Person-Centered Theory (Carl
Rogers)
BIOGRAPHY
Carl Ransom Rogers was born in
1902 at Oak Hill, Illinois. He was widely
regarded as one of the most eminent
thinkers in psychology and best known
for developing the psychotherapy
method called client-centered therapy
and for being one of the founders of
humanistic psychology.
Rogers’s father was a civil
engineer, and his mother was a
housewife; he was the fourth of six
children.
One reason he chose to abandon
his pursuit of theology was a student-led
seminar on religion which caused him to
question his faith. Another inspiration for
his switch to the study of psychology was
a course he took at Columbia University
taught by the psychologist Leta Stetter
Hollingworth. Rogers considered
psychology to be a way to continue
studying life's many questions without
having to subscribe to a specific doctrine
ROGERIAN THERAPY
• Person-centered Theory or also
known as Rogerian Therapy in the
1940s. This type of therapy diverged
from the traditional model of the
therapist as expert and moved
instead toward a nondirective,
empathic approach that empowers
and motivates the client in the
therapeutic process.
• The therapy is based on Rogers’s
belief that every human being
strives for and has the capacity to
fulfill his or her own potential.
• Focused on rather than viewing
people as inherently flawed, with
problematic behaviors and thoughts
that require treatment, person-
centered therapy identifies that each
person has the capacity and desire
for personal growth and change.
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
Formative Tendency
• There is a tendency for all matter,
both organic and inorganic, to
evolve from simpler to more
complex forms.
• Complex organisms develop from
single cells; and human
consciousness evolves from a
primitive unconsciousness to a
highly organized awareness.
Actualizing Tendency
• The tendency within all humans
(and other animals and plants) to
move toward completion or
fulfillment of potentials
• 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
oneself are all examples of the
single motive of actualization
The Self and Self-Actualization
• 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
• They then begin to evaluate
experiences as positive or
negative, using as a criterion the
actualizing tendency. Because
nourishment is a requirement for
actualization, infants value food
and devalue hunger. They also
value sleep, fresh air, physical
contact, and health because each
of these is needed for
actualization.
• Self-actualization is a subset of
the actualization tendency and is
therefore not synonymous with it.
• 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.
TWO SELF SUBSYSTEMS
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.
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.
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”. He used the term
synonymously with both consciousness
and symbolization.
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.
• 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.
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. 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.
• That is, the person develops a need
to be loved, liked, or accepted by
another person, a need that Rogers,
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
oneself. Rogers 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.
• 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.
BARRIERS TO PSYCHOLOGICAL
HEALTH
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.
Incongruence
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 organismic experience is the
source of psychological disorders.
Conditions of worth that we received
during early childhood led to a somewhat
false self-concept, one based on
distortions and denials.
Vulnerability
The greater the incongruence between
our perceived self (self-concept) and our
organismic experience, the more
vulnerable we are. Rogers believed that
people are vulnerable when they are
unaware of the discrepancy between
their organismic self and their significant
experience.
Anxiety and Threat
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 defined anxiety as “a
state of uneasiness or tension whose
cause is unknown”
Defensiveness
Defensiveness is the protection of the
self-concept against anxiety and threat
by the denial or distortion of experiences
inconsistent with it
Disorganization
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.
PSYCHOTHERAPY
Client-centered therapy is
deceptively simple in statement but
decidedly difficult in practice. Briefly, the
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. But
therein lies the difficulty. The qualities of
congruence, unconditional positive
regard, and empathic understanding are
not easy for a counselor to attain.
STAGES OF THERAPEUTIC CHANGE
Stage 1 is characterized by an
unwillingness to communicate anything
about oneself. People at this stage
ordinarily do not seek help, but if for some
reason they come to therapy, they are
extremely rigid and resistant to change.
They do not recognize any problems and
refuse to own any personal feelings or
emotions.
In Stage 2, clients become slightly less
rigid. They discuss external events and
other people, but they still disown or fail
to recognize their own feelings. However,
they may talk about personal feelings as
if such feelings were objective
phenomena.
In Stage 3, they more freely talk about
self, although still as an object. Clients
talk about feelings and emotions in the
past or future tense and avoid present
feelings. They refuse to accept their
emotions, keep personal feelings at a
distance from the here-and-now
situation, only vaguely perceive that they
can make personal choices, and deny
individual responsibility for most of their
decisions.
In Stage 4 begin to talk of deep feelings
but not ones presently felt. When clients
do express their present feelings, they
are usually surprised by this expression.
They deny or distort experiences,
although they may have some dim
recognition that they are capable of
feeling emotions in the present. They
begin to question some values that have
been introjected from others, and they
start to see the incongruence between
their perceived self and their organismic
experience. They accept more freedom
and responsibility than they did in Stage
3 and begin to tentatively allow
themselves to become involved in a
relationship with the therapist.
In Stage 5, they have begun to undergo
significant change and growth. They can
express feelings in the present, although
they have not yet accurately symbolized
those feelings. They are beginning to rely
on an internal locus of evaluation for their
feelings and to make fresh and new
discoveries about themselves. They also
experience a greater differentiation of
feelings and develop more appreciation
for nuances among them. In addition,
they begin to make their own decisions
and to accept responsibility for their
choices.
feeling of genuine caring and affection for
the person they are becoming. An
interesting concomitant to this stage is
physiological loosening. Stage 6 signals
an end to therapy. Indeed, if therapy
were to be terminated at this point, clients
would still progress to the next level.
Stage 7 can occur outside the
therapeutic encounter, because growth
at Stage 6 seems to be irreversible.
Clients who reach Stage 7 become fully
functioning “persons of tomorrow” They
are able to generalize their in-therapy
experiences to their world beyond
therapy. They possess the confidence to
be themselves at all times, to own and to
feel deeply the totality of their
experiences, and to live those
experiences in the present. Their
organismic self, now unified with the self-
concept, becomes the locus for
evaluating their experiences. People at
Stage 7 receive pleasure in knowing that
these evaluations are fluid and that
change, and growth will continue. In
addition, they become congruent,
possess unconditional positive self-
regard, and are able to be loving and
empathic toward others.

In Stage 6 experience dramatic growth

and an irreversible movement toward
becoming fully functioning or self-
actualizing. They freely allow into
awareness those experiences that they
had previously denied or distorted. They
become more congruent and are able to
match their present experiences with
awareness and with open expression.
They no longer evaluate their own
behavior from an external viewpoint but
rely on their organismic self as the
criterion for evaluating experiences. They
begin to develop unconditional self-
regard, which means that they have a