Carl Rogers And Humanistic Approach To Psychology

In the history of humanity, there have been several notable psychologists that has shaped the way people think of people and themselves. Of those noted psychologists is Carl Rogers, an influential American phycologists born on January 8,1902 in Oak Park, IL and died on February 4, 1987. Rogers was famously known for both his humanistic and client-centered approach to psychology (Hall, 1997). This paper look into the life, works, and beliefs of Carl Rogers.
Rogers was born on January 8, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois. One of six children born into the family of a contractor/engineer and his wife, he characterized his childhood environment as “anti-intellectual” and dominated by a religiosity of the fundamentalist type. Raised on a farm from the …show more content…
He subsequently focused on clinical and educational psychology, writing his doctoral dissertation on personality adjustment in children. Throughout the 1930s, Rogers worked in the field of child psychology, and in 1940 he accepted a position as a professor of psychology at Ohio State University. It was at this time that he began to develop the theories and methodology for which he would later become renowned. The incipient concepts of Rogers 's therapeutic approach appeared in his 1942 book Counseling and Psychotherapy, and within the next few years he developed his concept of the self as the organizing element in human personality and the principles of the “nondirective,” or client-centered, style of therapy (Hall, 1997). In 1945 he took a position as professor of psychology and head of the counseling center at the University of Chicago, where, over the next twelve years, he further refined and articulated his ideas, publishing Client-Centered Therapy (1951) during this time. A charismatic figure, Rogers 's influence over students, colleagues, and various collaborators, as well as his publication of best-selling …show more content…
The obstacle to this development, according to Rogers, are conditions, primarily those inflicted by a child 's parents, in which the individual is denied “unconditional positive regard” and is thereby influenced by either positive or negative “conditions of worth” which instill values and elicit behaviors that are at odds with a person 's inborn organismic valuing process. The result of exposure to these conditions of worth is the development of individuals who look to the approval of others for their sense of identity rather than finding it within themselves. Consequently, serious conflicts arise within the personality between its natural organismic valuing process and its perception of conditions of worth that are alien to it. Such conflicts are the source of the vast array of neurotic symptoms and disorders that have been catalogued since the inception of psychology as a professional discipline. In order to cure his patients, whom he called “clients” so as to relate to them in a more equitable manner than