Carl Ransom Rogers It's one of the Most influential psychologists in history , Being one of the founders of both the humanistic psychological approach - along with Abraham Maslow -like of research psychotherapy.
Positioned by the American Psychological Association (APA) As the sixth most important psychologist of the twentieth century and the second among the clinicians (only surpassed by Sigmund Freud), throughout his career has received many awards for his contributions to Psychology and his works, including the Prize Of Scientific Contributions Distinguished by the APA itself.
Due to its importance, throughout the following article I will tell you about the Life, main theories And works Of this reputed psychological author in addition to some Quotes that will make you reflect .
Biography of Carl Rogers
Carl Ransom Rogers was born on January 8, 1902 in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. His father was a civil engineer, while his mother worked as a housewife.
Born as the fourth of six children, from an early age he would begin to develop an unusual intelligence: he spoke before reaching the kindergarten.
His studies carried out in a religious and traditional atmosphere as altar boy in the vicarage of Jimpley. Years later, he would move to New York to begin studying Agriculture, a discipline that he quickly abandoned to study History and Theology.
During those years, a trip to Beijing to participate in a Christian conference led him to doubt his beliefs as a religious. The experience served to enroll him in the program of Clinical Psychology of the University of Columbia.
He enrolled in Teachers College at the same university receiving his master's degree in 1928, serving as director of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in Rochester. Three years later he would get a doctorate.
In the meantime, he would marry Helen Elliot in 1924, a woman with whom he had a boy and a girl, named David and Natalie respectively.
Already in 1939, Rogers would publish his first book titled Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child , The result of numerous studies based on theories such as Otto Rank And currents such as existentialism . The work would serve to obtain a chair of Clinical Psychology at Ohio State University.
Three years later he published another book, Counseling and Psychotherapy , Where the foundations of client-centered therapy - based on the therapist's understanding and acceptance - are laid, and what would subsequently become the pillars of Humanistic Psychology.
In 1944 he would return to his hometown where he would perform different therapies and investigations with which he would write Client-centered Therapy In the year 51, working as a kind of complement and specialization of his previous work. Years before, in 47 he would achieve one of the greatest achievements of his entire life: to be appointed President of the American Psychological Association.
Rogers never stopped growing professionally and moving forward with various studies. In 1956 he became President of the American Academy of Psychotherapists and in 1957 he obtained the chair of Psychology and Psychiatry of the University of Wisconsin by publishing On Becoming a Person.
In 1964 he left teaching to move to the Western Behavioral Science Institute in California. Three years later he would publish the result of his experience in his department of psychiatry with the book The Therapeutic Relationship and its Impact: A Study of Schizophrenia. I would also found The Center for the Study of the Person and the Institute of Peace, focused on conflict resolution.
During his last years he resided in San Diego (California), interspersing therapies with conferences and social activities. He applied his theories in situations such as political oppression and national conflicts, which led him to create workshops focused on intercultural communications meeting with Protestants around the world.
Finally he died suddenly on February 4, 1987 at the age of 85 years.
The importance of the work in life of Carl Rogers served to him to have several continuadores of his studies of the Humanistic Psychology.
You may also like Rogers's Theory of Personality .
Main Theories
Like the great psychologists of history, Carl Rogers also left in his books as much his studies as thoughts and main theories. Then I will explain the most important.
Therapy focused on the client
Rogers was the creator of client-centered therapy. To summarize, this talks about the importance that each person has for change and the personal growth .
From the outset, he chooses to call the patient as a client, whom a sympathetic and attentive psychologist allows to take control of his therapy.
For this method, Rogers introduces a technique called reflex. In it, the therapist reflects thoughts by repeating what the client says. This enhances active listening.
He also talks about three qualities that any therapist must demand during his sessions:
1- Congruence
Being truthful and honest is one of the keys to getting quality therapy. A good therapist should be congruent with your feelings .
Given this, the patient can and should tell you at any time when your professional is lying to you. If they detect that the feeling of congruence is being violated, they may feel betrayed.
2- Empathy
Putting yourself in the other's place is for Rogers another of the inviolable aspects of client-centered therapy. As he points out, we must understand the other not as a psychologist, but as people who understand their problems.
Here active listening comes into play, something that can serve to make the patient see that you put yourself in their place and understand their problems and concerns.
3- Unconditional positive consideration
In it, the therapist must respect the other as a human being, without making judgments that could harm them. Rogers explains this as the most complicated point to make by a professional, although with respect can be achieved.
As the reputed psychologist explains, when the behavior of the other is considered disturbing, the personality of the other must be assessed without judgment. It is usually put the example of the mother who tells her son to order his room. "You are a messy and messy child", Communicates to him, when he should really say" Your room is messy, try to fix it a bit."
Theory of self
The humanist current has as its object the study of philosophies such as phenomenology or existentialism. These focus on topics such as the self, the person, their existence and experience with the world.
One of Rogers' main theories is based on the fact that people or organisms are born with tendencies toward actualization through experimentation.
For the development of the subject, the author explains the concept of the self or self, which is created through the experiences and perceptions that being receives both the environment and others to be able to mold and form their own world. These experiences are referred to as"phenomenological field".
The people who managed to"actualize"themselves through experience are defined by the term"fully functional", the ideal assumption to be achieved.
In this way and to explain his theory in a more scientific way, he presented a series of 19 propositions that I summarize here:
1 - Individuals and organisms are in a continuously changing world full of experience - phenomenological field - of which they are part.
2- The organism reacts to the phenomenological field, which is experienced and perceived. This field of perception is the"reality"for the individual.
3- The organism reacts as an organized whole for it before its phenomenological field.
4- The organism has a basic and instinctive tendency or impulse to constantly update itself.
5- As a result of interaction with the environment, and in particular as a result of interaction with others, an effort is made to satisfy our needs, thus forming behavior.
6 - In this way, the body has a basic tendency to effort. To be updated, maintained, searched and improved, the body must experiment to preserve its development.
7- The best point of view to understand the behavior is from the internal frame of reference of the individual.
8- A part of this frame of reference is differentiated by constructing the self or self.
9- This self appears as a result of the interaction of the individual with both the environment and others. The self is defined as the organized, fluid but congruent conceptual pattern of the perceptions of the characteristics and relations of the ego or the ego together with the values linked to these concepts.
10 - The values related to the experiences and values that are part of the structure itself, in some cases, are values experienced directly by the organism, and in some cases are values introjected or received from others, but perceived in a distorted way, as If they had been experienced directly.
11- As experiences occur in the life of the individual are:
A) Symbolized, perceived and organized in some relation with it.
B) Ignored because there is no perception with the structure - self relationship.
C) Denied symbolization because experience is incompatible with the structure of the self.
12- Most forms of behavior are compatible with the concept of self.
13- In some cases, behavior can be triggered by needs that have not been symbolized. Such behavior may be incompatible with the structure of the self. In such cases the behavior is not"owned"by the person.
14- Psychological maladaptation occurs when the individual rejects significant experiences. When this situation occurs, a situation of basic or potential tension is created.
15- On the other hand, the psychological adaptation exists when the concept of itself assimilates all sensory and significant experiences.
16. Any experience that is incompatible with the self can be perceived as a threat.
17. Under certain conditions, which involve mainly the complete absence of threat to the structure of the self, experiences that are incompatible with it can be perceived and examined to be assimilated.
18- When the individual perceives and accepts in a compatible system all his sensory and visceral experiences, he can come to understand and accept others more as differentiated persons.
19- As the individual perceives and accepts more experiences in his structure of the self, he replaces his value system by a continuous process of organic evaluation.
Work
- Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child
- Counseling and Psychotherapy: Newer Concepts in Practice.
- Client-Centered Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory
- The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change
- A Theory of Therapy, Personality and Interpersonal Relationships Developed in the Client-centered Framework
- On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy
- Freedom to Learn: A View of What Education Might Become.
- On Encounter Groups
- On Personal Power: Inner Strength and Its Revolutionary Impact
- The Way of Being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
- Person to Person: The Problem of Being Human
- The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change.