The Legacy of Carl Rogers in Therapy

¶ … Therapeutic Orientation:

The person-centered or humanistic perspective of Carl Rogers

The humanistic or person-centered perspective of Carl Rogers offers a positive and empowering concept of the human psyche and a client's prospects for growth and development. Rather than placing the therapist in the role of an all-knowing expert, Rogers viewed the psychologist as a kind of co-facilitator, who would help lead the client on a journey of personal empowerment by giving the client unconditional positive regard. "The therapist was not to be an expert who understood the problem and decided how it should be solved. Rather, the therapist should free the client's power to solve personal problems" (Zimring, 1999, p.1). Rogers viewed neuroses as having their roots in a loss of self-esteem and a critical role of the therapist is to give the client the support to feel better about him or herself. People are always viewed as the ultimate experts on themselves, not the therapist. Learning can only take place when people feel secure. Mental illness is fundamentally viewed as the loss of self-esteem and Rogers viewed all clients as possessing the potential for self-actualization in the presence of positive support. Incongruence is the source of unhappiness and a good therapist will help resolve this state of incongruence. "Incongruence is a basic construct in the theory we have been developing. It refers to a discrepancy between the actual experience of the organism and the self-picture of the individual insofar as it represents that experience" (Rogers, 1956, p.2).

Empathy is critical, in Rogers' view, for the therapist to benefit the client. "The therapist [must] be congruent or integrated in the relationship" and along with unconditional positive regard have the ability to see the clients world "as if" it were the therapist's own, while still retaining a sense of professional distance (Zimring, 1999, p.1). The gulf between therapist and client is viewed as much less wide than it is in other therapeutic approaches and this is one of the attractions of the therapy. I do not believe that people change because they are told to change; rather, they must find within themselves the desire to seek growth and learning. Rogers believed that self-directed learning was the greatest teacher (Zimring, 1999, p.1).

A good therapist exhibits "certain attitudinal qualities which exist in the personal relationship between the facilitator and the learner" (Zimring, 1999, p.2). Empathetic, warm, and opening traits are equally important as technical knowledge to promote the client's healing. The therapist does not affect an impersonal and distanced approach in humanistic psychology but rather is open about him or herself in a human fashion, without affecting a remote and objective persona that is not truly who the therapist is in his or her daily life. "To sense the client's anger, fear, or confusion as if it were your own, yet without your own anger, fear, or confusion getting bound up in it, is the condition we are endeavoring to describe" (Rogers, 196, p.4).