Rogers, Carl

The major contribution if Carl Rogers (1902–1987) to the field of education was his perspective on psychological development as a process on individual growth through personal understanding. His precepts related to (a) warm, positive interactions between people, (b) motivation to learn as an internal process, and (c) personal readiness as the foundation of all learning have greatly influenced the profession. Rogers was born in 1902 in Oak Park, Illinois. He originally was an agriculture major at the University of Wisconsin, but graduated with a BA in religion. He earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from Columbia University in 1931. Rogers served on the faculties of Ohio State University (1940–1945), the University of Chicago (1945–1957), and the University of Wisconsin (1957–1964).

Rogers developed the theory of nondirective counseling. This theory is built on the “actualizing tendency,” which is the motivation present in every life form to develop its potentials to the fullest extent possible. Within this principle is the concept of organismic valuing, or the fact that all organisms know what is good for them. Therefore, persons have the answers to all their problems and questions within themselves. The job of the counselor or therapist is to empathically reflect the client's feelings, beliefs, and attitudes in order to identify problem solutions for themselves.

Rogers hypothesized that personal growth is facilitated when counselors are open in the relationship with their client, that is, the counselor is genuine and without “front” or “façade.” Rogers used the term congruence to describe this condition. By this he meant that the feelings counselors are experiencing are available to them, available to their awareness, that they are able to live these feelings, be them in the counseling relationship, and able to communicate them if appropriate.

The second essential condition in the relationship, according to Rogers, is that counselors are experiencing an accurate empathic understanding of their clients' private worlds and are able to communicate some of the significant fragments of that understanding. To sense the clients' inner world of private personal meanings as if it were one's own, but without ever losing the “as if” quality—this is empathy, and this seems essential to a growth-promoting relationship.

The third condition hypothesized by Rogers is that growth and change are more likely to occur the more that the counselor is experiencing a warm, positive, acceptant attitude toward what is in the client. This condition is labeled unconditional positive regard.

Rogers advanced the hypothesis that the relationship was more effective if this condition existed. He believed that when this condition was present in the encounter between counselor and client, constructive changes in the client are more likely to occur.

Rogers further hypothesized that actual changes in behavior occurred only when the individual provided the initiative to change. He felt that you could not teach a person anything until that person was emotionally and psychologically ready to accept instruction, direction, or guidance.

Rogers's nondirective theory is an “if-then” theory. It involves no intervening variables. Although there are speculations as to the way the relationships between the conditions and the events that follow them occur, the “why” is not a part of the theory.

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