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Carl Rogers

AKA Carl Ransom Rogers

Born: 8-Jan-1902
Birthplace: Oak Park, IL
Died: 4-Feb-1987
Location of death: San Diego, CA
Cause of death: Heart Failure

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Psychologist

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Non-directive theory of psychology

Psychotherapist Carl Rogers was a founder of the Association for Humanistic Psychology and the Center for Studies of the Person, and a pioneer in the "human potential movement". In 1964 he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, and among present-day psychologists he is generally regarded as second in influence only to Sigmund Freud.

He attended college intending to major in agriculture, then switched his studies to history after attending a six-month "World Student Christian Federation Conference" in Beijing. After college he enrolled in a Christian seminary, then dropped out to study clinical psychology program of Columbia University. He worked for several years at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, where he slowly developed his own non-judgmental manner for dealing with juvenile delinquents. He later said he was unaware that his technique was radical until he attended a convention and described his work in conversation with other child psychologists, and saw their eyebrows raise and furrow.

In years of practice and numerous popular books Rogers developed the non-directive theory of psychology, a "client-centered approach" (Rogers eschewed the word 'patient') wherein the client is "treated as a person, not as an object to be manipulated and directed." In practice, this means that the therapist adopts an accepting, listening stance, letting the patient or client determine the focus, pace and direction of therapy, and it is now the dominant method of psychotherapy. Rogers argued for a "treatment with no couches, no dream interpretations", and taught the "actualizing tendency", a natural human motivation to develop potentials to the fullest extent. Eventually a proponent of encounter groups, toward the end of his career Rogers facilitated encounter therapy sessions between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Belfast, and between blacks and whites in South Africa while that nation was still under apartheid.

Father: Walter Alexander Rogers (civil engineer, b. 1868, d. 1944)
Mother: Julia Margaret Cushing Rogers (b. 1868, m. 1891, d. 1954)
Brother: Lester Cushing Rogers (b. 1893, d. 1972)
Sister: Margaret Gertrude Rogers (b. 1895, d. 1995)
Brother: Ross Walter Rogers (b. 1899, d. 1933)
Brother: Walter Cushing Rogers(b. 1907, d. 1992)
Brother: John Willard Rogers (b. 1908, d. 2002)
Wife: Helen Martha Elliott Rogers (friend from second grade, b. 1901, dated 1922-24, m. 1924, d. 1979)
Son: David Elliott Rogers (b. 1926)
Daughter: Natalie Rogers (b. 1928)

    University: BA History, University of Wisconsin at Madison (1924)
    Theological: Union Theological Seminary (dropped out)
    University: MA Psychology, Columbia University (1927)
    University: PhD Psychology, Columbia University (1931)
    Professor: Psychology, Ohio State University (1940-45)
    Professor: Psychology, University of Chicago (1945-57)
    Professor: Psychiatry and Psychology, University of Wisconsin at Madison (1957-64)
    Scholar: Center for Studies of the Person

    American Psychological Association President (1946-47)
    Humanist of the Year 1964

Author of books:
Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child (1939)
Counselling and Psychotherapy (1942)
Client-Centered Therapy (1951)
Psychotherapy and Personality Change (1954)
On Becoming A Person (1961)
The Therapeutic Relationship and Its Impact (1967)
Freedom to Learn: A View of What Education Might Become (1967)
Man and the Science of Man (1968)
Person to Person (1968)
Carl Rogers on Encounter Groups (1970)
Becoming Partners: Marriage and Its Alternatives (1972)
Encounter Groups (1977)
Carl Rogers on Personal Power (1977)
A Way of Being (1980)
Transitions (1987, posthumous)
The Carl Rogers Reader (1989, posthumous)
Carl Rogers Dialogues (1989, posthumous)


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