T
raditional psychotherapy traces its origins to a
psychoanalytic point of view that regards bothpathology and the inability to achieve one’s poten-
tial as failures in understanding the past. These fail-
ures are seen as rooted in the unacknowledged role
of inner forces or intrapsychic conflicts. Through
therapy, one can learn to understand all this, and
the ensuing insight will set one free—free from the
misery of problems, symptoms, and the failure to
live a productive, meaningful life.
For many years, these views dominated psy-chotherapy. In the early 1940s, however, a serious
alternative to psychoanalytic psychotherapy began
to appear. An approach known as nondirective
counseling—later to becomeclient-centered therapy—
was taking shape under the guidance of Carl
Rogers.
Client-Centered Therapy
The perspective of Carl Rogers is almost the dia-
metric opposite of psychoanalysis; yet the two
points of view do share a few characteristics. Both
theories developed out of therapeutic encounters
with people who had problems. As a result, neither
perspective can be totally understood without an
appreciation of the ways it relates to therapy.
Origins
The full extent of Rogers’contribution becomes
apparent if one recalls the mental health world of
the late 1930s. Psychoanalysis, both as theory and
practice, was the dominant force. The theories of
psychologists such as Gordon Allport and Kurt
Lewin were attracting some attention, but the real
spotlight was on theories that had a close association
with treatment, which meant psychoanalysis or at
least some close derivative of it. This attention
seemed to increase as many prominent psychoana-
lysts fled Europe and settled in the United States.
At this time, Carl Rogers was an obscure
clinical psychologist in Rochester, New York,
struggling with the clinical problems of children.
Like most therapists of the day, Rogers had
been heavily exposed to psychoanalytic thinking.
After completing his Ph.D. at Columbia University,
he began work at a child guidance clinic in
Rochester. There, he came in touch with the
will therapy of Otto Rank and the relationship
therapy of Jessie Taft. Rank believed that patients
should be allowed free opportunity to exert their
wills and to dominate the therapist. Taft, a social
worker, brought Rank’s notions to America,
emphasizing the relationship between the therapist
and the patient. Indeed, Taft regarded this rela-
tionship as more important than any intellectual
explanations of the patient’s problems. Conse-
quently, the therapeutic situation was made a very
permissive one.
Rogers found these views highly congenial.
They were consonant both with his religious beliefs
and with his democratic convictions regarding the
nature of human relationships in society. A belief
that no person has the right to run another person’s
life found subsequent expression in his therapeutic
notions of permissiveness, acceptance, and the re-
fusal to give advice.The Phenomenological World
Rogers’theory of personality developed mainly out
of therapeutic encounters with patients and from
certain philosophic notions about the nature of peo-
ple. Furthermore, client-centered therapy anchors
itself in phenomenological theory (Greenberg,
Elliott, & Lietaer, 2003; Rogers, 1951).
Phenomenologyteaches that behavior is totally
determined by the phenomenal field of the person.
The phenomenal field is everything experienced by
the person at any given point in time. Therefore, to
understand people’s behavior, one must know
something about their phenomenal field—that is,
what the world is like for them. A difficulty, how-
ever, is that one must make inferences regarding
this field from the person’s behavior. Those infer-
ences in turn can be used to predict or understand
the behavior in question. There is a real potential
here for circularity if the therapist is not careful. For