Person-Centered Theory
Rogers
Humanistic Psychology
• Assumptions:
• Everyone has potential for growth
• No one is inherently bad or unworthy
• Goal:
• Help people realize their potential in order to foster their growth
• Here and now
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Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
• Born in Illinois
• Wanted to be a farmer, entered the University
of Wisconsin as an agriculture major
• Involved in religious activities, spent 6 months
traveling to China, wanted to be a minister
than changed his ideas
• Turned to Psychology and received a PhD from
Colombia University
• Influenced by the ideas of Otto Rank
• The Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child
(1939), Counseling and Psychotherapy (1942),
Client-Centered Therapy (1951), On Becoming
a Person (1961)
• President of the American Psychological
Association 1946-1947 3
Person-Centered Theory
• Basic Assumptions
• Formative Tendency
• Actualizing Tendency: Tendency to develop capabilities in ways
that maintain or enhance the organism (present in all living
creatures)
• Need for maintenance: people’s desire to protect the current,
comfortable self-concept
• Need for enhancement: to become more, to develop and to achieve
growth
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…
• The Self-Actualization
• Self actualization is a subset of actualization tendency
• Maintenance or enhancement of the self
• Moves person toward greater autonomy and self-sufficiency
• Promotes congruence, organization, wholeness, and integration in the
person
• Organismic valuing process: Mechanism that evaluates whether
experiences are actualizing
• If not, you feel an annoying sense that something isn’t right
• If yes, person is operating as “fully functional person”
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…
• The Self-Concept: set of qualities of one’s being and one’s
experiences that are perceived in awareness
• The Ideal Self:the image of the kind of person you want to be
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…
• Awareness
• Levels of Awareness
• Ignored or denied
• Accurately symbolized
• Distorted
• Denial of Positive Experiences
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Becoming a Person
• «contact» with another person
• Need for positive regard: Strong motive for love, friendship,
attention, nurturance and affection from important others
• Unconditional Positive Regard: given without any conditions or
contingencies. Accepting others for who they are without
passing judgment on them.
• Positive Self-Regard: Valuing one’s self
• When it is established, it becomes independent of the continual
need to be loved
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Barriers to Psychological Health
• Conditions of Worth: Conditions under which a person is considered
worthy of regard
• Positive regard given only in situations that meet particular
conditions. Accepting others only when they meet your
expectations.
• Conditional Self-Regard: application of conditions to self
• Conflicts between self-actualization and fulfilling conditions of
worth
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Barriers to Psychological Health
• Incongruence: inconsistency between our experiences
and our self-concept
• Defensiveness: Ways to defend against anxiety of incongruence
• Distortions of the experience
• Denial
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Personality Adjustment from
Rogers’ Viewpoint
Basic Assumption: Personality adjustment is reflected by the degree of congruence
within the self-concept
Personality Adjustment: Characterized by individuals who exhibit a high degree of
congruence between their experiences and sense of self—the fully functioning person
Personality Maladjustment: Characterized by individuals who express themselves based
on the conditions of worth provided by others and exhibit a heightened sense of
incongruence between their experiences and sense of self
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Personality Adjustment is Reflected by an Individual’s Degree of 12
Problems in Behavior
• Problems arise from:
• Incongruity and the negative affect that results
• Living in order to meet conditions of worth
• Not living in ways that promote self-actualization
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Therapy
• Client-Centered Therapy:
• Therapist demonstrates “Therapeutic Alliance” qualities
• Congruence: genuineness, honesty with the client
• Empathy: the ability to feel what client feels
• Respect: acceptance, unconditional positive regards toward the client
• Non-evaluative, rather therapist reflects with
• Clarification of feelings
• Restatement of content
• So self-actualization processes can move client toward greater integration
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Client-Centered Therapy
“In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I
treat, or cure or change this person? Now I would phrase the question
in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may
use for his own personal growth?”
Carl Rogers
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Personal Growth
• In this view, people should engage in processes similar to those that
occur in therapy throughout life
• Continued personal growth should be a goal for everyone
• Requires authenticity from those we interact with, empathic
understanding from them, and unconditional positive regard
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