, the self concept tends to resist change, and gaps between
it and the ideal self result in incongruence and various levels of psychopathology.
C. Awareness
People are aware of both their self-concept and their ideal self, although awareness
need not be accurate or at a high level. Rogers saw people as having experiences
on three levels of awareness: (1) those that are symbolized below the threshold
of awareness and are either ignored or denied, that is, subceived, or not allowed
into the self-concept; (2) those that are distorted or reshaped to fit it into
an existing self-concept; and (3) those that are consistent with the self-concept
and thus are accurately symbolized and freely admitted to the self-structure.
Any experience not consistent with the self-concept-even positive experiences-will
be distorted
or denied.
D. Needs
The two basic human needs are maintenance and enhancement, but people also need
positive regard and self-regard. Maintenance needs include those for food, air,
and safety, but they also include our tendency to resist change and to maintain
our self-concept as it is. Enhancement needs include needs to grow and to realize
one's full human potential. As awareness of self emerges, an infant begins to
receive positive regard from another person-that is, to be loved or accepted.
People naturally value those experiences that satisfy their needs for positive
regard, but, unfortunately, this value sometimes becomes more powerful than
the reward they receive for meeting their organismic needs. This sets up the
condition of incongruence, which is experienced when basic organismic needs
are denied or distorted in favor of needs to be loved or accepted. As a result
of experiences with positive regard, people develop the need for self-regard,
which they acquire only after they perceive that someone else cares for them
and values them. Once established, however, self-regard becomes autonomous and
no longer dependent on another's continuous positive evaluation.
E. Conditions of Worth
Most people are not unconditionally accepted. Instead, they receive conditions
of worth; that is, they feel that they are loved and accepted only when and
if they meet the conditions set by others.
F. Psychological Stagnation
When the organismic self and the self-concept are at variance with one another,
a person may experience incongruence, which includes vulnerability, threat,
defensiveness, and even disorganization. The greater the incongruence between
self-concept and the organismic experience, the more vulnerable that person
becomes. Anxiety exists whenever the person becomes dimly aware of the discrepancy
between organismic experience and self-concept, whereas threat is experienced
whenever the person becomes more clearly aware of this incongruence. To prevent
incongruence, people react with defensiveness, typically in the forms of distortion
and denial. With distortion, people misinterpret an experience so that it fits
into their self-concept; with denial, people refuse to allow the experience
into awareness. When people's defenses fail to operate properly, their behavior
becomes disorganized or psychotic. With disorganization, people sometimes behave
consistently with their organismic experience and sometimes in accordance with
their shattered self-concept. IV. Psychotherapy
For client-centered psychotherapy to be effective, certain conditions are necessary:
A vulnerable client must have contact of some duration with a counselor who
is congruent, and who demonstrates unconditional positive regard and listens
with empathy to a client. The client must in turn perceive the congruence, unconditional
positive regard, and empathy of the therapist. If these conditions are present,
then the process of therapy will take place and certain predictable outcomes
will result.
A. Conditions
Three conditions are crucial to client-centered therapy, and Rogers called them
the necessary and sufficient conditions for therapeutic growth. The first is
counselor congruence, or a therapist whose organismic experiences are matched
by an awareness and by the ability and willingness to openly express these feelings.
Congruence is more basic than the other two conditions because it is a relatively
stable characteristic of the therapist, whereas the other two conditions are
limited to a specific therapeutic relationship. Unconditional positive regard
exists when the therapist accepts the client without conditions or qualifications.
Empathic listening is the therapist's ability to sense the feelings of a client
and also to communicate these perceptions so that the client knows that another
person has entered into his or her world of feelings without prejudice, projection,
or evaluation.
B. Process
Rogers saw the process of therapeutic change as taking place in seven stages:
(1) clients are unwilling to communicate anything about themselves; (2) they
discuss only external events and other people; (3) they begin to talk about
themselves, but still as an object; (4) they discuss strong emotions that they
have felt in the past; (5) they begin to express present feelings; (6) they
freely allow into awareness those experiences that were previously denied or
distorted; and
(7) they experience irreversible change and growth.
C. Outcomes
When client-centered therapy is successful, clients become more congruent, less
defensive, more open to experience, and more realistic. The gap between their
ideal self and their true self narrows and, as a consequence, clients experience
less physiological and psychological tension. Finally, clients' interpersonal
relationships improve because they are more accepting of self and others. V. The Person of Tomorrow
Rogers was vitally interested in the psychologically healthy person, called
the "fully functioning person" or the "person of tomorrow."
Rogers listed seven characteristics of the person of tomorrow. The person of
tomorrow (1) is able to adjust to change, (2) is open to experience, (3) is
able to live fully in the moment, (4) is able to have harmonious relations with
others, (5) is more integrated with no artificial boundaries between conscious
and unconscious processes, (6) has a basic trust of human nature, and (7) enjoys
a greater richness in life. The factors have implications both for the individual
and for society. VI. Philosophy of Science
Rogers agreed with Maslow that scientists must care about and be involved in
the phenomena they study and that psychologists should limit their objectivity
and precision to their methodology, not to the creation of hypotheses or to
the communication of research findings. VII. The Chicago Study
When he taught at the University of Chicago, Rogers, along with colleagues and
graduate students, conducted a sophisticated and complex study on the effectiveness
of psychotherapy.
A. Hypotheses
This study tested four broad hypotheses. As a consequence of therapy (1) clients
will become more aware of their feelings and experiences, (2) the gap between
the real self and the ideal self will lessen; (3) clients' behavior will become
more socialized and mature; and (4) clients will become both more self-accepting
and more accepting of others.
B. Method
Participants were adults who sought therapy at the University of Chicago counseling
center. Experimenters asked half of them to wait 60 days before receiving therapy
while beginning therapy with the other half. In addition, they tested a control
group of "normals" who were matched with the therapy group. This control
group was also divided into a wait group and a non-wait group.
C. Findings
Rogers and his associates found that the therapy group-but not the wait group-showed
a lessening of the gap between real self and ideal self. They also found that
clients who improved during therapy-but not those rated as least improved-showed
changes in social behavior, as noted by friends.
D. Summary of Results
Although client-centered therapy was successful in changing clients, it was
not successful in bringing them to the level of the fully functioning persons
or even
to the level of "normal" psychological health. VIII. Related Research
More recently, other researchers have investigated Rogers's facilitative conditions
both outside therapy and within therapy.
A. Facilitative Conditions Outside Therapy
In the United Kingdom, Duncan Cramer has conducted a series of studies investigating
the therapeutic qualities of Rogers's facilitative conditions in interpersonal
relationships outside of therapy. Cramer found positive relationships between
self-esteem, as measured by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and the
four facilitative conditions that make up the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory-level
of regard, unconditionality of regard, congruence, and empathy. Moreover, the
direction of the relationship strongly suggested that Rogers's facilitative
conditions precede the acquisition of higher levels of self-esteem.
B. Facilitative Conditions and Couples Therapy
In Belgium, Alfons Vansteenwegen (1996) used a revised form of the Barrett-Lennard
to determine if Rogers's facilitative conditions related to success during couples
therapy. He found that client-centered couples therapy can bring about positive
changes in couples, and that some of these changes lasted for at least seven
years after therapy. IX. Critique of Rogers
Rogers's 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.
X. 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. |