VIEW OF THE
THEORIST
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personality as I stand by with awe at the emergence of a self, a person, as I see a birth process in which I have had an important and facilitat- ing part. The book is, I believe, about life, as life vividly reveals itself in the therapeutic process with its blind power and its tremendous capac- ity for destruction, but with its overbalancing thrust toward growth, if the opportunity for growth is provided.
SOURCE : ROGERS , 1961, pp. 4–5
Carl R. Rogers was born on January 8, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois. He was reared in a strict and uncompromising religious and ethical atmosphere. His parents had the welfare of their children constantly in mind and inculcated in them a worship of hard work. Rogers’s description of his early life reveals two main trends that are refl ected in his later work. The fi rst is the concern with moral and ethical matters. The second is the respect for the methods of sci- ence. The latter appears to have developed out of exposure to his father’s efforts to operate their farm on a scientifi c basis and Rogers’s own reading of books on scientifi c agriculture.
Rogers started his college education at the University of Wisconsin, major- ing in agriculture, but after two years he changed his professional goals and decided to enter the ministry. During a trip to Asia in 1922, he had a chance to observe commitments to other religious doctrines as well as the bitter mutual hatreds of French and German people, who otherwise seemed to be likable individuals. Experiences like these infl uenced his decision to go to a liberal theological seminary, the Union Theological Seminary in New York. Although he was concerned about questions regarding the meaning of life for individu- als, Rogers had doubts about specifi c religious doctrines. Therefore, he chose to leave the seminary, to work in the fi eld of child guidance, and to think of himself as a clinical psychologist.
Rogers obtained his graduate training at Teachers College, Columbia Univer- sity, receiving his Ph.D. in 1931. His education included exposure to both the
Carl R. Rogers
CARL R. ROGERS (1902–1987): A VIEW OF THE THEORIST 167
dynamic views of Freud and the rigorous experimental methods then prevalent at Teachers College. Again, there were the pulls in different directions, the devel- opment of two somewhat divergent trends. In his later life Rogers attempted to bring these trends into harmony. Indeed, these later years represent an effort to integrate the religious with the scientifi c, the intuitive with the objective, and the clinical with the statistical. Throughout his career, Rogers tried continually to apply the objective methods of science to what is most basically human.
Therapy is the experience in which I can let myself go subjectively. Research is the experience in which I can stand off and try to view this rich subjective experience with objectivity, applying all the elegant methods of science to determine whether I have been deceiving myself. The conviction grows in me that we shall discover laws of personality and behavior which are as signifi cant for human progress or human relationship as the law of gravity or the laws of thermodynamics.
SOURCE : ROGERS , 1961a, p. 14
In 1968, Rogers and his more humanistically oriented colleagues formed the Center for the Studies of the Person. The development of the center expressed a number of shifts in emphasis in Rogers’s studies from work within a formal academic structure to work with a collection of individuals who shared a perspective, from work with disturbed individuals to work with nor- mal individuals, from individual therapy to intensive group workshops, and from conventional empirical research to the phenomenological study of peo- ple. Rogers believed that most of psychology was sterile and generally felt alienated from the fi eld. Yet the fi eld continued to value his contributions. He was president of the American Psychological Association in 1946–1947, was one of the fi rst three psychologists to receive the Distinguished Scientifi c Con- tribution Award (1956) from the profession, and in 1972 was the recipient of the Distinguished Professional Contribution Award.
With Rogers, the theory, the man, and the life are interwoven. In his chapter “This Is Me,” Rogers lists 14 principles that he learned from thousands of hours of therapy and research. Here are some illustrations:
1. In my relationships with persons I have found that it does not help, in
the long run, to act as though I were something that I am not.
2. I have found it of enormous value when I can permit myself to under-
stand another person.
3. Experience is, for me, the highest authority . . . it is to experience that
[I] must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me.
4. What is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very
element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others.
5. It has been my experience that persons have a basically positive direction. 6. Life, at its best, is a fl owing, changing process in which nothing is fi xed.
SOURCE : ROGERS , 1961a, pp. 16–17 c05APhenomenologicalTheory-CarlRogers'sPerson-CenteredTheoryofPersonality.indd Page 167 10/11/12 3:10 PM user-019A
These principles did not come to Rogers “out of the blue.” Prior scholar- ship informed his perspective. The roots of Rogers’s humanistic theory can be located in 18th-century Enlightenment philosophy that focused attention on the lives of humans (rather than speculation about the spiritual world), 19th-century Existentialist philosophy that challenged individuals to grapple intellectually with the nature of their existence, and 20th-century philosoph- ical contemporaries of Rogers who analyzed the role, in human nature, of subjective conscious experience (Moss, 2001). We consider some of these intellectual trends in this book’s next chapter. For now, let’s turn directly to Rogers’s contributions.
THE SUBJECTIVITY OF EXPERIENCE
Rogers’s theory is built on a deeply signifi cant insight into the human condi- tion. In our daily living, we believe we experience an objective world of real- ity. When we see something occur, we believe it exists as we saw it. When we tell people about the events of our day, we believe we are telling them what really happened. We are so confi dent in our objective knowledge of an objec- tive reality that we rarely question it. But Rogers does. He explains: “I do not react to some absolute reality, but to my perception of this reality” (Rogers, 1951, 1977, p. 206, emphasis added). The “reality” we observe is really a “private world of experience . . . , the phenomenal fi eld” (Rogers, 1951, 1977, p. 206).
This phenomenal fi eld —the space of perceptions that makes up our experience—is a subjective construction. The individual constructs this in- ner world of experience, and the construction refl ects not only the outer world of reality but also the inner world of personal needs, goals, and beliefs. Inner psychological needs shape the subjective experiences that we interpret as objectively real.
Consider some simple examples. If a child sees an angry look from its mother, or you detect a disappointed look from a dating partner, these emotions—anger, disappointment—are the reality that is experienced. But this so-called reality could be wrong. Personal needs (to be accepted by the mother, to be attractive to the dating partner) may contribute to our per- ceiving the other as angry or disappointed. Yet people commonly fail to recognize this infl uence of inner needs on perceptions of the outer world. Failing to recognize this, the individual “perceives his experience as reality. His experience is his reality” (Rogers, 1959, 1977, p. 207). We are sure things really exist as we saw them. Yet our seeing is not an objective recording of the world of reality but a subjective construction that refl ects our personal needs.
Rogers surely was not the fi rst to have this intuition. Similar ideas can be traced back at least as far as the Allegory of the Cave by Plato, who depicted persons as perceiving mere shadows of reality, being unable to glimpse the objective world of existence. Rogers’s uniqueness was his ability to develop this insight into a theory of personality: a model of individual development and of the structures and dynamics of the mind, along with methods for assessing personality and conducting therapy.
ROGERS’S VIEW
OF THE PERSON
ROGERS’S VIEW OF THE PERSON 169 Feelings of Authenticity
Two additional aspects of Rogers’s analysis of the subjectivity of experience defi ne his core view of the person. The fi rst is that people are prone to a distinc- tive form of psychological distress. It is a feeling of alienation or detachment— the feeling that one’s experiences and daily activities do not stem from one’s true, authentic self. Why do these feelings arise? Because we need the approv- al of others, we tell ourselves that their desires and values are our own. The child tries to convince himself that it really is bad to hit his baby sister, just as his parents say, even though it feels good to do so. The adult tries to convince herself that it really is good to settle down into a traditional career and family lifestyle, as valued relatives instruct, even though she really prefers a life of independence. When this happens, the individual thinks but does not feel an attachment to his or her own values. “Primary sensory and visceral reactions are ignored” and “the individual begins on a pathway that he later describes as ‘I really don’t know myself’ ” (Rogers, 1951, 1977, p. 213). Rogers relates the case of a client who described her experiences as follows: “I’ve always tried to be what the others thought I should be, but now I’m wondering whether I shouldn’t just see that I am what I am” (Rogers, 1951, 1977, p. 218).
Note how Rogers’s conception of the deliberate/thoughtful and the instinctive/ visceral aspects of the organism differs from Freud’s. To Freud, visceral reac- tions were animalistic impulses that needed to be curbed by the civilized ego and superego. Distorting and denying these impulses was part of normal, healthy personality functioning. But to Rogers, these instinctive visceral reac- tions are a potential source of wisdom. Individuals who openly experience the full range of their emotions, who are “accepting and assimilating [of] all the sensory evidence experienced by the organism” (Rogers, 1951, 1977, p. 219), are psychologically well adjusted.
Confl ict between instinctive and rational elements of mind thus is not an im- mutable feature of the human condition in Rogers’s view. Rather than confl ict, persons can experience congruence. They can realize a state in which their conscious experiences and goals are consistent with their inner, viscerally felt values.
The Positivity of Human Motivation
The fi nal key aspect of Rogers’s view of persons is his conception of human motivation. Rogers’s clinical experiences convinced him that the core of our nature is essentially positive. Our most fundamental motivation is toward pos- itive growth. Rogers recognized that some institutions may teach us otherwise. Some religions, for example, teach that we are basically sinful. The institution of psychoanalysis teaches that our basic instincts are sexual and aggressive. Rogers did recognize that people can, and often do, act in ways that are destructive and evil. But his basic contention is that, when we are functioning freely, we are able to move toward our potential as positive, mature beings.
To those who called him a naive optimist, Rogers was quick to point out that his conclusions were based on decades of experience in psychotherapy:
I do not have a Pollyanna view of human nature. I am quite aware that out of defensiveness and inner fear individuals can and do behave in ways which are incredibly cruel, horribly destructive, immature, regressive,
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antisocial, hurtful. Yet one of the most refreshing and invigorating parts of my experience is to work with such individuals and to discover the strongly positive directional tendencies which exist in them, as in all of us, at the deepest levels.
SOURCE : ROGERS , 1961, p. 27
Here is a profound respect for people, a respect that is refl ected in Rogers’s theory of personality and his person-centered approach to psychotherapy.
A PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Rogers takes a phenomenological approach to the study of persons. Here at the outset of our coverage of his work, then, we should explain what is meant by this lengthy term.
In psychology or other disciplines, such as philosophy, a phenomenological approach is one that investigates people’s conscious experiences. The investi- gation, in other words, does not try to characterize the world of reality as it exists independent of the human observer. Instead, one is interested in the experiences of the observer: how the person experiences the world.
A bit of refl ection on the material of the previous two chapters should re- veal why Rogers’s position was so noteworthy within personality psychology. The psychodynamic tradition was not particularly interested in phenomenol- ogy. To Freud, conscious phenomenological experience is not the core of personality. Indeed, conscious experience may be related in only the most indirect ways to that core, which involves unconscious drives and defenses. As you will see in subsequent chapters, some other theories that initially were developed at around the same time as Rogers’s (e.g., trait theory, behav- iorism) devote relatively little attention to the textures and dynamics of everyday phenomenological experience. Rogers, then, was an important voice in promoting the psychological study of phenomenology .
What does Rogers’s concern with phenomenological experience have to do with his view of the science of personality? Are these two independent things: a phenomenological perspective on psychology on the one hand, and a view- point on science on the other? Or might one have an implication for the other?
A bit of refl ection suggests that a marriage between a traditional conception of science and a concern with phenomenological experience may be diffi cult. Science, as usually conceived, rests on clear-cut data: Laboratory instruments inform us about entities’ objective physical features (size, mass, electrical charge, etc.). Rogers, however, argues that personality psychology must address subjective internal experiences. These experiences cannot be mea- sured in the manner of objective physical qualities. Instead, they have a subjec- tive quality; their meaning rests on the interpretations of the individual having the experience (the subject who is experiencing things). Here’s a classic example. If someone quickly closes one eye—that is, winks—external mea- sures could record the timing and duration of the winking. But they could not indicate whether the person was truly winking at someone across the room or