Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

Carl Ransom Rogers was an influential American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach to psychology. Rogers is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research and was honored for his pioneering research with the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by the American Psychological Association in 1956.

The person-centered approach, his own unique approach to understanding personality and human relationships, found wide application in various domains such as psychotherapy and counseling (client-centered therapy), education (student-centered learning), organizations, and other group settings.

For his professional work he was bestowed the Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Psychology by the APA in 1972. Towards the end of his life Carl Rogers was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with national intergroup conflict in South Africa and Northern Ireland. In an empirical study by Haggbloom et al. (2002) using six criteria such as citations and recognition, Rogers was found to be the sixth most eminent psychologist of the 20th century and second, among clinicians, only to Sigmund Freud.

His best known books are: On Becoming a Person, Client Centered Therapy, Freedom to Learn, A way of Being, Carl Rogers on Personal Power, and Becoming Partners: Marriage and Its Alternatives. Two of his books have been published posthumously: The Carl Rogers Reader, a collection of his most influential writings, and Carl Rogers Dialogues, which features interchanges with such other giants in the field as Paul Tillich, B.F. Skinner, Gregory Bateson, and Rollo May.

In a person who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system, without being distorted by any process of defensiveness.