PERSON-CENTERED THEORY By: Carl Rogers

OVERVIEW

 Although Roger is best known as the founder of client-centered therapy, he develops a

humanistic theory of personality that grew out of his experience as a practicing psychotherapist.
 He was more concerned with helping people than worth discovering why they behaved as they
did. (He was more likely to ask “how can I help this person grow and develop?” than to ponder
the question “what caused this person to develop in this manner?”)
 Rogers built his theory on the scaffold provided by experiences as a therapist.

BIOGRAPHY OF CARL ROGERS

 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.
 Although his illness prevented him from immediately going back to the university, it did not keep
him from working: He spent a year recuperating by laboring on the farm and at a local
lumberyard before eventually returning to Wisconsin.
 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.
 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.

(In 1987, Rogers suffered a fall that resulted in a fractured pelvis: he had life alert and was able to
contact paramedics. He had a successful operation, but his pancreas failed the next night and he
died a few days later.)

PERSON-CENTERED THEORY

 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.
BASIC ASSUPMTIONS

FORMATIVE TENDENCY
 Rogers believed that there is a tendency for all matter, both organic and inorganic, to evolve
from simpler to more complex forms.
(Self-improvement, growth; natural desire or tendency of all living creatures to grow and
evolve.)

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 fulfilment of
potentials.
(individual’s innate desire to develop and grow, attempting to improve in the direction of an ideal
self and, in the process, make a constructive contribution to society.)
 Tendencies to maintain and enhance the organism are subsumed within the actualizing
tendency.

(Maintenance - 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. Enhancement - The need for enhancing the self is seen
in people’s willingness to learn things that are not immediately rewarding.)

THE SELF AND SELF-ACTUALIZATION

 According to Roger, infants begin to develop a vague concept of self when a portion of their
experience becomes personalized and differentiated in awareness as “I” or “me” experiences.

(Infants gradually become aware of their own identity as they learn what tastes good and what
tastes bad, what feels pleasant and what does not. They then begin to evaluate experiences as
positive or negative. Just like sa example ni Sir Karl.)

 Self-actualization is a subset of the actualization tendency and is therefore not synonymous with
it.

(Self-actualizations refers to the whole person—conscious and unconscious, physiological and

cognitive. While, self-actualization is like full realization of one’s creative, intellectual, and social
potential through internal drive. Just example musician must make music, an artist must paint, a
poet must write)

 Self-actualization is the tendency to actualize the self as perceived in awareness

(When the organism (real self) and the perceived self are in harmony, the two actualization
tendencies are nearly identical; but when people’s organismic experiences are not in harmony with
their view of self, a discrepancy exists between the actualization tendency and the self-actualization
tendency.)
Rogers postulated two self-subsystems, the self-concept and the ideal self.

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 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.

AWARENESS

Rogers defined awareness as “the symbolic representation (not necessarily in verbal symbols) of
some portion of our experience”.

LEVEL OF AWARENESS

1. Ignored or denied (walking in the streets alone, you choose to ignore your thinking. Just like
a mother that never wanted a child.)

2. Accurately symbolized (given the example here that if you are a pianist and have full
confidence in playing piano and told by a friend that he is excellent in playing it then it is
accurately symbolized.)

3. Distorted (they find it impossible to see themselves the way that others see them. Just like
the same example about the pianist so is his competitor told him that he is excellent, thou
his friend and the competitor said the same but he will still think that “why this person trying
to flatter me?”)

BECOMING A PERSON

 An individual must make contact – positive or negative – with another person. (infant)

(In order to survive, an infant must experience some contact from a parent or other caregiver.
Molding process)

 Become aware that another person has some measure of regard for them, they begin to value
positive regard and devalue negative regard. (children or adult)

o The person develops a need to be loved, liked, or accepted by another person, a need
that Rogers referred to as positive regard.

o Positive regard is a prerequisite for positive self-regard, defined as the experience of

prizing or valuing one’s self.
BARRIERS TO PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH

Conditions of Worth

 Instead of receiving unconditional positive regard, most people receive conditions of worth; that
is, they perceived that their parents, peers, or partners love and accept them only if they meet
people’s expectations and approval.

Incongruence

Unpleasant feelings can result from a discrepancy between our perceived and ideal self.

• Vulnerability

• Anxiety and Threat

(when the distance between the perceived self and ideal self is too far it is called incongruence and it
can lead to discomfort, anxiety, stress, and frustration.)

Defensiveness

Is the protection of the self-concept against anxiety and threat by the denial or distortion of
experiences inconsistent with it.

• 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)

• Denial (we refuse to perceive an experience in awareness, or at least we keep some

aspect of it from reaching symbolization.)

Disorganization

 If defensive behavior failed, behavior becomes disorganized.

 People sometimes behave consistently with their organismic experience and sometimes in
accordance with heir shattered self-concept.

(means that the individual is out of adjustment with society who has failed to organize the chief
goals of his life into an integrated whole so as to achieve unity of the self.)

PSYCHOTHERAPY

 Client-centered approach holds that in order for vulnerable or anxious people to grow
psychologically, they must come into contact with a therapist who is congruent and whom they
perceive as providing an atmosphere of unconditional acceptance and accurate empathy.

(Congruent - therapist is real and/or genuine, open, integrated and authentic during their
interactions with the client. While, Unconditional acceptance - therapist's deep and genuine caring
for the client and an attitude of "I'll accept you as you are." then empathy – ability to understand
sensitively and accurately [but not sympathetically] the client's experience and feelings in the here-
and-now.)
 To be more congruent and less defensive, clients have a clearer picture of themselves and a
more realistic view of the world. They are more effective in solving problems; and they have a
higher level of positive self-regard.

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