Sigmund Rogers's Humanistic Theory

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Up until the 1940s and 50s the main practice and theories around counselling and psychology were dominated by Sigmund Freud and B F skinner. These were psychoanalysis and behaviorism, these theories worked on the principal that the psychologist was the expert and the patient was essentially without knowledge or free will to help himself i.e. deterministic (The doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes regarded as external to the will. Some philosophers have taken determinism to imply that individual human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.)

However around this time there was also another, humanistic movement gaining momentum with people like Otto Rank, a psychologist who worked with Freud for 20 but …show more content…

Rogers wrote 19 books and many articles outlining his humanistic theory. Among his best-known works are Client-Centered Therapy (1951), On Becoming a Person (1961), and A Way of Being (1980) He continued to develop his theories In to the 50’s and was particularly concerned to validate his ideas through research, making a huge contribution to research in psychotherapy inspiring thousands of project in the 1960s, 70s and 80s to evaluate the effectiveness of counselling and psychotherapy. His particular contributing to contemporary culture was to put the individual, their experience and self-healing potential at the heart of the change process. This was a serious challenge to mainstream psychology at the time which was bust trying to convince the world that psychologists were the ‘experts’ on human behaviour. With his emphasis on human potential, Carl Rogers had an enormous influence on both psychology and education. Beyond that, he is considered by many to be one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century. More therapists cite Rogers as their primary influence than any other

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