2. Carl Ransom Rogers was born on January
8, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois, the fourth of
six children born to Walter and Julia
Cushing Rogers. Carl was closer to his
mother than to his father who, during the
early years, was often away from home
working as a civil engineer. Rogers received
a PhD from Columbia in 1931 after having
already moved to New York to work with the
Rochester Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children.
3. Rogers spent 12 years at Rochester, working at a job
that might easily have isolated him from a successful
academic career. The personal life of Carl Rogers was
marked by change and openness to experience. As an
adolescent, he was extremely shy, had no close friends,
and was “socially incompetent in any but superficial
contacts”. He was the first 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. He died in 1987.
5. Although Rogers’s concept of humanity
remained basically unchanged from the early
1940s until his death in 1987, his therapy and
theory underwent several changes in name.
During the early years, his approach was known
as “nondirective,” an unfortunate term that
remained associated with his name for far too
long. Later, his approach was variously termed
“client-centered,” “person-centered,” “student-
centered,” “group-centered,” and “person to
person.” We use the label client-centered in
reference to Rogers’s therapy and the more
inclusive term person-centered to refer to
Rogerian personality theory.
7. Formative Tendency
Rogers (1978, 1980) believed that there is a
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. Rogers called this
process the 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
8. Actualizing Tendency
An interrelated and more pertinent assumption is
the 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. The need to satisfy one’s
hunger drive, to express deep emotions when they
are felt, and to accept one’s self are all examples of
the single motive of actualization. Because each
person operates as one complete organism,
actualization involves the whole person.
9. 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. It
includes such basic needs as food, air, and safety;
but it also includes the tendency to resist change
and to seek the status quo. The conservative nature
of maintenance needs is expressed in people’s
desire to protect their current, comfortable self-
concept. People fight against new ideas; they
distort experiences that do not quite fit; they find
change painful and growth frightening.
10. 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. The need for
enhancing the self is seen in people’s
willingness to learn things that are not
immediately rewarding
19. The Self-Concept
The 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. 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.
20. The Ideal Self
The second subsystem of the self is
the 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. A wide gap
between the ideal self and the self-concept
indicates incongruence and an unhealthy
personality. Psychologically healthy
individuals perceive little discrepancy
between their self-concept and what they
ideally would like to be.
22. Awareness
Without awareness the self-concept
and the ideal self would not exist.
Rogers (1959) defined awareness as
“the symbolic representation (not
necessarily in verbal symbols) of some
portion of our experience” (p. 198). He
used the term synonymously with both
consciousness and symbolization.
23. Levels of Awareness
First, some events are experienced below the
threshold of awareness and are
either ignored or denied. 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.
Second, Rogers (1959) hypothesized that some
experiences are accurately symbolized and freely
admitted to the self-structure. Such experiences are
both nonthreatening and consistent with the existing
self-concept.
24. A third level of awareness involves experiences
that are perceived in a 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.
26. Rogers (1959) discussed the processes
necessary to becoming a person.
First, an individual must make contact—
positive or negative—with another person.
This contact is the minimum experience
necessary for becoming a person. In order to
survive, an infant must experience some
contact from a parent or other caregiver. As
children (or adults) become aware that
another person has some measure of regard
for them, they begin to value positive regard
and devalue negative regard
27. That is, the person develops a need to be
loved, liked, or accepted by another person, a
need that Rogers (1959) referred to
as positive regard. If we perceive that others,
especially significant others, care for, prize, or
value us, then our need to receive positive
regard is at least partially satisfied.
Positive regard is a prerequisite for positive
self-regard, defined as the experience of
prizing or valuing one’s self. Rogers (1959)
believed that 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.
28. The source of positive self-regard, then, lies in
the positive regard we receive from others, but
once established, it is autonomous and self-
perpetuating. As Rogers (1959) stated it, the
person then “becomes in a sense his [or her]
own significant social
30. Not everyone becomes a
psychologically healthy person. Rather,
most people experience conditions of
worth, incongruence, defensiveness,
and disorganization.
31. Conditions of Worth
Instead of receiving unconditional positive regard,
most people receive 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”
32. Incongruence
We have seen that the organism and the self are two
separate entities that may or may not be congruent
with one another. Also recall that actualization refers
to the organism’s tendency to move toward
fulfillment, whereas self-actualization is the desire of
the perceived self to reach fulfillment. These two
tendencies are sometimes at variance with one
another.
33. Psychological disequilibrium begins when we fail to
recognize our organismic experiences as self-
experiences: that is, when we do not accurately symbolize
organismic experiences into awareness because they
appear to be inconsistent with our emerging self-concept.
This incongruence between our self-concept and our
organ ismic experience is the source of psychological
disorders. Conditions of worth that we received during
early childhood lead to a somewhat false self-concept,
one based on distortions and denials. The self-concept
that emerges includes vague perceptions that are not in
harmony with our organismic experiences, and this
incongruence between self and experience leads to
discrepant and seemingly inconsistent behaviors.
Sometimes we behave in ways that maintain or enhance
our actualizing tendency, and at other times, we may
behave in a manner designed to maintain or enhance a
self-concept founded on other people’s expectations and
evaluations of us.
34. Vulnerability
The greater the incongruence between our
perceived self (self-concept) 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.
35. Anxiety and Threat
Whereas vulnerability exists when we have no awareness
of the incongruence within our self, anxiety and threat are
experienced as we gain awareness of such an
incongruence. When we become dimly aware that the
discrepancy between our organismic experience and our
self-concept may become conscious, we feel anxious.
Rogers (1959) defined anxiety as “a state of uneasiness or
tension whose cause is unknown” (p. 204). As we become
more aware of the incongruence between our organismic
experience and our perception of self, our anxiety begins to
evolve into threat: that is, an awareness that our self is no
longer whole or congruent. Anxiety and threat can
represent steps toward psychological health because they
signal to us that our organismic experience is inconsistent
with our self-concept. Nevertheless, they are not pleasant
or comfortable feelings.
36. Defensiveness
In order to prevent this inconsistency between our
organismic experience and our perceived self, we react in
a defensive manner. Defensiveness is the protection of
the self-concept against anxiety and threat by the denial or
distortion of experiences inconsistent with it (Rogers,
1959). Because the self-concept consists of many self-
descriptive statements, it is a many-faceted phenomenon.
The two chief defenses
are distortion and denial. With distortion, we misinterpret
an experience in order to fit it into some aspect of our self-
concept. We perceive the experience in awareness, but we
fail to understand its true meaning. With denial, we refuse
to perceive an experience in awareness, or at least we
keep some aspect of it from reaching symbolization.
37. Disorganization
Most people engage in defensive behavior, but
sometimes defenses fail and behavior becomes
disorganized or psychotic. But why would defenses fail to
function?
Denial and distortion are adequate to keep normal people
from recognizing this discrepancy, but when the
incongruence between people’s perceived self and their
organismic experience is either too obvious or occurs too
suddenly to be denied or distorted, their behavior
becomes disorganized. Disorganization can occur
suddenly, or it can take place gradually over a long period
of time. Ironically, people are particularly vulnerable to
disorganization during therapy, especially if a therapist
accurately interprets their actions and also insists that
they face the experience prematurely (Rogers, 1959).
38. In a state of disorganization, people sometimes
behave consistently with their organismic experience
and sometimes in accordance with their shattered
self-concept.
An example of the first case is a previously prudish
and proper woman who suddenly begins to use
language explicitly sexual and scatological. The
second case can be illustrated by a man who,
because his self-concept is no longer a gestalt or
unified whole, begins to behave in a confused,
inconsistent, and totally unpredictable manner. In
both cases, behavior is still consistent with the self-
concept, but the self-concept has been broken and
thus the behavior appears bizarre and confusing.
41. Rogers' Seven Stages of Process:
Definition
Stage 1
People will not speak about feelings openly, and
tend to blame others for causing their pain, rather
than take responsibility for themselves: ‘If only my
friend would stop doing that, I’d feel better.’
It is rare to see a client at this stage: ‘The
individual in this stage of fixity and remoteness of
experience is not likely to come voluntarily for
counselling’ (Rogers, 1961: 132).
42. Stage 2
There is slightly less rigidity, with a small movement
towards wondering whether responsibility should be taken
by self, but not actually doing so: ‘It’s not my fault; it’s
theirs – isn’t it?’
It may be possible to start working with a client at this
stage, through offering the core conditions, trusting the
client’s process, and so allowing the client to find their own
way forward.
Stage 3
The person is beginning to consider accepting responsibility
for self, but generalises and focuses more on past than
present feelings: ‘I felt angry, but then everyone does, don’t
they?’
This is quite a common stage to enter therapy; it is
important to use unconditional positive regard to accept the
client just as they are, supporting them to feel safe to
explore their feelings.
43. Stage 4
The client begins to describe their own here-and-now
feelings, but tends to be critical of self for having these:
‘I feel guilty about that, but I shouldn’t really.’
While the client is willing and actively seeks
involvement in the therapeutic relationship, they may
lack trust in the counsellor.
The counsellor also needs to take care not to collude
with a client’s use of humour to distance themselves
from the full impact of here-and-now feelings.
44. Stage 5
Clients express that they are seeing things more clearly, and take
ownership of their situation, being prepared to take action: ‘I’m
not surprised I’m angry with my boss after what I’ve been through.
So I’ve quit my job.’
This is a very productive stage in therapy, as the client can
express present emotions and begin to rely on their own decision-
making abilities. The counsellor is likely to see the client taking action
in their life.
Stage 6
The client recognises their own and others’ process towards self-
actualisation: ‘I accept that pain within me, and what I and others
did. I feel a warmth and compassion towards myself and them for
where I am at.’
Once at this stage, the client is unlikely to regress. They
may choose not to continue with therapy, now being able to treat
themselves with self-care and love.
Stage 7
We are likely to see a fluid, self-accepting person who is open to
the changes that life presents:
45. Therapists need to be able to be
responsively attuned to their clients
and to understand them emotionally as
well as cognitively. When empathy is
operating on all three levels –
interpersonal, cognitive, and affective
– it is one of the most powerful tools
therapists have at their disposal.”
