Carl Rogers and Client-Centered Therapy

Born in Oak Park, Illinois, USA, on January 8, 1902, Carl Ramsom Rogers was the third to last of 6 brothers from a Protestant family, in which religious and traditional (fundamentalist) values, along with the encouragement of hard work, were widely cultivated.

At the age of 12, Rogers and his family moved to a farm where he became interested in agriculture and the natural sciences. Later, at the University, Rogers would dedicate himself, initially, to deepening in physical and biological sciences, entering the course of Agronomy.

In 1922, on a trip to China, he opened himself up to other more liberal opinions and to the diversification of his ideas. Soon after earning a degree in history from the University of Wisconsin in 1924, he attended the United Theological Seminary in New York, where he received a liberal view of religion.

Transferring to the Teacher’s College at Columbia University, he had his first contact with Psychology. At the same University, he obtained his Master’s degree in 1928 and Doctorate in 1931. His first clinical experiences, still based on the behavioral and psychoanalytic tradition – the latter exerting the greatest influence – were carried out as an intern at the Instituto de Conselhamento Infantil.

In this place, Rogers felt the strong break between Freudian speculative thinking and the measuring and statistical mechanism of behaviorism. After receiving his doctorate, Rogers joined the Rochester Center staff, of which he would become director. In the course of his career, he was elected president of the APA (American Psychological Association) twice and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987, days before his death on February 4.

Rogers was of fundamental importance for introducing the current concept of psychologist, as this work was, until then, carried out only by psychiatrists; he also inserts the use of the word client instead of patient. In addition, his different view of the neo-behavioralist and neo-Freudian positions came to form the so-called Third Force, Humanism, which had as its main ideas:

– emphasis on conscious experience,

– belief in the integrality of human nature and conduct,

– concentration on free will,

– in the spontaneity and power of creation of the individual;

– and the study of everything that might have relevance to the human condition.

During active work with clients, he acquired new ways of thinking about psychotherapeutic practice that freed him from the strong academic and conceptual constraints that exist in the teaching and practice of psychology.

Rogers also elaborated important concepts regarding group therapies, having his concepts applied to the educational area until the present.

To speak of his “Person/Client-Centered Therapy”, in which the emphasis on the current experience is of fundamental importance, related to the material brought by the client at the moment of the therapeutic encounter, is to speak of what is connected to the totality of the subjective experience lived, what attaches equally to the most intimate feelings.

Client-Centered Therapy refers to what is immediately felt and what is implicitly significant for the feeling that the subject experiences when having an experience. The therapist, therefore, acts as a facilitator and a mirror for the feelings and thoughts of the client, who becomes more aware of and in contact with his experiential material, “perceiving” aspects of his personality and behavior that previously escaped him.

Hence, the client, aided by therapeutic help, ends up modifying or maturing the concept he has of himself and, consequently, reassessing his life strategies and worldview. Deep down, the whole process, in its progress, is the result of the client’s own action, of his immersion in the therapeutic process and of his degree of investment in it. Hence the name: “Customer- or Person-Centered Approach”.

The main aspects of the Rogerian approach are:

– attention to the subtle but ever-existing drive towards growth, health and adjustment, as therapy is nothing more than helping to release the client in his natural quest for normal growth and development;

– greater emphasis on affective and existential aspects, which are much more potent than the intellectual ones;

– greater emphasis on the material brought by the client and his immediate situation than in the past;

– great emphasis on the therapeutic relationship itself, which constitutes a kind of organic entity that forms out of the encounter between therapist and client and which, in itself, contributes to the growth experience of both client and therapist.

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