Summary of Carl Rogers's On Becoming A Person

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 I am a psychologist who has spent much of his career studying psychotherapy. My book, Client-Centered Therapy, is about the suffering and the hope, the anxiety and the satisfaction, that fills each therapist’s counseling room. It is about the unique relationship each therapist forms with each client, and the common elements that they all share.

#2 I was raised in a home marked by close family ties, a very strict and uncompromising religious and ethical atmosphere, and a worship of the virtue of hard work. I was fascinated by the night-flying moths, and I became an authority on the gorgeous Luna, Cecropia, and other moths that inhabited our woods.

#3 I was a history major at Wisconsin when I fell in love with a girl whom I had known for many years. I was married with the reluctant consent of my parents so that we could go to graduate school together.

#4 I was a member of a group that petitioned the administration to allow them to set up a seminar for credit, a seminar with no instructor, where the curriculum would be composed of their own questions. The seminary was understandably perplexed by this, but they granted our petition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Feb 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669351030

IRB Media

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Book preview

Insights on Carl Rogers's On Becoming a Person

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I am a psychologist who has spent much of his career studying psychotherapy. My book, Client-Centered Therapy, is about the suffering and the hope, the anxiety and the satisfaction, that fills each therapist’s counseling room. It is about the unique relationship each therapist forms with each client, and the common elements that they all share.

#2

I was raised in a home marked by close family ties, a very strict and uncompromising religious and ethical atmosphere, and a worship of the virtue of hard work. I was fascinated by the night-flying moths, and I became an authority on the gorgeous Luna, Cecropia, and other moths that inhabited our woods.

#3

I was a history major at Wisconsin when I fell in love with a girl whom I had known for many years. I was married with the reluctant consent of my parents so that we could go to graduate school together.

#4

I was a member of a group that petitioned the administration to allow them to set up a seminar for credit, a seminar with no instructor, where the curriculum would be composed of their own questions. The seminary was understandably perplexed by this, but they granted our petition.

#5

I was drawn to child guidance work, and eventually ended up working as a psychologist in the Child Study Department of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in Rochester, New York. I was paid $2,900 per year.

#6

I was in Rochester, New York, for twelve years, from 1973 to 1988, and I was extremely valuable during that time. I was able to diagnose and plan for the delinquent and underprivileged children who were sent to me by the courts and agencies, and I was able to conduct treatment interviews with parents.

#7

I had learned to be more subtle and patient in my interactions with clients, trying to time them in a gentle fashion that would gain acceptance. I had been working with a highly intelligent mother whose boy was something of a hellion. The problem was clearly her early rejection of the boy, but over many interviews we could not help her to this insight.

#8

I was a psychologist, but I did not feel like I was following my own course. I was doing work that seemed to have no relation to what I was doing. I began teaching courses at the University of Rochester on how to deal with problem children, under the Department of Sociology.

#9

I was a much better parent during the Rochester years than I had been before. I had the privilege of being in relationship with two fine sensitive youngsters through all their childhood pleasure and pain, their adolescence assertiveness and difficulties, and into their adult years and the beginning of their own families.

#10

I began to teach at Ohio State University in 1940. I was surprised to find that my point of view on treatment and counseling was extremely controversial. I had to question my own ideas.

#11

I have learned to live in increasingly deep therapeutic relationships with an ever-widening range of clients. This can be and has been extremely rewarding. It can be and has been at times very frightening, when a deeply disturbed person seems to demand that I must be more than I am to meet his need.

#12

I have learned that it is not helpful or effective to try to maintain a façade in my relationships with others. It does not help to act as though I are something I am not. It does not help to act calm and pleasant when I am actually angry and critical. It does not help to act as though I know the answers when I do not.

#13

I find that I am more effective when I can listen acceptantly to myself and be myself. When I accept myself as I am, I change. Real relationships are vital and meaningful. When I accept all these attitudes as a part of me, my relationship with the other person becomes what it is and can grow and change most readily.

#14

To