Without careful discretion, these chapters may be interpreted as a capitulation that the undesirable nature of man must mean that growth is a futile endeavour. Rogers tenets or therapeutic effectiveness is stronger in their instrumentality for the theory and its application to practice but is weaker as a principled philosophy. Rogers saw personality and change as differences in the ways that experiences were apprehended. Personality and Change are both processes; while other therapies claimed that personality is the structure which must be restructured (or that personality is the product of learning which can be unlearned or reprogrammed), Rogers saw personality and change as differences in the ways that experiences were comprehended and understood within the organism. Person centred therapy sees personality and change as separate processes (Sanders, 2006). Increasing organismic trust: they trust their own judgment and ability to choose behavior appropriate for each moment. They do not rely on existing codes and social norms but trust that as they are open to experiences they will be able to trust their own sense of right and wrong. Under certain conditions, involving primarily complete absence of threat to the self structure, experiences inconsistent with it may be perceived and examined, and the structure of self revised to assimilate and include such experiences.

Rogers (1961) did not claim this to be the only a process of change, rather what he witnessed to occur after the client is consistently experiencing themselves as 'fully received’. A reminder, this structure was a hypothesis (a prediction) which he put forward for testing. How to cite this article: Smith, M. K. (1997, 2004, 2014) ‘Carl Rogers and informal education’, The encyclopedia of pedagogy and informal education. [ https://infed.org/mobi/carl-rogers-core-conditions-and-education/. Retrieved: insert date].

The values attached to experiences, and the values that are a part of the self-structure, in some instances, are values experienced directly by the organism, and in some instances are values introjected or taken over from others, but perceived in distorted fashion, as if they had been experienced directly. Rogers's theory of the self is considered humanistic, existential, and phenomenological. [21] It is based directly on the " phenomenal field" personality theory of Combs and Snygg (1949). [22] Rogers's elaboration of his theory is extensive. He wrote 16 books and many more journal articles about it. Prochaska and Norcross (2003) states Rogers "consistently stood for an empirical evaluation of psychotherapy. He and his followers have demonstrated a humanistic approach to conducting therapy and a scientific approach to evaluating therapy need not be incompatible." The application of this ties closely into Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR) in practice, whereby Rogers speaks of prizing the person as someone with value and worth, as a separate individual, despite how they may act or behave. Most importantly in UPR is that a relationship works only by acceptance; which involves understanding that for the clients, their own attitudes or feelings (i.e. their realities) are legitimate for them even if they may seem contradictory, infantile or bizarre to the therapist. Fundamentally the person is free to explore their own experience. It is reiterated that the role of the therapist in practice is to “become a companion [to the client] … …in their frightening search for themselves” (Rogers, 1961. p.34) and not necessarily a leader. Rogers, Carl R, Lyon, Harold C., Tausch, Reinhard: (2013) On Becoming an Effective Teacher—Person-centered Teaching, Psychology, Philosophy, and Dialogues with Carl R. Rogers and Harold Lyon. London: Routledge

In the PCT parlance, this quote is taken to mean that the client themselves will become an integrated process of changingness at the culmination of an optimal therapeutic relationship. That a client will literally be open for and accepting of the variety of ways in which they experience their feelings. The role of the therapist in PCT is facilitating a process of growth already inherent in the organism by providing the therapeutic conditions. With an implicit combination of Unconditional Positive Regard, Empathy and Therapist Congruence, the process of change itself hinges on the extent that the client experiences these conditions for construing themselves as being received in the ‘here and now’ of the therapy. Rogers originally developed his theory as the foundation for a system of therapy. He initially called it "non-directive therapy" but later replaced the term "non-directive" with "client-centered", and still later "person-centered". Even before the publication of Client-Centered Therapy in 1951, Rogers believed the principles he was describing could be applied in a variety of contexts, not just in therapy. As a result, he started to use the term person-centered approach to describe his overall theory. Person-centered therapy is the application of the person-centered approach to therapy. Other applications include a theory of personality, interpersonal relations, education, nursing, cross-cultural relations and other "helping" professions and situations. In 1946 Rogers co-authored "Counseling with Returned Servicemen" with John L. Wallen (the creator of the behavioral model known as The Interpersonal Gap), [27] documenting the application of person-centered approach to counseling military personnel returning from World War II.In this we can see something of Rogers’ debt to Dewey– but something else had been added in his particular concern with experience and selfhood. First, there is an interest in looking at the particular issues, questions and problems that participants bring (this is not a strongly curriculum-based orientation and has some parallels with the subsequent interest in self-direction in learning). Second, he draws in insights from more psychodynamic traditions of thinking (as did educators such as A. S. Neill and Homer Lane).

Between 1974 and 1984, Rogers, his daughter Natalie Rogers, and psychologists Maria Bowen, Maureen O'Hara, and John K. Wood convened a series of residential programs in the U.S., Europe, Brazil and Japan, the Person-Centered Approach Workshops, which focused on cross-cultural communications, personal growth, self-empowerment, and learning for social change. Raskin, N. (2004). Contributions to Client-Centered Therapy and the Person-Centered Approach. Herefordshire, Ross-on-the-Rye, UK: PCCS Books. Rogers was born on January 8, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. His father, Walter A. Rogers, was a civil engineer, a Congregationalist by denomination. His mother, Julia M. Cushing, [5] [6] was a homemaker and devout Baptist. Carl was the fourth of their six children. [7] After a lot of research and academic deliberation Rogers (1958) settled to accumulate his methodology for the personality change process through what he called a naturalist observational descriptive approach. This was done phenomenologically, meaning he drew inferences of the process from within therapy from having the privileged position of being both a therapist and a client himself. By this, Roger’s could gradually infer what observations emerge that invite change to occur whilst also preserving the individual differences that get lost among the research that only looks to quantify change as a post-therapy outcome (Tudor & Worrall, 2006)Experience which, if assimilated, would involve a change in the organization of self, tends to be resisted through denial or distortion of symbolism" (Rogers, 1951). If the content or presentation of a course is inconsistent with preconceived information, the student will learn if they are open to varying concepts. Being open to concepts that vary from one's own is vital to learning. Therefore, gently encouraging open-mindedness is helpful in engaging the student in learning. Also, it is important, for this reason, that new information be relevant and related to existing experience. After two years, Rogers left the seminary to attend Teachers College, Columbia University, obtaining an M.A. in 1927 and a Ph.D. in 1931. [11] While completing his doctoral work, he engaged in child study. In 1930, Rogers served as director of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in Rochester, New York. From 1935 to 1940 he lectured at the University of Rochester and wrote The Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child (1939), based on his experience in working with troubled children. He was strongly influenced in constructing his client-centered approach by the post-Freudian psychotherapeutic practice of Otto Rank, [12] especially as embodied in the work of Rank's disciple, noted clinician and social work educator Jessie Taft. [13] [14] In 1940 Rogers became professor of clinical psychology at the Ohio State University, where he wrote his second book, Counseling and Psychotherapy (1942). In it, Rogers suggests that by establishing a relationship with an understanding, accepting therapist, a client can resolve difficulties and gain the insight necessary to restructure their life. In relation to No. 17, Rogers is known for practicing " unconditional positive regard", which is defined as accepting a person "without negative judgment of .... [a person's] basic worth". [24] Development of the personality [ edit ] Rogers himself never set out to prove the causality of this formula this but did openly lend the formulate to be incorporated by researcher in their own study. Thorne argues that it is not too simplistic to, ‘affirm that the whole conceptual framework of Carl Rogers rests on his profound experience that human beings become increasingly trustworthy once they feel at a deep level that their subjective experience is both respected and progressively understood’ (1992: 26). We can see this belief at work in his best known contribution – the ‘core conditions’ for facilitative (counselling and educational) practice – congruence (realness), acceptance and empathy).