Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) is esteemed as one of the founders of humanistic psychologyopens in new window. He developed the person-centered, also known as client-centered, approach to psychotherapy and developed the concept of unconditional positive regard while pioneering the field of clinical psychological research.
Rogers initially planned to become a minister and enrolled in Union Theological Seminary. During that time, he took educational psychology classes at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he began doing clinical work with children, and decided to switch to psychology full-time (Rogers, C., 1967). He received his PhD from Columbia in 1931 (Rogers, C., 1967). After graduation, he began working at the Rochester Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. His experiences as a therapist there laid the groundwork for the development of his client-centered approach to therapy (Rogers, C., 1967).
After some time at the University of Rochester, he became a professor of clinical psychology at Ohio State University. It was here that he wrote Counseling and Psychotherapy (Rogers, C., 1967), which first presented his belief that establishing a relationship with an accepting and understanding therapist would help clients resolve their problems and gain insight into their lives. This became known as unconditional positive regardopens in new window. The book was a surprise hit, with the publisher expecting to sell fewer than 2,000 copies. As of 1967, the book had sold over 80,000. During his time teaching at Ohio, he tapped into the unmet demand for classes that taught students how to work with people rather than how to conduct experiments in a lab. The practicum he developed there was the first to integrate supervised therapy into the academic training of future therapists (Rogers, C., 1967).
In 1945, he moved to the University of Chicago. During his time in Chicago, he became interested in scientifically studying the effectiveness of different methods of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy had never been studied scientifically because practitioners balked at having a third-party watch their therapy sessions in order to quantify and measure their practice. Rogers analyzed transcripts from hundreds of therapy sessions and administered psychometric tests to clients before and after receiving therapy to determine the effectiveness of therapy. He developed new ethical standards for psychotherapy that emphasized client agency and confidentiality. Recording a session required the client’s consent and therapists could not share info about a client with outsiders beyond confirming that the client was in therapy. These methods are now widespread. He published his findings from these experiments in Client-Centered Therapy (1951) and Psychotherapy and Personality Change (1954, Gendlin, E. T., 1988. He also founded a counseling center connected to the University (Rogers, C., 1967).
The need for counseling increased greatly after World War II. Rogers worked with the United Service Organization to develop a program for training others to provide non-directive therapy (Baker, D., 2012). This type of therapy was flexible and easy to learn and allowed the United States to increase the number of clinical psychologists relatively quickly in a short time period.
In 1945, Rogers and other applied psychologists joined with academic psychologists to reorganize the APA. He was elected president in 1947 (Baker, D. 2012). Rogers oversaw the expansion of APA to include clinical psychologists as well as an increase in the number of divisions, allowing psychologists of all backgrounds to find a home within APA. As he recalled in a memoir, “these were years of great change and expansion in psychology following the war, and I was deeply involved in formulations regarding clinical training, the formation of the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology, and the continuing attempt to resolve the tensions between psychiatry and psychology (Rogers, C., 1967).”
In 1957, he left the University of Chicago to teach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, his alma mater. In 1963, he moved to La Jolla, California, where he became a resident of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute (WBSI). In 1968, he left WBSI to help found the Center for Studies of the Person. By this point, Humanistic Psychology had come into its own and was popular across the country and increasingly across the world (Rogers, C., 1967).
Rogers was the first recipient of the Distinguished Professional Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association. (Carl R. Rogers: Distinguished Professional Contribution Award, 1973). The award citation reads “His commitment to the whole person has been an example which has guided and challenged the practice of psychology in the schools, in industry, and throughout the community. By devising, practicing, evaluating, and teaching a method of psychotherapy and counseling which reaches to the very roots of human potentiality and individuality, he has caused all psychotherapists to reexamine their procedures in a new light. Innovator in personality research, pioneer in the encounter movement, and a respected gadfly of organized psychology, he has made a lasting impression on the profession of psychology.”
In the 1970s and 1980s, he dedicated his time to bringing humanistic principles to international settings in order help resolve political oppression and national social conflict. He traveled to Northern Ireland, South Africa, Brazil, and the Soviet Union to lead experiential workshops on communication and creativity. With his daughter Natalie Rogers and three other psychologists, he also developed a series of residential programs called the Person-Centered Approach Workshops which focused on cross-cultural communications, personal growth, self-empowerment, and learning for social change. He continued this work until his death in 1987 (Goleman, D., 1987).
References
Baker, D. (2012). Reflections on Rogers. PSYCH TODAY, 25(2). https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/reflections-on-rogersopens in new window.
Carl R. Rogers: Distinguished Professional Contribution Award (1973). American Psychologist, 28(1), 71–74. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0020368opens in new window
Gendlin, E. T. (1988). Obituary: Carl Rogers (1902–1987). American Psychologist, 43(2), 127–128. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0091937opens in new window
Goleman, D. (1987, February 06). Carl R. Rogers, 85, leader in psychotherapy, dies. https://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/06/obituaries/carl-r-rogers-85-leader-in-psychotherapy-dies.html?pagewanted=allopens in new window
Rogers, C. (1967). Carl R. Rogers. In E. G. Boring & G. Lindzey (Eds.), A history of psychology in autobiography, Vol. 5, pp. 341–384). Appleton-Century-Crofts. https://doi.org/10.1037/11579-013opens in new window