?Chapter Outline
I. Overview of Rogers's Person-Centered Theory Although Carl Rogers is finest known because the founder of client-centered therapy, he also developed an important theory of personality that underscores his process to therapy.
II. Biography of Carl Rogers Carl Rogers was born into a devoutly religious family in the Chicago suburb in 1902. After the family moved into a farm near Chicago, Carl became interested in scientific farming and learned to appreciate the scientific method. When he graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Rogers intended to become a minister, but he gave up that notion and completed a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University in 1931. In 1940, after nearly a dozen years absent from an academic life working as a clinician, he took a position at Ohio State University. Later, he held positions with the University of Chicago along with the University of Wisconsin. In 1964, he moved to California where he helped found the Center for Studies with the Person. He died in 1987 at age 85.
III. Person-Centered Theory Rogers carefully crafted his person-centered theory of personality to meet his very own demands for a structural product that could explain and predict outcomes of client-centered therapy. However, the theory has implications far beyond the therapeutic setting. A. Common Assumptions Person-centered theory rests on two simple assumptions: (1) the formative tendency, which states that all matter, both of those organic and inorganic, tends to evolve from simpler to a bit more complex types, and (two) an actualizing tendency, which suggests that all living things, together with humans, tend to move toward completion, or fulfillment of potentials. However, in order for people (or plants and animals) to become actualized, certain identifiable conditions must be existing. For a person, these conditions include a relationship with another person who is genuine, or congruent, and who demonstrates finished acceptance and empathy for that person. B. The Self and Self-Actualization A feeling of self or personal identity begins to emerge during infancy, and, once established, it facilitates a person to strive toward self-actualization, which serves as a subsystem for the actualization tendency and refers to the tendency to actualize the self as perceived in awareness. The self has two subsystems: (1) the self-concept, which features all those aspects of one's identity that are perceived in awareness, and (two) the ideal self, or our check out of our self as we would like to be or aspire to be. Once formed, the self concept tends to resist change, and gaps in between it together with the ideal self result in incongruence and assorted amounts of psychopathology.
C. Awareness People are aware of both equally their self-concept and their ideal self, although awareness really need not be accurate or in a substantial stage. Rogers saw people as having experiences on three concentrations of awareness: (1) those that are symbolized below the threshold of awareness and are either ignored or denied, that is certainly, subceived, or not allowed into the self-concept; (two) those that are distorted or reshaped to fit it into an present self-concept; and (3) those that are consistent with the self-concept and thus are accurately symbolized and freely admitted to the self-structure. Any go through not consistent with the self-concept-even positive experiences-will be distorted or denied. D. Needs The two standard human needs are maintenance and enhancement, but people also might need positive regard and self-regard. Maintenance needs include those for food, air, and safety, nevertheless they also include our tendency to resist change and to manage our self-concept as it is. Enhancement needs include needs to grow and to realize one's total human potential. As awareness of self emerges, an infant begins to get positive regard from another person-that is, to be loved or accepted. People naturally value those experiences that satisfy their needs for positive regard, but, unfortunately, this value every now and then becomes alot more powerful than the reward they get for meeting their organismic needs. This sets up the condition of incongruence, which is encountered when essential organismic needs are denied or distorted in favor of needs to be loved or accepted. As a result of experiences with positive regard, people establish the have for self-regard, which they acquire only after they perceive that someone else cares for them and values them. Once established, however, self-regard becomes autonomous and no longer dependent on another's continuous positive evaluation. E. Conditions of Worth Most people are not unconditionally accepted. Instead, they acquire conditions of worth; that is certainly, they come to feel that they are loved and accepted only when and if they meet the conditions established by others. F. Psychological Stagnation In the event the organismic self also, the self-concept are at variance with a particular another, a person may have incongruence, which contains vulnerability, threat, defensiveness, and even disorganization. The greater the incongruence among self-concept and then the organismic go through, the additional vulnerable that person becomes. Anxiety exists whenever the person becomes dimly aware of your discrepancy in between organismic know-how and self-concept, whereas threat is professional whenever the person becomes further clearly aware of this incongruence. To prevent incongruence, people react with defensiveness, typically with the sorts of distortion and denial. With distortion, people misinterpret an have so that it fits into their self-concept; with denial, people refuse to enable the know-how into awareness. When people's defenses fail to operate properly, their behavior becomes disorganized or psychotic. With disorganization, people in some cases behave consistently with their organismic practical knowledge and from time to time in accordance with their shattered self-concept.
IV. Psychotherapy For client-centered psychotherapy to be effective, certain conditions are necessary: A vulnerable client must have contact of some duration having a counselor who is congruent, and who demonstrates unconditional positive regard and listens with empathy to some client. The client must in turn perceive the congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathy from the therapist. If these conditions are current, then the system of therapy will take destination and certain predictable outcomes will result. A. Conditions Three conditions are crucial to client-centered therapy, and Rogers called them the necessary and sufficient conditions for therapeutic growth. The for starters is counselor congruence, or a therapist whose organismic experiences are matched by an awareness and by the ability and willingness to openly express these feelings. Congruence is way more primary than the opposite two conditions for the reason that it can be a relatively stable characteristic in the therapist, whereas the opposite two conditions are restricted into a distinct therapeutic relationship. Unconditional positive regard exists once the therapist accepts the client without conditions or qualifications. Empathic listening is the therapist's ability to feeling the feelings of the client and also to communicate these perceptions so that the client knows that another person has entered into his or her world of feelings without prejudice, projection, or evaluation. B. Strategy Rogers saw the strategy of therapeutic change as taking location in seven stages: (1) clients are unwilling to communicate anything about themselves; (two) they discuss only external events and other people; (3) they begin to talk about themselves, but continue to as an object; (four) they discuss good emotions that they have felt on the past; (5) they begin to express existing feelings; (6) they freely make it possible for into awareness those experiences that ended up previously denied or distorted; and (7) they practical experience irreversible change and growth. C. Outcomes When client-centered therapy is successful, clients become extra congruent, less defensive, increased open to go through, and much more realistic. The gap around their ideal self and their true self narrows and, as a consequence, clients have less physiological and psychological tension. Finally, clients' interpersonal relationships improve basically because they are considerably more accepting of self and others.
V. The Person of Tomorrow Rogers was vitally interested inside psychologically healthy person, called the "fully functioning person" or the "person of tomorrow." Rogers listed seven characteristics with the person of tomorrow. The person of tomorrow (1) is able to adjust to change, (two) is open to working experience, (3) is able to live fully around the moment, (four) is able to have harmonious relations with others, (5) is added integrated with no artificial boundaries relating to conscious and unconscious processes, (6) has a standard trust of human nature, and (7) enjoys a greater richness in life. The factors have implications each with the individual and for society.
VI. Philosophy of Science Rogers agreed with Maslow that scientists must care about and be involved inside phenomena they study which psychologists should limit their objectivity and precision to their methodology, not to the generation of hypotheses or to the communication of research findings.
VII. The Chicago Study When he taught within the University of Chicago, Rogers, along with colleagues and graduate students, conducted a sophisticated and complex study for the effectiveness of psychotherapy. A. Hypotheses This study tested four broad hypotheses. As a consequence of therapy (1) clients will become even more aware of their feelings and experiences, (two) the gap amongst the real self and also the ideal self will lessen; (3) clients' behavior will become a little more socialized and mature; and (four) clients will become the two alot more self-accepting and even more accepting of others. B. Method Participants ended up adults who sought therapy in the University of Chicago counseling center. Experimenters asked 50 percent of these to wait sixty days before receiving therapy though beginning therapy with the opposite 50 %. Additionally, they tested a control group of "normals" who have been matched with the therapy group. This control group was also divided into a wait group in addition to a non-wait group. C. Findings Rogers and his associates found that the therapy group-but not the wait group-showed a lessening from the gap in between real self and ideal self. They also found that clients who improved during therapy-but not those rated as least improved-showed changes in social behavior, as noted by friends. D. Summary of Good results Although client-centered therapy was successful in changing clients, it was not successful in bringing them to the stage in the fully functioning persons or even to the stage of "normal" psychological health.
VIII. Related Research A whole lot more lately, other researchers have investigated Rogers's facilitative conditions the two outdoors therapy and in therapy. A. Facilitative Conditions Outside the house Therapy Inside of the United Kingdom, Duncan Cramer has conducted a series of studies investigating the therapeutic qualities of Rogers's facilitative conditions in interpersonal relationships exterior of therapy. Cramer found positive relationships relating to self-esteem, as measured by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, in addition to the four facilitative conditions that make up the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory-level of regard, unconditionality of regard, congruence, and empathy. Moreover, the direction from the relationship strongly suggested that Rogers's facilitative conditions precede the acquisition of higher stages of self-esteem. B. Facilitative Conditions and Couples Therapy In Belgium, Alfons Vansteenwegen (1996) applied a revised sort belonging to the Barrett-Lennard to determine if Rogers's facilitative conditions related to success during couples therapy. He found that client-centered couples therapy can bring about positive changes in couples, which a few of these changes lasted for at least seven years after therapy.
IX. Critique of Rogers Rogers's person-centered theory is a particular with the most carefully constructed of all personality theories, and it meets relatively nicely just about every with the six criteria of the useful theory. It rates very big on internal consistency and parsimony, excessive on its ability to be falsified and to generate research, and high-average on its ability to organize knowledge and to serve as a guide to the practitioner.
X. Concept of Humanity Rogers believed that humans have the capacity to change and grow-provided that certain necessary and sufficient conditions are existing. Therefore, his theory rates very big on optimism. Furthermore, it rates huge on complimentary choice, teleology, conscious motivation, social influences, and therefore the uniqueness in the individual.