carl rogerslessons for working at relational depthcharles j oleary

7/21/2019 Carl Rogerslessons for Working at Relational Depthcharles j Oleary

1/33

Carl Rogers:Lessons for working at relational depth,Charles J. O'Leary

Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies

Special Issue

Tiefgehende Beziehungen

Profundidad Relacional

Profondeur Relationelle

Relational Depth

Guest Editor: Mick Cooper

Zeitschrift des Weltverbandes fr Personzentrierte und Experienzielle Psychotherapie und

Beratung

1 / 33


2/33


Revista de la Asociacin Mundial para Psicoterapia y Orientacin Centradas en la Persona y

Experiencial

Journal de l'Association Mondiale pour la Psychothrapie et le Counseling Centres sur la

Personne et Exprientiels

Journal of the World Association for Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy and

Counseling

2 / 33


3/33


Volume 5 Number 4 Winter 2006

Carl Rogers: Lessons for working at relational depth

Carl Rogers: Lektionen fr die Arbeit an tiefgehenden Beziehungen

3 / 33


4/33


Carl Rogers: Lecciones para trabajar en profundidad relacional

Carl Rogers : L'apprentissage du travail en profondeur

Charles J. O'Leary

USA

Abstract. This paper, based on personal recollections and Carl Rogers' written response toReinhold Niebuhr and his dialogues with Martin Buber and B. F. Skinner, highlights five qualities

of Carl Rogers that may encourage and inspire therapists. Congruence, commitment,

confidence, imagination and generosity were characteristic of Rogers. Examples of these

virtues from Rogers' writing and history may provide a partial answer to Mearns and Cooper's

question: "What is it like to meet another human at relational depth?" (2005, p. 35).

Zusammenfassung. Dieser Artikel basiert auf persnlichen Erinnerungen sowie auf Carl

Rogers' schriftlicher Antwort an Reinhold Niebuhr und auf seinen

Dialogen mit Martin Buber und B. F. Skinner. Er setzt fnf

Qualitten von Carl Rogers ins Zentrum, die Therapeuten und Therapeutinnen ermutigen und

inspirieren knnten. Kongruenz, Engagement, Zuversicht, Fantasie und Grozgigkeit waren

fr Rogers charakteristisch. Beispiele dieser Tugenden aus den Schriften von Rogers' und aus

seiner Geschichte knnten teilweise eine Anrwort auf die Frage von Mearns und Cooper liefern:

"Wie ist eseigentlich, jemandem wirklich tiefgehend zu begegnen?" (2005, S. 35).

4 / 33


5/33


Resumen. Este artculo, basado en recuerdos personales y en respuestas escritas de Carl

Rogers' a Reinhold Niebuhr y en dilogos de Rogers con Martin Buber y B. F. Skinner, ilumina

cinco cualidades de Carl Rogers que probablemente alienten e inspiren a

terapeutas. Congruencia, compromiso, confianza, imagina

cin y generosidad eran caractersticas de Rogers. Ejemplos de estas virtudes en escritos de

Rogers y en su historia tal vez ofrezcan una respuesta parcial a la pregunta de Mearns y

Cooper: "Cmo es encontrarse con otro ser humano en profundidad relaconal?" (2005, p.

35).

Rsum. Cet article, bas sur des souvenirs personnels et galement sur des rponses crites

par Carl Rogers Reinhold Niebuhr et dialogues entre Rogers et Martin Buber et B. F. Skinner,

met en lumire cinq qualits caractristiques de Rogers, afin de permettre inspiration et

encouragement auprs des thrapeutes : la congruence, l'engagement, la confiance, lacrativit et la gnrosit. Des exemples, tires des crits et de l'histoire de Rogers fourniront,

peut-tre, une rponse partielle la question de Mearns et Cooper : "Comment dcrire la

rencontre en profondeur relationnelle entre deux tres humains ?" (2005, p. 35).

5 / 33


6/33


Author Note. Address correspondence to Charles J. O'Leary, 900 Logan Street, Denver,

Colorado 80203,USA. Email: < [email protected] >.

O'Leary 1477-9757/06/04229-11


Keywords:Rogers, relational depth, congruence, commitment, confidence, imagination,generosity

6 / 33
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


7/33


Mearns and Cooper (2005, p. xii) define working at relational depth as "A state of profound

contact and engagement between two people in which each person is fully real with the Other

and able to understand and value the Other's experiences at a high level." Working at relational

depth is not characterized by a prescribed set of counselor behaviors or client expectations. On

the contrary, such an experience cannot be planned in advance, but emerges in unrepeatable

contact between persons. The therapist alone cannot create a meeting at relational depth

client readiness, perception of the possibility and willingness to respond to the counselor are

preconditions. Certain therapist qualities may, however, create the possibility for such meetings

as Carl Rogers has famously described (Rogers, 1957). Through personal recollection andespecially through his words and behavior as shown in Carl Rogers: Dialogues (Kirschenbaum

& Henderson, 1990a) and

The Carl Rogers Reader (Kirschenbaum

& Henderson, 1990b), I will describe personal qualities of Carl Rogers relevant to therapists'

behavior and attitudes. Although the concept of relational depth emerged many years after

Rogers' writings, Rogers actually embodied and exemplified many of the qualities that are

necessary for relational depth to occur.

In my fourth decade of work with clients I still need to meet with Rogers in his varied but

consistent legacy of words whenever I

- feel an urgency, however benevolent my intentions, to have a client think or act in a

certain way;

- find myself deciding that, darn it, this is one client that really needs me to be

judgmental

- find myself waiting for a couple to arrive and feeling unconditional support for one of th

em and a lesson to teach to the other;

- feel overwhelmed by the apparent scarcity of clients' resources in relation to the extend

of their problems;

- think that I would be an excellent therapist if it weren't for the quality of the clients I see

7 / 33


8/33


Five elements of Rogers' character, available in his written record, offer a kind of true north as

on a compass. These particular attitudes make up a way of being (Rogers, 1980) that facilitates

working at relational depth. They are congruence, commitment to core belief confidence,imagination in the service of empathy, and generosity.

ROGERS WAS CONGRUENT: HIS ENGAGEMENT WITH CLIENTS WAS CONSISTENT

WITH HIS FULL ENGAGEMENT IN OTHER ASPECTS OF HIS LIFE

Working at relational depth implies being "totally in the situation" (of therapy) (Mearns & Cooper

2005, p. 37) and derives from a habit of generous involvement in the tasks and predicaments

living. Just as a client enters dialogue with a therapist that is preceded by and will be followed

8 / 33


9/33


230 Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies, Volume 5, Number 4

O' Leary

many other conversations (Rober, 2005), the therapist's habits of thought, behavior and

intention are continuous with his or her encounters with a client. A meeting at relational depth

always takes place between persons, not between a person and the occupant of a role. Carl

Rogers' life was characterized by full engagement in his life outside the therapy office.

At this time, I must allow myself a claim for uniqueness and importance. One time, Carl Rogers

criticizedme! I had shown him some written work I had done as part of my graduate program. He read it

and, when we met to discuss it, said this and that about my work that showed that he

understood it and the person who had written it. He then got to what he really wanted to say.

"Your writing," Carl assured me, "could sure stand some improvement." He couldn't wait to point

out carelessness in sentence structure, split infinitives, dangling participles and other crimes

against our language. When Rogers wrote he paid attention to writing. He did not assume that

the interesting things he might have to say gave him an exemption from fidelity to the task at

hand. If shown someone's writing, Rogers engaged with seriousness about the enterprise of

writing that was parallel to the respect he showed the inner exploration of a client in therapy.

9 / 33


10/33


Thoroughness as a writer does not, of course, make one a good therapist, but that kind of

complete concentration to all aspects of an encounter with the written word speaks well of the

attention that could be available for a silent, contrary, hopeless or otherwise discouraging client.

Rogers was congruent in his willingness to participate fully whatever the conditions.

Rogers' energetic attention to the tasks of life was the foundation for the focused attention he

was able to give the individual client. He once grumbled in reference to behaviorist psychologist

B. F. Skinner: "Fred Skinner told me that he sets up a system of rewards for every piece of work

he does so that he is reinforced for working. Me, I work when I feel like it." Hearing this later, his

colleague Betty Meador remarked: "Yes, but he always feels like it." Rogers was able to be

non-directive with clients yet be perceived as active and energetic. The intensity that was his

habit in the many activities of his life was present when he was silent and still in the presence of

clients.

Rogers' habitual commitment to his work did not exempt him from facing the contradictions and

dramas that some human situations seem to produce despite our best efforts. Rogers once

wrote of facilitating a weekend group for school administrators. He had begun the group by

saying that whatever the group wanted to do would be OK with him. By Saturday evening,

however, he found that the group had settled into a way of talk about small things in a

superficial way that was becoming unbearable to him.

Here is Rogers' description:

I was in a quandary. In order to allay a considerable early anxiety in the group, I had stressed in

the first session that they could make of it exactly what they wished and operationally they

seemed to be saying very loudly, "We want to spend expensive hard won weekend time talking

of trivia." To express my feelings of boredom and annoyance seemed contradictory to thefreedom I had given them. After wrestling within myself for a few moments, I decided that they

had a perfect right to talk trivia, and I had a perfect right not to endure it. So I walked quietly out

of the room and went to bed. After I left and the next morning, the reactions were as varied as

the

10 / 33


11/33


Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies, Volume 5, Number 4 231


participants. One felt rebuked and punished, another felt I had played a trick on them, a third felt

ashamed of their time-wasting, others felt as disgusted as I at their trivial interchanges. I told

them that to the best of my awareness, I was simply trying to make my behavior match my

contradictory feelings, but that they were entitled to their own perceptions. At any rate, after that

the interactions were far more meaningful. (Rogers, 1990, pp. 344-345)

11 / 33


12/33


This is a story of awkwardness in the service of principle. Awkwardness is not a virtue in itself,

but it can sometimes be an indication of willingness to be open and real in complicated

situations. In this event, the awkwardness developed into a deeper encounter (a meeting ofpersons) facilitated by his complete willingness to listen non-defensively to the meaning his

action had held for his companions. Rogers' trust in himself to act when there are no clear

guidelines allowed him to trust in others to find their own way in ambiguous and uncomfortable

circumstances.

Of course, as a result of this experience, Rogers decided it would have been preferable to say "

We

can make of this what we wish" and would thus have left himself freer to comment on what hedid or did not want or like (1990, p. 344). On no other occasion did Rogers have to resolve a

dilemma by going to bed during a group!

ROGERS HAD AN UNSHAKEABLE COMMITMENT TO CORE BELIEFS ABOUTRELATIONSHIPS

The quality of a relationship ultimately derives from the beliefs each person holds about the

other. Kindness or courtesy covering underlying disrespect or assumption of superiority cannotsurvive the challenges of a deepening relationship. Rogers' basic respect and egalitarian style

were the foundation of his system of therapy. "If you treat people as if they can be trusted, they

are trustworthy," he was fond of saying (NBC TV, 1983). Meeting at relational depth calls for "...

a positive affirmation of the client down to the very essence of their being, a confirmation of their

uniqueness, individuality and humanity" (Mearns & Cooper, 2005, p. 43). One must suspend

what Rogers called "the evaluative tendency" by which other humans are diagnosed,

stereotyped and, most important, judged as deficient (Rogers, 1961, p. 331). Rogers was

insistent that a belief system with an intrinsically limited view of human potential was the

opposite of therapeutic.

12 / 33


13/33


While usually open in conversation, even with persons greatly different from himself, Rogers

was absolutely committed to a few core values and would offer no compromise on those. This is

made very clear in his written responses to a book, The Self and the Dramas of History (1956)

that he was asked to review. Its author, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, was an American hero to

working people, a tireless fighter for social justice when churches often ignored such a concept.He also was an eloquent speaker and the author of the "Serenity Prayer," made most famous

by its adoption

by Alcoholics Anonymous.

Rogers' essay about Niebuhr stands out because, in it, he was unusually stern, not particularly

civil and not at all

13 / 33


14/33



O' Leary

accommodating. He found nothing he liked in Niebuhr's book and very little in his later

responses to three theologians who in a journal were asked to comment on Rogers' comments

(Kirschenbaum & Henderson, 1990a, pp. 208-228).

Niebuhr seemed to Rogers to offer two positions that were the extreme opposite of Rogers' own

life and way of being in dialogue. First, Niebuhr seemed to present himself, a leadingtheologian, as an expert who knew in advance what was true and, especially, worthy of

judgments in other people. About Neibuhr, the usually mild-spoken Rogers wrote: ...

I find that I am impressed most of all by the awesome certainty with which Dr Niebuhr knows.

He knows, with incredible assurance what is wrong with the thinking of St Thomas Aquinas,

Augustine, Hegel, Freud, Marx, Dewey and many, many others. He also knows what are the

errors of communism, existentialism, psychology and all the social sciences. His favorite term

for the formulations of others is 'absurd,' but such other terms as "erroneous," "blind," "naive,""inane" and "inadequate" also are useful. It seems to me that the only individuals who come off

14 / 33


15/33


well in the book are the Hebrew prophets, Jesus (as seen by Dr Niebuhr), Winston Churchill,

and Dr Niebuhr himself. (Kirschenbaum & Henderson, 1990a, p. 208)

Rogers was not patient with a writer describing persons from a position of a priori superiority.

He was offended by any signs of that kind of self-satisfaction that makes a client, student or

reader the object of a judgment. Once, when a colleague talked proudly of drawing answers out

of a client by careful questions, Carl said, in effect, "If I had something I thought someone

should know, I would tell it to them directly." (He rarely claimed that position.) Rogers' rejection

of Niebuhr's "certainty" reflects his core position as companion for another persons explorationrather than as an expert with a lesson to teach.

Secondly, and perhaps more important, he rejected Niebuhr's position on the inherent

sinfulness of humans. (Today's "inherent sinfulness" is more likely to be a psychiatric diagnosis

applied as an absolute description of a client rather than as a state of their soul.) On this point

Rogers was unequivocal. Faithful to his experience, Rogers asserted:

It is in his conception of the basic deficiency of the individual self that I find my experience

utterly at variance. [Niebuhr] is quite clear that the "original sin" is self-love, pretension, claiming

too much, grasping after self-realization. I read such words and try to imagine the experience

out of which they have grown. I have dealt with maladjusted and troubled individuals, in the

intimate personal relationship of psychotherapy, for more than a quarter of a century ... And if I

were to search for the central core of difficulty in people as I have come to know them, it is that

in the great majority of cases they despise themselves, regard themselves as worthless and

unlovable. To be sure, in some instances this is covered by pretension, and in nearly all of us

these feelings are covered by some sort of a facade. But I could not differ more deeply from thenotion that self-love is the fundamental and pervasive "sin." Actually it is only in a relationship in

which he is loved (something very close, I believe, to the theologians' agape) that the individual

can begin to feel a dawning respect for, acceptance of, and, finally, even a fondness for himself.

It is as he can thus begin to sense himself as lovable

15 / 33


16/33




and worthwhile, in spite of his mistakes that he can begin to feel love and tenderness for others.

(Kirschenbaum & Henderson, 1990a, pp. 210-211)

16 / 33


17/33


Rogers' argument against the judgmental assumptions of a theologian is relevant to the

contemporary question of the effect of psychiatric diagnosis on the attitude of a therapist to his

or her clients. Despite the potential usefulness of defining disorders, illnesses or patterns of

behavior, any conception that identifies a client with a condition of deficiency must

preclude the land of relationship that Rogers has defined as healing. If a theory keeps you from

meeting a client with openness, it is the theory that has deficiency, not the client. Rogers

rebutted Niebuhr with intensity not born of feeling alone but extensive therapeutic experience

and research.

In his response to Niebuhr, Rogers insisted that no oneshould claim an expert's position on the

meaning of another person's life. Equally passionately, he believed that an a priori sense of

what was wrong about another was incongruent with understanding that person. He anticipated

the concept of "prior knowledge" (Anderson, 1997) that kind of therapist expertise that would

make attentive dialogue with a patient almost superfluous.

ROGERS HAD UNSHAKEABLE CONFIDENCE IN THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AS HE

PRACTICED IT

Working at relational depth requires sureness of purpose in therapists who venture into such

meetings. Clients see therapists because of distress, often accompanied by confusion and

profound mistrust. The therapist offers confidence and certainty, not about the clients nature,

problems or best course of action, but about the possibilities that may be opened by the

meeting. "I don't always know exactly where we were going but I know we are going

somewhere," master family therapist and Rogers' admirer Virginia Satir once remarked (Satir,

1972).

17 / 33


18/33


Rogers' confidence is clear in his dialogue with Martin Buber, the famous German and later

Israeli philosopher of relationship, most well known for his book I and Thou. Just as

Niebuhr's writing seemed deeply inimical to Rogers' approach to humans, Buber's writingoffered Rogers the exact language to describe the meetings at relational depth that were his

experience of therapy. Interestingly, though appreciative of some of Rogers' descriptions of his

work with clients, Martin Buber was not at all receptive to understanding Rogers' therapeutic

relationships as parallel to that highest form of relationship in which connectedness and

separateness are simultaneously possible. In the dialogue with Buber, Carl was an unabashed

suitor, finding connections and points of agreement with a very reluctant, somewhat prickly

potential partner.

Buber insisted that in a true I-Thou encounter you can be surprised by what your conversational

partner might say. Influenced by a perception of therapy that preceded Rogers' innovations, he

assumed that a therapist would intrinsically be on different level from the client, knowing in

advance what the client may think or say rather than able to share in dialogue that is new and

unexpected in the present. Rogers seized on the point:

18 / 33


19/33



O' Leary

I hope that perhaps sometime I can play recordings of interviews for you to indicate how the

surprise element can be there. That is a person can be expressing something and then

suddenly be hit by the meaning of that which has come from someplace in himself which he

doesn't recognize. He is really surprised at himself. (Kirschenbaum & Henderson, 1990a, p. 57)

Rogers never forgot that whatever he said, unlike all previous therapists and philosophers, was

based on his research. He had the confidence appropriate to the person who was first to

expose the minute-by-minute process of his therapy to hundreds of hours of audio-taping andthousands of hours of research analysis that was the state of the art for his time.

19 / 33


20/33


Rogers addressed Buber's concerns about the distinction between meetings between friends

and associates and those with clients. (It is impressive that this is a response in a conversation

rather than a prepared paper.)

I feel that when I'm being effective as a therapist, I enter the relationship as a subjective person,

not as a scrutinizer not as a scientist. I feel too that when I am most effective then somehow I

am relatively whole in that relationship, or the word that has meaning to me is transparent. To

be sure there may be many aspects of my life that aren't brought into the relationship, but what

is brought into the relationship is transparent. There is nothing hidden. Then I think, too, that in

such a relationship I feel a real willingness for this other person to be what he is. I call that

acceptance. I don't know that that's a very good word for it, but my meaning there is that I'mwilling for him to possess the feelings he possesses, to hold the attitudes he holds, to be the

person he is. And then another aspect of it which is important to me is that I think in those

moments I am able to sense with a good deal of clarity the way his experience seems to him,

really viewing it from within him, and yet without losing my own personhood or separateness in

that. Then, if in addition to those things on my part my client... is able to sense something of

those attitudes in me, then it seems to me that there is a real experiential meeting of persons, in

which each of us is changed. I think sometimes the client is changed more than I am, but I think

both of us are changed in that kind of experience. Now I see that as having some resemblance

to the sort of thing you have talked about in the I-Thou relationship .... (Kirschenbaum &

Henderson, 1990a, p. 48)

Buber did not agree with Rogers, and, in fact, had many convincing distinctions between his

concept of "I and Thou" and Rogers' experiences as a therapist. The difference, Buber

maintained, is that the relationship with a client can never be reciprocal it is always true that

one person is trying to help the other. Rogers was convinced that the term IThou described

his work with clients; Buber did not agree. Here is how Rogers offered a resolution:

Because it seems to me again that in the most real moments of therapy I don't believe that this

intention to help is any more than a substratum on my part either. Surely, I wouldn't be doingthis work if that wasn't part of my intention. And when I first see the client that's what I hope I will

20 / 33


21/33


be able to do, is to be able to help him. And yet in



21 / 33


22/33


the interchange of the moment, I don't think my mind is filled with the thought of "Now I want to

help you." It is much more I want to understand you. (Kirschenbaum & Henderson, 1990a, p.

55)

His "substratum" seems exactly parallel to "configurations of self" (Mearns & Thorne, 2000).

One configuration of himself was always the helper; one configuration of the client would always

be the person in need of help. Rogers asserted that there were other parts of therapist andclient, which, independent of role, were able to meet as a human to human.

Rogers was able to acknowledge Buber's objections to his claim of similarity while offering a

clear explanation of the difference of his experience of therapy and Buber's assumptions about

the therapeutic relationship. This was not cleverness, but a search for language faithful to the

kind of meeting that Rogers was discovering. Meeting at relational depth does not deny

objective reality. Rogers conceded (about a meeting between a therapist and a schizophrenic)

"Looking at it from the outside, one can easily discern plenty of difference. But it seems to me,when therapy is effective, there is this same kind of meeting of persons no matter what the

psychiatric label" (Kirschenbaum & Henderson, 1990a, p. 53).

Rogers' meeting with Buber, well worth reading in its entirety, adds additional richness to the

concept of meeting at relational depth. His researched experience allowed him a forceful,

confident claim to redefine the possibilities of therapeutic meeting.

CARL ROGERS WAS IMAGINATIVE AND RESOURCEFUL IN THE PRACTICE OF

EMPATHY

22 / 33


23/33


Working at relational depth requires a capacity for empathy that goes beyond an ability to

translate another person's words into an intelligible meaning. "A superficial empathy

understands what the client is saying and feeling but it is a deeper empathy and congruencethat communicates 'she understood what it feels like to be me ...'" (Mearns & Cooper, 2005, p.

45). Such empathy is an effort in which senses, emotion and intellect allow the therapist to

connect with the client's experience with unexpected particularity and immediacy. A moment

near the end of Rogers' famous dialogue with the behaviorist B. F. Skinner may illustrate this

kind of experience. The 1956 debate between Carl Rogers and Burrhus Frederic Skinner is

wonderful reading. It was a meeting between two men, similar in their grace and precision with

language, their histories of meticulous research, their ability to connect with the audience and

with each other and their absolutely different conclusions about the nature of human personality

and motivation. One was the passionate advocate of science as precise measurement of what

can be observed externally; the other the insistent explorer and defender of the importance of asubjective world, no less real because of its impossibility of measurement. Near the end of the

debate, however, Rogers made a shift that demonstrated an ability to enter into the world of his

partner in dialogue. Since his partner was an academic, Rogers connected with him through the

medium of one of Skinners own papers:

Rogers: I welcome being reminded of Dr Skinner's very inspiring article in the American

23 / 33


24/33


236 Person-Centered and Experiential Psycbotherapies, Volume 5, Number 4

O' Leary

Psychologist on the processes of science as he had experienced them in his own career. As I

remember that article, Dr Skinner gives a very vivid picture of the scientific life as process. This

is exactly the kind of thing that I have been trying to describe as the "Good Life." Far from

knowing where he was going to come out, he had to live in process and had to let learnings

emerge as they emerged, shaping his new behavior. This makes me feel a great deal about Dr

Skinner, to realize that in his own life ... (Skinner laughs) ... in his own life he

values that emerging unpredictable process. What I have been trying to say about the land of

culture I would want to design and the kind of outcomes I see in therapy when therapy is

successful, is that it leads to exactly that kind of thing. The individual becomes an ongoing

process of life in which the outcome is not set. There are no static goals. You don't even know ifyou will come out happy. You are living

24 / 33


25/33


this

on a day-by-day basis, endeavoring to be open to all of your experience.

Skinner: This may be a historic moment. I think I have been changed by that argument.

(Kirschenbaum & Henderson, 1990a, p. 144)

Meeting Skinner at relational depth meant carefully reading Skinners own words anddiscovering in them an important element of Rogers' own experience. In showing that he could

listen wholeheartedly to Skinner, Rogers made it possible for Skinner to listen to him. Empathy

was not only passive receptivity in the moment, but the expression of commitment to

understand the other's language on the others own terms.

CARL ROGERS HAD A FIFTH QUALITY THAT IS HARDER TO DEFINE: A MODEST

GENEROSITY: A HABITUAL ASSUMPTION OF THE OTHER PERSON'S

DESERV1NGNESS

Working at relational depth involves self-extension and readiness to respond to others as if they

were deserving. Unconditional positive regard would be little more than a mechanistic lack of

personal opinion without generosity of attitude from the person offering it. "What we want to

emphasize here is that, at these times of relational depth, the therapist is actively prizing'

(Rogers, 1957) the client (Rogers' favorite term for unconditional positive regard)" (Mearns &

Cooper, 2005, p. 43). An experience of Rogers in a non-therapeutic setting may illustrate a way

of being that allowed unexpected depth of contact in his meetings.

25 / 33


26/33


It is worth noting that, despite his fame, Rogers' home address and phone number were in the

public directory. The mother of a participant in the La Jolla Program, a training program in group

facilitation based on Rogers' approach but unconnected with him except by a one-day

appearance, once called Carl at home to get a message to her son. Without complaint, Rogers

gave her the information she needed to reach her loved one. Many of his associates at the timereceived requests for help or information for which the seekers first called Carl at home.

When Carl Rogers was in his eighties, he suffered from an eye condition that made it

26 / 33


27/33




almost impossible for him to read. Every medical and mechanical device was attempted and, in

fact, his ability to read improved considerably. During the period before his eyes were improved,

he gave a talk at the Living Now Institute. At one point in the program he talked about a

quotation from Lao-Tzu that expressed the convictions that were at the heart of his work. He

told the group that he carried the quotation about with him in his wallet. Someone asked if he

would read it. Those who knew him were concerned about his ability to fulfill this request, but

Rogers pulled a dirty many times folded hand-written piece of paper out of his pocket.

Laboriously, using a magnifying glass, he read the following quotation.

A leader is best

When people barely know that he exists

27 / 33


28/33


Not so good when people obey and acclaim him

Worst when they despise him...

But of a good leader, who talks little

When his work is done, his aim fulfilled

They will all say, "We did this ourselves."

(Quoted in Rogers, 1980, p. 42, from Bynner, 1962)

When he was finished, someone unbelievably said: "I didn't quite get that Carl, could you

read it again?" His friends were moved by anger at the surprising insensitivity of the questioner

then even more moved by the unruffled 83-year-old Carl Rogers generously going about the

very hard, embarrassingly awkward, task of once again reading the long quotation. Rogers had

a natural receptivity born of an assumption of goodwill in others. He took people and events as

he found them. He gave his listeners more than the reading of a lovely quote. He offered the

indelible impression of a responding in the present with humility and patience for whatever hewas asked.

CONCLUDING QUESTIONS

28 / 33


29/33


This article is based on a talk I gave at Professor Dave Mearns' Retiral Conference at the

University of Strathclyde on May 17, 2006. At the end of the talk, I invited participants, in groups

of two, to discuss their own current form of dialogue with Carl Rogers and how it influences theirwork as counselors, therapists or educators. The room was filled with the sounds of 350 people

talking enthusiastically about meetings that were alive, relevant and emotionally engaging. One

person-centered counselor present, later, shared her recollection with me. Ending her day's

work as a physician, she happened to take home a copy of Client-Centered Therapy, (Rogers,

1951) found herself reading it throughout the night and set her mind, then and there, on her

future training and career as a counselor. (Over twenty years later, she still intends to return the

book.) I invite the reader to conduct his or her own search for what in Rogers' life or writing is

most influential and helpful in current work. What is the situation in your work that is most

stressful and puzzling? What would you like to say about it to Carl Rogers? What would he be

likely to say about it to you?

29 / 33


30/33



O' Leary

REFERENCES

Anderson, H. (1997). Conversation, language and possibility: A postmodern approach to

therapy. New York: Basic Hooks.

Bynner, W. (Translator) (1962). The way of life according to Laotzu. New York: CapricornBooks.

30 / 33


31/33


Duncan, B. (2005). What's right with you? Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications Inc.

Kirschcnbaum, H. & Henderson, V. L. (1990a). Carl

Rogers: Dialogues.London: Constable. Kirschcnbaum, H. & Henderson, V. L. (1990b).

The Carl Rogers reader.

London: Constable. Mearns, D.

&

Cooper, M. (2005).

Working at relational depth in counselling and psychotherapy.

London: Sage.

Mearns, D. & Thorne, B. (2000). Person-centred therapy today: New frontiers in theory and

practice. London: Sage.

NBC TV (1983). Keith Berwick and Carl Rogers. At one with. Television program. Los

Angeles.

Rober, P (2005). Family therapy as a dialogue of living persons: A perspective inspired by

Bakhtin, Voloshinov and Shotter. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 31, 385-399. Rogers,

C. R. (1951). Client

-centered therapy

Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality

change. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 21, 95-103.

Rogers, C. R. (1980). A way of being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Rogers, C. R. (1990). Can I be a facilitative person in a group? In H. Kirschenbaum & V. L.

Henderson, (Eds.), The Carl Rogers reader, pp. 339-357. London: Constable (Original work

published 1970).

31 / 33


32/33


Satir, V. (1972). Perceptions: the personal aspects of therapy. Videotape. Boston: The Boston

Family Institute.

NOTES

1. The longer that Carl Rogers is dead, and the older I get, the closer I am tempted to claim my

friendship with him was. But for now I still admit: I know him well, not because of our personal

closeness, but by the length of time I was exposed to him and his associates. La Jolla,

California was a lively place in the early 1970s when I studied there at the Center for Studies of

the Person. Over four hundred distinct types of psychotherapy have been identified (Duncan,

2005). It now seems to me that half of them were being practiced, if not invented at that timeand place! If young at that time and place, you might have been proud of learning things that

made you feel like a better therapist than Carl Rogers since he seemed quieter than other

therapists of his own (or any) time and, after all, his style of therapy was then over thirty years

old. Rogers was gently receptive if told of your interests, entirely without a need to prove you

wrong and consistently secure about the efficacy of the way of being that he had developed.

(He had, after all, gone farther than anyone of his time in researching the perennial elements

that make therapy useful and worthwhile.)

2. I am from Boston, Massachusetts. I am of Irish descent. You know that that part of me will

always believe in original sin and reserves the right to despise myself. It would be bad luck not

to! If I were his client, Rogers would never have tried to talk me out of it. On the contrary, he

would have left his own secure (and he was I believe very secure in himself) perspective to join

me or any client in understanding what it might mean to be in a state of sin, of self-dislike, or

fear or any other dark place in which a person may live. At the same time, and most important,

Rogers would never assume any condition especially any essential deficiency in my nature

whether deriving this by theological, philosophical or psychological system. On this Rogers was

passionate, assertive and unshakeable.

32 / 33


33/33



carl rogerslessons for working at relational depthcharles j oleary

Documents