Carl Rogers

Carl Rogers

Carl Rogers was born on January 8, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb.   Carl was the fourth of six children that grew up in the Pentecostal Church. The very conservative, well behaved Carl, however, would soon turn into one of the most influential psychologist that the world has ever seen.
Rogers was quite smart and could read well before kindergarten. He spent his childhood in the church, and breezed his way through school. After he graduated, his first career choice was agriculture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. That choice was   then followed by history, and then religion. At age 20, following his 1922 trip to China, for an international Christian conference, he started to doubt his religious convictions. To help him clarify his career choice, he attended a seminar entitled Why am I entering the Ministry?, after which he decided to change his career. After two years he left the seminary to attend Teachers College, Rogers moved to Columbia University and obtained an MA in 1928 and a PhD in Psychology in 1931.
In 1951, Rogers was the first to conceptualize Person-Centered therapy. Rogers developed his Person-Centered approach to psychotherapy after becoming frustrated by the standard methodologies and procedures used in Freudian psychoanalysis and other therapies. He found that he obtained better results by listening to his patients and allowing them to direct the course of treatment. In his book, On Becoming a Person, he wrote "Unless I had a need to demonstrate my own cleverness and learning, I would do better to rely upon the client for direction of movement" (Rogers 1961). Rogers believed that if you were aiming for a good turn out with your patient, you needed to have unconditional positive regard (Respect), genuineness and honesty (Congruence), and empathic understanding (Empathy). In other words, for Rogers, an effective therapist does not need any special technique, just the three qualities of respect, congruence,...