Carl Rogers: One of the Founding Fathers of Humanism Essay

Carl Rogers (1902-87) was the founder of the client-centred or person-centred approach to counselling and therapy. (McLeod 2001)

Humanistic therapy emerged in the 1950's as an alternative to behavioural and psychoanalytic therapy. Rogers is it’s

Carl Rogers was one of the founders of the humanist movement. Humanism is a theoretical orientation that emphasizes the unique qualities of humans,

In Spite of Watson. Most Rogers’s achievements can be seen as a result of Watson’s “negative” view on psychology. After observation had been established, Carl Rogers decided to take a more optimistic approach,

So, Rogers moved from being an expert, someone who highly trained in psychological techniques, to someone who realised that the relationship was the most important thing in within this

cognitive approach. Rogers used a humanistic person centred approach to therapy and I will look at

He loved to study how we interacted with each other, how we respond to different things, personalities and personal issues. His study focused mainly on the human mind and its actions and reactions. Fun Facts: His Person-Centered approach to psychotherapy is the dominant approach to therapy in the United States today. It is applied in psychotherapy, education, and business settings with great success.

One incident which appears to have had a particular impact on Carl Rogers was when working in his first job as a psychologist, at Rochester New York, for an organisation for the prevention of cruelty to children,

Sigmund Freud and Carl Rogers are two psychologists who developed theories on personalities. Sigmund Freud was known as the “Father of Psychoanalysis” and his well known theory stated that nearly all psychological issues went back to a sexual problem. Carl Rogers was a humanistic psychologist who researched the personality theory in the notion of the self or the self concept.

Carl R. Rogers constructed the person-centered theory by his influences of Elizabeth Davis and Frederick Allen who studied under Jessie Taft as well as Otto Rank and John Dewey (Patterson, 2007; Walsh, 2010). Influenced by Jessie Taft, Rogers adopted an optimistic view of people, individuals are capable of recreating themselves and are not the end products of their past (Patterson, 2007; Walsh, 2010). Otto Rank advocated that treatment of a client be centered around that client and that therapist be more emotionally involved within the process. Third Rogers was influenced by John Dewey who helped him understand and develop his position that self-actualized people live in harmony rather then conflict

In the 1940s Carl Rogers was well on his way to revolutionizing the state of traditional, directive psychotherapy and pioneering what would soon become the person-centered approach. Although Rogers strayed from the psychological mainstream’s view that therapists drive their clients recovery through such mediums as advice, direction, teaching and interpretation he still believed that the therapist’s role was crucial, and it was their attributes that paved the way to increased awareness and self-directed change.

Rogers had a very positive view on humanity and believed that if a normal, self-aware person follows their own internal thoughts and feelings, they would come to the correct conclusions which would not only satisfy themselves, but others

For instance, Rogers (1965) devoted much of his work and writing to the uniqueness of ordinary people in the psychology of science. As such, he interrogated the place of the individual person in life through a series of thought-provoking psychological dissertations. For instance, he challenged the role of the American Association of Humanistic Psychologists in enhancing an educational atmosphere that would create a philosophy of life that transcends time and one that infuses the true value of living. Likewise, Wertheimer (1938) advanced the principle of the Gestalt Theory, which further interrogates the essence of life and living within the science of psychology. Indeed, both Rogers and Wertheimer seem to concur with the arguments of psychologists such as William James who placed more value and emphasis on the human value. For instance, he called on the need to look more deeply in the human mind and to report what lies in there. Indeed, this is statement concurs with Roger’s and Wertheimer’s convictions that the human mind is a fundamental tool in psychological sciences and which holds the magical key of introspection. Eventually, it emerges that the individual person holds much of the power to affect their life experiences with aspects such as joy, pain, and sorrow and the

It is inevitable that in psychotherapy there are numerous theories. Theories arise out of scholarly investigations of ideas on human behavior. Human behavior is an extraordinarily interesting subject and therefore produces a plethora of ideas from a variety of theorists. These theorists are influenced by their education, culture, and time period. One influential theorist is Carl Rogers. His contributions to human behavior have changed many of the theories that preceded him, and his theory contributed to many theories that followed.

Humanistic theory by Carl Rogers, is based on an ensemble of theories and methods largely having the origins in humanistic psychotherapy, but adapted to the specific of activity from the social work areas, the solving of the socio-human and collective problems and not only the individual problems. Regardless of the specific and nature of the object of intervention humanistic theory uses this unlimited and miraculous resource of the human or humane personality. This is the reason why its theories and methodologies operate with concepts like human being, soul, person, self, empathy, compactly, personal development, spirituality, humane personality, even when aims objectives at the family, organizational or community level. humanistic social work is, ultimately, the representation of the individual client as personality, soul, being, and moving in the background the representation as body or through elementary social relationships, as well as the representation of the collective client as a sympathetically interaction between persons with souls, personalities, as human beings. Humanistic traits like empathy and spirituality, through creativity, aesthetic sensibility, authentic faith, concern for truth, balanced personality will transmit and stimulate the development of the human/ humane features at the client’s level too, factually transmitting positive energy, happiness, aesthetic, intellectual, spiritual, and playful qualities. Also, thus contributing to its personal development, increasing the self-esteem, social consciousness, the capacity of initiative and social autonomy - fulfilling the true mission of the humanistic social work practice. So, humanistic work prioritizes the human personality as resource and operates with an empathetic professional personality concept that combines the human humane personality with the pragmatic positive personality. The focus of the humanistic curriculum is the goal is to train and cultivate the empathetic-professional personality, the ability to resonate to the sufferings and the human problems of customers and display qualities such as empathy, presence of spirit, the high level of