On Becoming A Person ( Carl Rogers)
16 Pages 4097 Words
On Becoming A Person ( Carl Rogers)
Being a creature of habit I feel the need to do an introduction to my paper. Carl Rogers was born January 8, 1902 in Oak Park, Illinois. It was his ideas and clinical results published in “On Becoming a Person” and other books that made him a such well-known figure in American psychology. Rogers established client-centered psychotherapy and opened up the development of scientific methods for studying psychotherapeutic outcomes and processes. Rogers was the first therapist to record and transcribe therapy sessions verbatim, a now standard .practice. He was the first, to propose a comprehensive theory about psychotherapy its self. Neither the Bible nor the prophets -- neither Freud nor research --neither the revelations of God nor man -- can take precedence over my own direct experience. This quote alone would intrigue me to read this book. Rogerian psychology has filled our American out look on life in general for the past fifty years. While reading this I very much kept this fact in mind. Some of his theories has not brought forth the expected Rogerian fruit. Others if they have brought forth fruit of any kind, from the condition of our society, I’d say it back fired in a big way. One example being, there are now more people in our prison system than in any other country in the world.
In chapter one Rogers simply tells who he perceives himself to be. How he got to his conceptions, and what his personal accomplishments are. There were three incidents he feels influenced his formulations of his psychological views. First, living with his failures and successes in a hands on environment in his every day work experience. Next he found interview techniques aren’t always reliable in every instance or circumstance. Last but not least, he learned when to quit, that it is possible to lose a battle and still win the war. Or in Rodgers words from pages eleven and twelve, “ i...