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Personality Psychology PSY 405

Lesson 22

ROGERS PERSON CENTERED APPROACH

Client Centered Approach or

Client Centered Therapy

Self Theory of Personality

1- Phenomenological theory of personality is that a person's behavior is obtained through observation of

his internal frame of reference. why an individual thinks, feels, and behaves in a given way, it is necessary

to know how that person perceives and interprets the world.

2- Humanistic

Humanistic view puts the emphasis on the positive aspects of life, free choices and personal growth

experiences.

EXAMPLE

In order to understand the personality of my Pakistani students I have to study their frame of reference and

see how they think , feel and behave.

So I have to put myself in their position and understand their personality

(empathy).

3-Actualizing tendency

An innate need to survive, grow and enhance one's self.

4-Fully functioning person is Rogers' view of the good life

It is a term used by Rogers to designate individuals who are using their capacities and talents, realizing

their potentials.

1-Biographical Sketch

2-Actualizing tendency

3-Rogers phenomenological position

4-Concept of self

5-Need for positive regard

6-Conditions of worth

7-Unconditional positive regard

8-Experience of threat and process of defense

Threat

Anxiety

9-Defense mechanisms

10-Fully functioning person

Five characteristics

1-Openness to experience

2-Experiential living

3-Organismic trusting

4-Experiential freedom

5-Creativity or psychological maturity

Personality Psychology PSY 405

11-Rogers view of science and research

12-Measuring self concept

13-Personality organization

14-Client centered therapy

15-Psychotherapy and gardening

16-Student centered teaching

17-Summary

18-Evaluation

Roger's Person Centered Approach

Experience of Threat and the Process of Defense

In Rogers' theory, threat exists when a person recognizes an incongruity between his or her self-concept

(and its incorporated conditions of worth) and actual experience. Experiences incongruent with the self-

concept are perceived as threatening; they are kept from entering awareness because the individual's

personality is no longer a unified whole. Thus, if an individual views himself as an honest person and he

behaves dishonestly, he is in a state of threat.

Anxiety is thus an emotional response to threat which signals that the organized self-structure is in danger

of becoming disorganized if the discrepancy between it and the threatening experience reaches awareness.

The anxiety-ridden individual is one who dimly perceives that the recognition or symbolization of certain

experiences would force a drastic change in his or her current self-image.

Rogers (l959) defines the process of defense as the behavioral response of the of the organism to threat; the

goal of defense is the maintenance of the current self-structure: "This goal is achieved by the perceptual

distortion of the experiences in awareness, in such a way as to reduce the incongruity between the

experience and the structure of the self, or by the denial of any experience thus denying any threat to the

self" (Rogers, 1959, pp. 204-205).

The Defense Mechanisms

Grade "F" on an examination. The Student can maintain her self-concept intact by saying "The professor

has unfair grading practices" or "I just had bad luck." Rogers occasionally refers to such selective

perceptions or distortions as rationalization.

Rogers' View of The Good Life

The Fully Functioning Person

"Fully functioning" is a term used by Rogers to designate individuals who are using their capacities and

talents, realizing their potentials, and moving toward complete knowledge of themselves and their full

range of experiences. Rogers specifies five major personality characteristics common to people who are

fully functioning. They briefly discussed

1- The first and foremost characteristic of the fully functioning person is openness to experience. To be

open to experience is the polar opposite of defensiveness. Individuals who are completely open to

experience are able to listen to themselves, to experience what is going on within themselves without

threat. They are acutely aware of their own feelings (but not self-consciously), they do not try to suppress

them; they often act upon them, and even if they do not act upon them, they are able admit them to

awareness.

2- The second characteristic of the optimally functioning person listed by Rogers involves what he terms

existential living. This is the global quality of living fully in each and every moment of one's existence. By

doing so, each moment of one's life is perceived as new- different from all that existed before. Thus, as

Rogers (1961) describes it, what a person is or will be in the next moment grows out of that moment and

cannot be predicted in advance by the person or others (the correspondence with existential philosophy is

quite clear here.

Personality Psychology PSY 405

3-Still another attribute of a fully functioning person is what Rogers calls organismic trusting. This

dimension of the good life is best illustrated in the context of decision making. Specifically, in choosing the

course of action to take in any situation, many people rely upon a code of social norms laid down by some

group or institution (e.g., the church), upon the judgment of others (from spouse and friends to Ann

Landers).

4- The fourth characteristic of the fully functioning person noted by Rogers is experiential freedom.

This facet of the good life involves the sense that one is free to live one's life in any way one chooses. It is

subjective freedom, a feeling that of one's own volition one is able to playa responsible part in shaping

one's world. At the same time, Rogers does not deny that a person's behavior is heavily influenced by his

or her biological makeup, social forces, and past experiences, which, in fact, determine the choices that are

made.

5- The final characteristic associated with optimal psychological maturity is creativity.

For Rogers, the person who is involved in the good life would be the type from whom creative products

(ideas, projects, actions) and creative living would emerge.

Rogers' View of Science and Research

Rogers is strongly committed to phenomenology as a basis for developing a science of persons and as a

method of examining the empirical validity of theoretical concepts. It will be recalled that phenomenology

refers to a disciplined effort to understand the essence of a person's subjective experience- specifically,

how people come to know and understand their world and themselves.

Measuring the Self-Concept: The Q Sort

William Stephenson (1953), a colleague of Rogers' at the University of Chicago, developed a general

methodology, called the Q technique, for investigation an individual's self-concept.

Accordingly, they adopted the Q sort, a specific rating procedure devised by Stephenson, as one of their

basic research tools in gathering data about therapeutic improvement.

What is the Q sort?

Essentially it is a method of studying systematically one's views about oneself and one's relationships with

others. The subject is given a deck of cards, each containing a printed statement or adjective concerning

some personality characteristic. The cards may contain such self-referent statements as "I am an aggressive

person," "I like to be with other people," "I am emotionally mature." Or the items might be "methodical,"

"inventive," "sincere," "quick-witted." The subject's task is to sort the cards into a series of categories

(usually seven in number), each corresponding to a point along a continuum ranging from those attributes

which are most like to those which are least like him or her. The chief feature of the method is that the

subject must sort the cards according to some prearranged or forced distribution.

Research-oriented Rogerians generally have their subjects Q-sort the statements twice: once for self-

description and once for ideal self-description. For the self-sort, subjects are instructed to sort the cards to

describe themselves as they see themselves at the present time. This self-sort depicts the subject's

experience of herself as she is. Following completion of the self-sort, the subject then is instructed to use

the same cards to describe the kind of person she would most like to be-her ideal person. This second sort is

called the ideal-sort.

Q-sort data can be analyzed in several ways. However, the product-moment correlation coefficient is the

most commonly used statistic for indicating the degree to which an individual's self-concept and ideal self-

concepts are congruent or divergent.

Personality Disorganization and Psychopathology

Thus, personality disorganization and psychopathology occur when the self is unable to defend against

threatening experiences. Persons undergoing such disorganization are commonly tagged "psychotic." They

manifest behaviors which are to an objective observer bizarre, irrational, or "crazy." Rogers posits that

psychotic behavior is often congruent with the denied aspects of experience, rather than with the self-

concept. For example, a person who has kept his sexual impulses under rigid control, denying that they

Personality Psychology PSY 405

were a part of his self-image, may make obvious sexual moves toward those whom he encounters.

Rogers' person-centered therapy attempts to reestablish a more harmonious relationship between the self-

concept and the total organism and to facilitate a greater degree of congruence between the self-concept

and the phenomenal field of experience.

Evolution of Rogerian-- Therapy : From Techniques to Relationships

With the publication in 1951 of his book Client-Centered Therapy, Rogers' approach progressed further

and came to be known primarily by this label as it still is today in some circles. While still retaining his

nondirective techniques, Rogers at this time was emphasizing the importance of the clients' perceptions, of

therapeutically entering the clients' world of subjective experience and focusing upon the clients'

perceptions of themselves, their lives, and their problems. Hence the term "client-centered". Since that

time, however, Rogers' approach has evolved to still another level. He has become more concerned with

the issue of precisely what conditions must be met before the client can begin to resolve his or her

problems. As stated earlier, he discovered that the relationship between therapist and client is the most

important aspect underlying personality change; consequently, he funneled all his efforts on this in the late

1950s (Rogers, 1957b, 1958, 1959) and continues to do so today. again, it shou1d be stressed that Rogers'

changes in thinking in this regard represent a progressive evolution to a more comprehensive and

meaningful level rather than an abandonment of old, outmoded concepts. At present, the "label" which best

captures the essence of the newer developments is "person-centered therapy (Rogers, 1977). This newer

term more accurately reflects the evolution of Rogers' thought-from techniques to relationships.

Audio and Video Recording of therapy sessions was by Rogers started so that students and trainees can

benefit in training.

Psychotherapy and Gardening

So Rogers' person-centered therapy (supported by empirical research) reflects his image of human nature

in general and the role of the therapist in particular. Upon reflection, one is tempted to draw an analogy

between person-centered therapy and gardening. When one recalls Rogers' background in agriculture, the

analogy becomes even more compelling. Concluding his acceptance speech for the 1973 APA

Distinguished Professional Contribution Award, Rogers drew the analogy for us:

And then I garden. Those mornings when I cannot find time to inspect my flowers, water the young shoots

I am propagating, pull a few weeds, spray some destructive insects, and pour just the proper fertilizer on

some budding plants, I feel cheated. My garden supplies the same intriguing question I have been trying to

meet all my professional life: What are the effective conditions for growth? But in my garden, though the

frustrations are just as immediate, the results, whether success or failure, are more quickly evident. And

when, through patient, intelligent, and understanding care I have provided the conditions that result in the

production of a rare or glorious bloom, I feel the same kind of satisfaction that I have felt in the facilitation

of growth in a person or in a group of persons.

Student Centered Teaching

Rogers is of the view that education system is based on faulty assumptions

about the learner

1- who must be given huge information,

2- without any active participation on part of the learner

. Teacher is a facilitator of education who creates an atmosphere conducive to learning.

Summary

Reflecting a close affinity with humanistic psychology, Rogers holds that the inner-most core of human

nature is essentially benevolent, purposive and trustworthy. These basic attributes of human nature will

surface if the proper conditions encourage the fulfillment of the individual's innate potential. In Rogers'

system, all human motives are subsumed under a single master motive-the actualizing tendency-the innate

tendency of the individual to actualize, maintain, and enhance himself or herself. .

Within the broad context of the humanistic movement, Rogers' particular theoretical position is

Personality Psychology PSY 405

phenomenological. He holds that the only reality, from the person's perceptual vantage point, is subjective

reality-the person's private world of experience. And central to that subjective world is the concept of self,

Rogers' most important personological construct. In his system, elements important in self-concept

development are the need for positive regard, conditions of worth, and unconditional positive regard.

Rogers argues that most ways of behaving that an individual adopts are consistent with her self-concept.

Threat exists when a person senses an incongruity between her self-concept and total organismic

experience; she then attempts to defend herself by means of perceptual distortion and denial. When the

incongruence between self-concept and actual experience becomes too great, personality disorganization

and psychopathology result. In sharp contrast, persons who are open to their experience, fully trust it, and

are freely moving in the direction of actualizing themselves are termed "fully functioning" in Rogers'

system.

Rogers' basic assumptions concerning human nature are generally strong, explicit, and reflective of the

fundamental cleavage between phenomenology and behaviorism in American psychology. Rogers'

phenomenological theory reflects (I) a strong commitment to the assumptions of freedom, rationality,

holism, changeability, subjectivity, proactivity, heterostasis, and unknowability and (2) a moderate

commitment to the constitutionalism assumption. .

Rogers' phenomenological theory, particularly its psychotherapeutic aspects, has stimulated an enormous

amount of research. In this chapter, a primary method of studying the self-concept, the Q sort, was

discussed along with illustrative research bearing upon aspects of the self-concept. Brief attention was also

given to Rogers' view of science.

In the concluding section, Rogers' unique and widely employed approach to psychotherapy, person-

centered therapy, was described as it has evolved over the years. Emphasizing the critical importance of the

relationship between therapist and client, Rogers' five conditions for positive personality change were

listed and discussed.

Evaluation

1- It is phenomenological and humanistic.

2- Focus on unconditional positive regard.

3- Person centered therapy.

4- Student centered teaching approach.

a- freedom to learn

b- teacher as facilitator.

Application

His theory can be applied to education, marriage and family.

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