Carl Rogers
Founder of client-centered therapy
Most quoted
"When the other person is hurting, confused, troubled, anxious, alienated, terrified; or when he or she is doubtful of self-worth, uncertain as to identity, then understanding is called for. The gentle and sensitive companionship of an empathic stance… provides illumination and healing. In such situations deep understanding is, I believe, the most precious gift one can give to another."
— from A Way of Being, 1980
"I have found the greater the degree of congruence of experience, awareness, and communication on the part of one individual, the more the ensuing relationship will involve: a tendency toward reciprocal communication; a tendency toward more mutually accurate understanding; improved psychological adjustment and functioning in both parties; mutual satisfaction in the relationship."
— from A Theory of Therapy, Personality and Interpersonal Relationships, 1959
"I believe it will have become evident why, for me, adjectives such as happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable, do not seem quite appropriate to any general description of this process I have called the good life… I believe they would be perceived as by-products of the directions I have described."
— from On Becoming a Person, 1961
All quotes by Carl Rogers (245)
The goal of education, if we are to survive, is the facilitation of change and learning. The only man who is educated is the man who has learned how to learn; the man who has learned how to adapt and change.
When I can relax and be close to the transcendental core of me, then I may behave in strange and impulsive ways in the relationship, ways which I cannot justify rationally, which have nothing to do with my thought processes. But these strange behaviors turn out to be right in some odd way.
The person-centered approach is built on a basic trust in the person… It depends on the actualizing tendency present in every living organism — the tendency to grow, to develop, to realize its full potential.
I find that being real is the most effective thing I can do to help another person.
The more I am willing to be myself in all this complexity of life and the more I am willing to understand and accept the realities in myself and in the other person, the more change seems to be stirred up.
Contemporaries of Carl Rogers
Other Psychologys born within 50 years of Carl Rogers (1902–1987).