The Carl Rogers Reader

1998
Houghton Mifflin Co., New York, New York

(Leaderless Groups)
P. 40-41
We [were meeting] audiences of six to eight hundred people ... we felt strongly
that to talk about the person centered approach without giving participants
a chance to talk and without sharing the control and direction of the sessions
was inconsistent with our principles

We took some far out gambles ... we tried leaderless groups, special interest
groups, a demonstration encounter group [and] dialog between staff and audience

... most daring was [forming] a large circle of eight hundred people and permit feelings and attitudes to be expressed ... there was no one person exercising
leadership ...

It became a mammoth encounter group ... [after] much initial chaos, people began
to listen to one another ... there were persons who felt they never learned so
much in such a short time

(Emerging Person)
P. 42
... Stanford Research Institute study estimates that forty-five million
Americans are committed ... to having things on a human scale ... it is better
to live frugally ... conserve, recycle, not waste ... and that inner life, not
externals is central ( Mitchell, 1977)

(Physical Healing)
P. 46
... terminal cancer patients given meditation and fantasy training focused on
overcoming the malignancy experience a surprising number of remissions.

(Conditions for Therapy / Definitions)
P. 135-136
... genuineness, realness and congruence ...
more the therapist is in the relationship ... [without] a professional front ...
the greater the likelihood that the client will change and grow ...

Genuineness means that the therapist is openly being the feelings and attitudes
that are flowing within at the moment

(Congruence)
There is a close matching or congruence between what is being experienced and what is present in awareness and what is expressed to the client

(Unconditional Positive Regard)
...acceptance, or caring, or prizing -- unconditional positive regard -- accepting a positive, non-judgmental, accepting attitude toward whatever the client IS a the moment...

Acceptance [is the] therapists willingness [to be] for the client to be whatever immediate feeling is going on -- confusion, resentment, fear, anger, courage, love, or pride ... non-possessive caring ... therapist prizes the client in a total rather than conditional way

(Trust)
... the person centered approach is built on basic trust in the person. This
is the sharpest difference from most institutions ... [much] of education,
government business, religion, family life, and psychotherapy is based on distrust ... [where] goals must be set because the person is seen as incapable of choosing aims ... and the [person] must be guided ... since otherwise he may go astray...

(Self-actualizing)
The person centered approach depends on the actualizing tendency present in
every living organism -- to grow, to develop, to reach its full potential.

(Therapist or Facilitator)
P. 137
When I am at my best as a facilitator or therapist ... I find that I am closest to my inner, intuitive self ... in touch with the unknown in me ... perhaps a
slightly altered state of consciousness ... then whatever I do seems to be full
of healing.

(Basic Conditions for Therapy)
P. 230
... I advance [with] some fear and trembling ... the concept that the essential conditions for therapy exist in a single configuration even thought he client may use them differently.

... effective psychotherapy of any sort produces similar changes ... and that a single set of conditions is necessary

(The Individual / Rogers Experience)
P. 266
Of all the incredible forms of life ... the individual human being [has] the most exciting potential, the greatest possibilities [and] the richest capacities for self-aware living ... my experience leads me to place a primary value on the [individual]

(Personal Freedom)
P. 267
I think of the confused psychotic man [whose healing began] when he muttered, "I don't know what I am going to do, but I'M going to do it." ... personal freedom, choice, purpose, or goal, have a profound and significant meaning ... behavioral sciences have made not only such terms meaningless, but the concept of meaning itself, meaningless.

(Knowledge)
P. 267
How do we know? ... we are apt to think of [the] machinery of science ... [but ] in the last analysis knowledge rests on the subjective .. I experience ... I exist ... I, in some sense, know, and I have felt assurance. All knowledge, including scientific, is a vast inverted pyramid resting on this tiny, personal, subjective base ... the discoverer of knowledge feels a trust in all his avenues of knowing, unconscious, intuitive, and conscious.

(Scientific Intuition)
P. 270
The great scientists, like Kepler, Einstein and others, have learned to trust this intuitive sensing

P. 272-276
(Conditions for a Scientist)
... sensing a pattern of relationships is a the heart of true science ...
** Beauty in nature
Keen and alert intelligence
Dedicated immersion over time with a broad range of phenomena
Commitment to finding out
Fresh non-defensive approach, laying aside previous knowledge
Openness to all avenues of knowledge
Trust in the total organismic sensing
Recognition of beauty or elegance of the perceptions of the pattern
Recognition that unity in the pattern is likely to provide fruitful discovery

... hypothesis must be put to the test ... I have deep respect for the methodologies that scientists have developed ... [but] behavioral sciences are marked by a shallowness that which bodes ill.

(Technology)
** Fuzzy logic appeals to Rogers
As computers are used more and more in all research, [fuzzy logic] may be found useful in fields in which we are interested.

(Education)
P. 301-303
** Teaching to teach is futile, anything that can be taught has no significant
influence on behavior
** Only self discovered learning influences behavior
** People can get together to learn
** Tests only measure inconsequential learning
** Grades credits and degrees are limiting
** Do away with conclusions as everything is always changing

(Education)
P. 315
** Proof of success with genuineness in teaching
Some teachers see their urgent problems as "helping children think for themselves and be independent", or, "getting students to participate"; etc. Students perceived the first group as exhibiting far more empathy, prizing and realness. [They] showed a high degree of facilitative attitudes.


(Person Centered Approach in Teaching)
P. 329
Threatening to teacher:
Who knows whether students can be trusted [with shared power and control]
Threatening to student:
It is much easier to conform and complain than take responsibility and live with the mistakes
Threat to the administrator:
... responsible freedom and shared power ... is a revolutionary force to be suppressed ...
** Life becomes dangerous and may cost your job

P. 338
** A technically unqualified administrator is given control of a dysfunctional
school. By enlisting parents, teachers and students and trusting them to create guidelines and policies for the school, he made it into a splendid school. When the district became economically sound it fired the director and hired a more technically qualified one.

(Good Life)
P. 411-412
** commonality for many
... the good life is a process not a state of being ... direction not destination
the direction ... is chosen by the whole organism ... where there is psychological freedom to move in any direction ...
... direction seems to have certain discernable general qualities, which appear to be the same in a wide variety of unique individuals

(Process Toward the Good Life)
P. 413
... movement away from defensiveness towards openness ...
... more able to listen to himself and what is going on within ...

... live fully in each moment ... the fluidity of such existential living is to say that the self and personality emerge from experience rather than being created by some preconceived self-structure ...

... one becomes a participant in and observer of ... experience rather than being in control of it ...

... increasing trust in his organism ... arriving at best behavior based on experience ...

(The Good Life)
P. 419
not necessarily happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable ... a range variety and richness ... significant movement in therapy may bring greater awareness of pain but also of ecstasy, anger is more clearly felt but so is love, fear is known more deeply but so is courage... they have underlying confidence in themselves and trustworthy instruments for encountering life