Carl vs. Carl — Part II
Ramblings Of A Psych Grad On Jung & Rogers
If you know me, then it is likely that you a) know I have a quote journal that I love more than people in my life, and b) have probably heard me quote Carl Rogers every now and then; most often, you’ll hear me invoke the paradox of which he spoke:
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change."
I will do my best to try and create a humanistic psych/person-centered therapy 101 write-up and communicate why this type of therapy has been a solid component of my rather eclectic psychotherapeutic modality.
Carl Rogers
The humanistic psychology movement (one of the fathers of whom was Carl Rogers) emerged during the 1950’s.
Advocates of the movement claimed that psychology shouldn’t follow the deterministic model of medical sciences, especially in response to behaviorism at the time. They also thought that psychoanalysis was focused too narrowly on the subconscious and psychosexual development.
They noticed that something was missing from the therapy equation; the variable they introduced were a sense of kind of gestalt holism and most importantly humanness in the therapeutic approach. Sounds super vague though, right? Stay with me.
The humanistic movement doesn’t follow a certain direction or systematized rules, but involves a composite of humanistic values stemming sometimes more from philosophy than psychology: from Husserl’s phenomenology and Heidegger’s emphasis on the subjectivity of experience, to Nietzsche-ian existentialism, to Kierkegaard/ Sartre/ Buber/ etc.
Existentialism speaks of one’s freedom to determine their own potential, but also of the inevitability of loneliness, death, the often “corrosive” nature of social conditions and of psychic suffering. Realizing and accepting all of the above signifies an act of of self-determination and affirmation of self; an act of salvation.
These philosophical theories set the foundation for the development of the humanistic movement. However, WWII is what triggered its emergence, together with the friction created with the behaviorists. The post-WWII climate was fruitful ground for the unveiling of a psychological theory based on free will and consciousness, responsibility, and the people’s power to define themselves on their own terms.
Carl Rogers, influenced by existential and phenomenological philosophy as well as Dewey’s functionalism and Otto Rank’s will therapy, created his own theory and therapeutic approach in the context of the humanistic movement. This approach was named “client-centered” and later on “person-centered therapy”; the fact that therapy was centered around the client, and the client’s personhood in its wholeness was pretty damn radical.
Rogers fought against the type of monolithic power structures often encountered in psychoanalysis or behaviorist settings, and challenged the treatment of clients as “patients”. By changing this terminology, he wanted to avoid having the patient label turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. He refused to diagnose a client and classify him in an objectified category of disorders and treat them as another “case”. He distanced himself from the biomedical model that imposed (impersonally, scientifically, “objectively”) the introjection of a “deficient” patient identity because the therapist judged them so.
This is one of the main reasons Rogers chose to make this approach a non-directive one, so as to make time and space for the client to simply be in therapy, without the anxiety-inducing time frame of goal attainment, and most importantly without the heteronomy often present in other forms of therapy re: nature of growth/ “therapy success”.
Rogers trusted, most of all, data stemming from his own personal experience in order to deduce things about himself as person and therapist, the therapeutic relationship and its effectiveness.
“Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person’s ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me.”
While one should take the above quotation with a grain of salt (if anyone trusted their own experience and solely their own experience in their decision-making we’d all be living pretty solipsistic/isolated lives and would also be super susceptible to biases), the gist of what Rogers is trying to convey is that each person is experiencing this world through the prism of their own individual truth(s). It may not necessarily always mirror what one might call objective reality, but it is incredibly real to the person living it; it gives that person a unique interpretative, meaning-making framework to understand their experience — this is what the therapist is asked to recognize and accept.
There’s a certain optimism that imbues his theory; Rogers searches for those deep spaces in the psyche where our innate positive drives lie, reminding us of the Socratic “ουδείς εκών κακός”, or “noone is willfully wicked”. According to him, humans are not shackled to their catastrophic impulses; they are persons who can autonomously make choices that are conducive to their health and development. He thought that folks are inherently capable of making these choices from an evolutionary perspective, something he called an “organismic valuing process”. In this way, people embed meaning onto the experiences they deem valuable, those they think will lead them to an authentic life, that will help them reach their full potential. Hence why the concept of “self-actualization” is at the core of Rogerian theory, since this innate pulsion is one’s ultimate goal in therapy and in life.
Rogers’ concept of “self” is not necessarily solely constructed by past events, but constructed by the way these events are interpreted in the present, according to the needs of the self in the here-and-now and future directions one wants to take. Therefore, contrary to the emphasis on the subconscious and the surfacing of repressed traumata psychoanalysis-style, Rogers suggests studying the personality mostly in the context of the present and future.
So how does the need for therapy arise if everyone just innately strives towards self-actualization? Well, Rogers said that the Self is not only moving towards an organismic valuing process on the basis of self-actualization but is also driven by a “need for positive regard”. That’s where social variables enter into play. These variables introduce “conditions of worth” that accompany manifestations of certain behaviors, cognition, emotions. Important others in our lives may set these conditions in order to positively recognize and accept us, thus potentially distorting one’s view of self and self-worth when internalizing these conditions.
If this pattern continues, it is most likely that an external locus of evaluation (meaning one judges their own thoughts/ideas/actions based on others’ views of said things) will be established.
Give up hope you must not, though. There is a way to reverse our locus of evaluation and point it inwards once again. When a person is experiencing intensely the incompatibility of the “should’s” and “want’s”, the “outside” rule and the “inside” need, anxiety ensues — the person then seeks the right environmental conditions, meaning the appropriate relationships through which they can shed the chains of their conditional value. They seek out allies in this tough process.
One of those allies is the therapist. In the therapeutic space, there is a point of psychic contact — although the word “point” itself sounds like a fixed destination and this is actually more of a continuous process. This contact happens between the client, who is experiencing challenges with their sense of intra-cohesion, and the therapist, who ideally is experiencing his sense of self genuinely, authentically.
Congruence is considered one of the pillars of person-centered practice and is essential in laying the groundwork for unlocking the metamorphic potential of the therapeutic relationship. Congruence involves one’s sense of self as one authentically is; the degree to which one’s experiences are in harmony with one’s self-image (and ideal-self). It is upon this sense of compatibility between the “inside out” and the “outside in” that the foundation for meaningful communication and trust can be built, that openness and self-revelation can organically emerge. The therapist can then help generalize this relationship and help “transfer” this sense of trust, openness, and fearlessness in being one’s self in other relationships of the client.
It is pertinent for the therapist to not only be connected to their internal experiences and how they are expressed outwardly, but also to be cognizant of the boundaries between their experience and that of their client. It’s very easy for the therapist to listen to the client’s experience and find themselves attending to parts of that experience that are pertinent to their own, thus neglecting the “request” inherent in the client’s words/expressed sentiment. Congruence is necessary in order to be aware and alert to one’s sense of self and to the presence and interplay between the therapist and the client’s self.
A congruent therapist aims to be transparent, reliable and honest, communicating thoughts and feelings that arise, referring to the authenticity of their experience. Actually, “aims” sounds a bit intentionally vague and “guideline-y” — truth is, do or do not, there is no try. This is an essential aspect of person-centered therapy, and therapists should make it a goal, and understand that while, yes, we are human, and this is a life-long process, this should be a goal we actively attempt to reach in every contact we make with a client.
A final note on congruence — in order to be genuinely present in the therapeutic relationship, titles and authority personas must be put aside. There is a safety in expertise, both for the client (who is expecting a panacea) and the therapist (who rests self-assured in their professional judgment). But this safety is illusory, as it inhibits actual contact; it further distances therapist and client and perpetuates a power differential that is anything but conducive to actual openness and change. It creates borders around the roles therapist and client are asked to play, and fosters a dependent relationship that is far from therapeutic.
The second pillar of practice in creating a solid therapeutic alliance is having an unconditional positive regard for the client in their wholeness. This recognition and acceptance, without judgment or evaluation, is not an easy feat; but it is integral to establish a space of emotional safety and to mollify one’s fear of self-revelation. Genuine warmth, caring, interest and respect for one’s uniqueness/individuality, all contribute to the development of an unconditional positive regard within the client themselves. They realize that conditions of worth are not a fixed reality, and neither is their self-worth. They learn to allow themselves to experience the “ugly” stuff, the contradictions, the fallacies, the things that don’t compute, without resorting to a distortion of their complex lived experience to assuage the threat of equilibrium loss. They learn to embrace the disequilibrium.
The third pillar of effective person-centered practice is empathy, meaning realizing, understanding and “living” a client’s emotions, as well as the meaning embedded in them, and communicating this understanding to the client. This touches every aspect of “being” in therapy: every move, gesture, look, word, can send a message of empathy, can make a client feel seen/heard. When actively listening in to capture the delicate nuances of one’s experience, particularly the internal experience, the therapist needs to be patient, careful, discrete and sensitive, so as not to project their own interpretation onto that experience, or immerse themselves entirely in a way that challenges the therapist and client’s much needed separateness.
Empathy would be incomplete without the “empathic reflection”, aka the communication of the empathic experience. If the therapist doesn’t verify the validity of their understanding, they are basically hypothesizing and interpreting without the input of the actual author of the experience.
According to Rogers, the results of the therapeutic alliance described above include a reorganization of one’s self, consciously and subconsciously, ameliorating one’s self-worth without ever losing sight of the realistic boundaries of their experience. They steadily move closer to their ideal-self, having a more genuine understanding of their self in the here-and-now. They change their locus of evaluation and shift it inwards while remaining open to experiences, both internal and external, avoiding the metaphorical egocentric catatonia that often accompanies one’s avoidance of openness.
It’s not that hard to guess what types of critique person-centered therapy has received: judgments on what they claim is not an empirical theoretical basis, utilizing rather nebulous concepts that defy quantification, overlooking the importance of the subconscious or the interaction with environmental events/stimuli (depending on whether you ask psychoanalysts or behaviorists), and ignoring the concept of conflict within the therapeutic relationship.
There are valid questions to be asked here: is the therapeutic relationship ever rendered ultimately idealistic and therefore often unrealistic/inauthentic? Where does the therapist’s non-directiveness end and idleness/apathy/ethically murky inaction begins? What about all that $/€ one might need to spend on this type of non-directive therapy vs. CBT types or brief solution-focused therapy? Finally, humanistic psychology has also been critiqued as being practiced in a way that’s directed to upper/middle-class folks in Western individualism-oriented societies and neglecting to effectively address the needs of folks in more collectivist spaces.
Despite its critiques, however, humanistic psychology has permeated the work and theory of many psychologists ever since, and remains revolutionary in its non-pathologization of the client, in its address of and subsequent abdication of the therapist’s arbitrariness and expertise, and in the sanative power of its therapeutic relationship.
