Carl Rogers

• best known as the founder of client-centered therapy, Carl Rogers
• During the early years, his approach was known as “nondirective,” an unfortunate term that remained associated with his name for far too long
• Rogers’ therapy and the more inclusive term person-centered to refer to Rogerian personality theory
• Rogers postulated two broad assumptions—the formative tendency and the actualizing tendency.
• formative tendency, tendency for all matter, both organic and inorganic, to evolve from simpler to more complex forms. For the entire universe, a creative process, rather than a disintegrative one, is in operation.
• formative tendency and pointed to many examples from nature. For instance, complex galaxies of stars form from a less well-organized mass; crystals such as snowflakes emerge from formless vapor; complex organisms develop from single cells; and human consciousness evolves from a primitive unconsciousness to a highly organized awareness
• actualizing tendency, or the tendency within all humans (and other animals and plants) to move toward completion or fulfillment of potentials (Rogers, 1959, 1980). This tendency is the only motive people possess
• Tendencies to maintain and to enhance the organism are subsumed within the actualizing tendency. The need for maintenance is similar to the lower steps on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (
• Even though people have a strong desire to maintain the status quo, they are willing to learn and to change. This need to become more, to develop, and to achieve growth is called enhancement
• actualization tendency is not limited to humans. Other animals and even plants have an inherent tendency to grow toward reaching their genetic potential— provided certain conditions are present.
• Specifically, people must be involved in a relationship with a partner who is congruent, or authentic, and who demonstrates empathy and unconditional positive regard
• Self-actualization is a subset of the actualization tendency and is therefore not synonymous with it. The actualization tendency refers to organismic experiences of the individual; that is, it refers to the whole person—conscious and unconscious, physiological and cognitive. On the other hand, self-actualization is the tendency to actualize the self as perceived in awareness
• e self-concept includes all those aspects of one’s being and one’s experiences that are perceived in awareness (though not always accurately) by the individual
• l The self-concept is not identical with the organismic self. Portions of the organismic self may be beyond a person’s awareness or simply not owned by that person. For example, the stomach is part of the organismic self, but unless it malfunctions and causes concern, it is not likely to be part of one’s self-concept.
• once people form their self-concept, they find change and significant learnings quite difficult
• ideal self , defined as one’s view of self as one wishes to be. The ideal self contains all those attributes, usually positive, that people aspire to possess
• wide gap between the ideal self and the self-concept indicates incongruence and an unhealthy personality
• Rogers (1959) defined awareness as “the symbolic representation (not necessarily in verbal symbols) of some portion of our experience”
• Rogers (1959) recognized three levels of awareness ignored or denied, accurately symbolized, a distorted form.
• An ignored experience can be illustrated by a woman walking down a busy street, an activity that presents many potential stimuli, particularly of sight and sound. Because she cannot attend to all of them, many remain ignored
• An example of denied experience might be a mother who never wanted children, but out of guilt she becomes overly solicitous to them. Her anger and resentment toward her children may be hidden to her for years, never reaching consciousness but yet remaining a part of her experience and coloring her conscious behavior toward them.
• e accurately symbolized and freely admitted to the self-structure. Such experiences are both nonthreatening and consistent with the existing self-concept. For example, if a pianist who has full confidence in his piano-playing ability is told by a friend that his playing is excellent, he may hear these words, accurately symbolize them, and freely admit them to his self-concept.
• distorted form. When our experience is not consistent with our view of self, we reshape or distort the experience so that it can be assimilated into our existing self-concept. If the gifted pianist were to be told by a distrusted competitor that his playing was excellent, he might react very differently than he did when he heard the same words from a trusted friend. He may hear the remarks but distort their meaning because he feels threatened.
• Denial of Positive Experiences Our example of the gifted pianist illustrates that it is not only the negative or derogatory experiences that are distorted or denied to awareness; many people have difficulty accepting genuine compliments and positive feedback, even when deserved.
• becoming a person. First, an individual must make contact—positive or negative—with another person
• a person develops a need to be loved, liked, or accepted by another person, a need that Rogers (1959) referred to as positive regard.
• Positive regard is a prerequisite for positive self-regard, defined as the experience of prizing or valuing one’s self.
• Not everyone becomes a psychologically healthy person. Rather, most people experience conditions of worth, incongruence, defensiveness, and disorganization
• conditions of worth; that is, they perceive that their parents, peers, or partners love and accept them only if they meet those people’s expectations and approval. “A condition of worth arises when the positive regard of a significant other is conditional, when the individual feels that in some respects he [or she] is prized and in others not
• Our perceptions of other people’s view of us are called external evaluations.
• incongruence when we do not accurately symbolize organismic experiences into awareness because they appear to be inconsistent with our emerging self-concept
• Vulnerability The greater the incongruence between our perceived self (selfconcept) and our organismic experience, the more vulnerable we are.
• Rogers (1959) believed that people are vulnerable when they are unaware of the discrepancy between their organismic self and their significant experience. Lacking awareness of their incongruence, vulnerable people often behave in ways that are incomprehensible not only to others but also to themselves
• ,anxiety and threat are experienced as we gain awareness of such an incongruence
• d anxiety as “a state of uneasiness or tension whose cause is unknown” (p. 204).
• threat: that is, an awareness that our self is no longer whole or congruent
• Defensiveness is the protection of the self-concept against anxiety and threat by the denial or distortion of experiences inconsistent with it
• e two chief defenses are distortion and denial.
• distortion, we misinterpret an experience in order to fit it into some aspect of our self-concept
• denial, we refuse to perceive an experience in awareness, or at least we keep some aspect of it from reaching symbolization