Who is Carl Rogers?

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Carl Rogers—who is he? When you see his name, I want you to automatically think of humanism. In AP Psych, the humanistic approach is all about believing humans have free will and the ability to grow (toward self-actualization). 🌱

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When it comes to learning about different psychologists in this class, it often gets difficult to keep track of what they really did. No worries, we’ll break down exactly what key topics you’ll see Rogers in. ⬇️

🔎 1.1: Introducing Psychology

Yep, Rogers is mentioned in the very first key topic of the course where you learn all about the different psychological approaches and key figures in each.

Rogers, along with Abraham Maslow (think about Maslow’s hierarchy!) founded humanism. These two were the very first humanistic psychologists and essentially created the field based on behaviorism and Freudian psychology.

What’s different? Behaviorism focused on what you can see and Freud focused on the unconscious. Rogers and Maslow shifted focus to the conscious experience and what motivates individuals.

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Essentially, humanism is all about each individual reaching their full potential.

🤪 Unit 7: Motivation, Emotion, and Personality

We’re jumping allll the way toward unit seven since Rogers is a huge part of humanism when discussing personality theories.

👤 7.5: Introduction to Personality

Thinking about humanism and personality, Rogers believes that free will will lead to self-actualization. He also places a strong emphasis on the importance of a supportive, nonjudgmental, and empathetic environment. We’ll expand on this next!

😊 7.8: Humanistic Theories of Personality

The Person-Centered Approach

Every human is capable of reaching their full potential, according to Rogers. He believed that we each have an innate drive toward self-actualization, but our environment has to support this self-fulfillment as well. In order to promote our growth, the environment has to include:

1. 🌲 Genuineness - being genuine demonstrates trust and sincerity, allowing someone to feel comfortable and grow in their environment. You may also see this written as “congruence.”
2. 🫂 Acceptance - unconditional positive regard, or accepting someone without any judgment.
3. 🙌 Empathy - provides a space for self-reflection and self-exploration, allowing someone to feel heard and understood.

Think about each of these conditions as the water, sunlight, and soil for a plant. Plants can’t grow without any of these! That’s how Rogers approached the growth of an individual, and this is known as the person-centered approach to therapy.

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Self-Concept

Self-concept is also central to Roger’s theory of personality. Each individual has a self-concept, which is really just a mental image of themselves. How do you see yourself? 👀

This self-concept is formed through interactions with others and reflects how individuals see themselves, including their beliefs, feelings, and perceptions about their abilities and worth.

• 👍🏼 If your self-concept is positive, you perceive everything around you positively.
• 👎🏼 If your self-concept is negative, you feel worthless, since your ideal self-image falls far from your actual self-image.

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🛋 Unit 8: Clinical Psychology

Now that you understand how Rogers perceives one’s personality and potential for growth, you can apply this to the clinical setting. How does Rogers approach therapy?

😌 8.7 Introduction to Treatment of Psychological Disorders

Rogers uses unconditional positive regard and provides an accepting, genuine, and empathic environment to allow a patient to express their feelings. From there, patients can overcome psychological disorders. His approach is called client-centered talk therapy.

🍬 8.8 Psychological Perspectives and Treatment of Disorders

Rogers developed client-centered therapy, or person-centered therapy. This is different from what you probably learned about other therapies in that:

• 🗝️ Conscious thoughts are key and are brought about with empathy and active listening.
• 🗝️ Promoting personal growth toward self-actualization is key. They focus on the present and how to move forward.

His approach to therapy is non-directive, meaning therapist do not provide advice, interpretations, or solutions. Instead, they encourage the client to take control of the session and focus on their own solutions. The client does this by creating a genuine, accepting, and empathetic environment.

👉🏼 Carl Rogers: Vocabulary To Know

To sum up Rogers and where he’ll show up in your AP Psych course, here are a few terms you should be familiar with:

1. 🌟 Self-Actualization: The process of becoming the best version of oneself, fulfilling one's potential, and achieving personal growth and development.
2. 🔄 Congruence: The state of alignment or consistency between one's self-concept and actual experiences. Incongruence occurs when there is a significant mismatch between the two.
3. 🧠 Self-Concept: An individual's mental image or perception of themselves, including their beliefs, feelings, and perceptions about their abilities, identity, and self-worth.
4. 🤗 Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR): A therapeutic condition in which the therapist provides unconditional acceptance, respect, and non-judgmental support to the client.
5. 🤝 Empathy: The ability to understand and share the feelings, thoughts, and perspectives of another person, often a central skill in therapeutic relationships.
6. 🏥 Client-Centered Therapy: Also known as person-centered therapy, it is a humanistic approach to psychotherapy developed by Rogers. It emphasizes the importance of a supportive, non-directive, and empathetic therapeutic relationship.
7. 🗣️ Active Listening and Reflection: Rogers paraphrased, confirmed, and allowed for reflection on the client's thoughts. The more they spoke about and clarified their feelings, the more the disorder slowly disappeared.