Carl Rogers' 19 Propositions

Authentic Counselling Training

Carl Rogers' 19 Propositions concerning Personality Dynamics and Behaviour

[Under construction: 9 February 2005]

This document in all parts is copyright © Peter Hughes from the date of construction given above. Please feel free to make use of them for solely personal purposes. However, should you wish to use them for teaching, training, commercial or other purposes, you are required to ask me first.

Preamble

In Client-Centred Therapy, Chapter 11 (‘A theory of personality and behaviour’, pp.481-533), Carl Rogers sets out the base on which his person centred approach rests (pp.483-524). Although Rogers terms this base theoretical (p.482), it is also partly philosophical, for he lays out the humanistic, phenomenological and existential credentials of the approach. These credentials stand in contrast to analytical (e.g. Freud, Berne) and reductionist (Skinner, Watson) perspectives. Rogers proposes 19 propositions (axioms) from which much of his person centred theory hangs. These axioms are based both on his own clinical observations over many years of therapeutic work, and also rest on the work of many other writers, researchers and clinicians. Having spent much of his early career holding views opposed to these propositions (p.482), Rogers arrived at these conclusions because the evidence before him demonstrated to him the inadequacies of the paradigm in which he had been working. It is a feature of the person centred approach that attention and value are given to lived experience, and therefore it is unsurprising that these 19 propositions should have an empirical base. In this spirit, Rogers remained open to the possibility that his propositions could be shown to be inadequate and/or inaccurate. He was writing in a particular time and environment, and therefore some of his propositions may, from a 21^st century lay British perspective, appear somewhat obscure. However, each proposition remains relevant to the person centred approach, even if a present-day counsellor in Manchester, Madrid or Montreal might express some of them differently.

This document presents Rogers’ propositions in close-to-their-original wording, along with the occasional gloss, based on Rogers’ own gloss. In addition, the document is punctuated with questions for thought and discussion that address issues relevant to the preceding proposition. Some of the questions appear to require trivial responses, but are presented to facilitate thought about the nature of human experience.

The Propositions

I. Every individual (organism) exists in a continually changing world of experience (phenomenal field) of which s/he is the centre, and can be known in a complete sense only to the individual him/herself. Although the individual experiences sensations and impulses, only a proportion of these are permitted into consciousness, and only under certain conditions.

· Of what sounds are you are aware, inside the room and outside?

· What is the temperature in the room?

· What is the light level in the room?

· Of what does the room smell?

· What words would you use to describe the feel of the furniture on which you are sitting?

· Which of your responses to the above questions were you aware before reading the question?

II. The organism reacts to the field as it is experienced and perceived. This perceptual field is, for the individual, "reality".

· What colour is a white-painted car under night-time neon lights?

· Why does a pint of good bitter beer taste foul immediately after eating a slice of bread?

· Why does the music from a hi-fi always sound louder to the neighbours?

· What level of importance do you attach to “true” (objective) reality?

III. The organism reacts as an organised whole to this phenomenal field.

· How readily do you salivate when someone rings a bell?

· How strongly do you believe 'depression' to be “caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain”?

IV. The organism has one basic tendency and striving - to actualise, maintain and enhance the experiencing organism. Rather than viewing the individual (organism) as controlled by ‘a mass of drives’, Rogers (and Maslow) considered all strivings to be different facets of the one tendency, “partial aspects of this one fundamental need”. Beyond the more obvious physiological needs, Rogers considered that the individual “moves in the direction of greater independence or self-responsibility … increasing self-government, self-regulation, autonomy … and socialisation” and away from being controlled by other people and external events.

· When you learned to ride/drive a vehicle, to what extent were you motivated by a desire for greater autonomy?

V. Behaviour is basically the goal directed attempt of the organism to satisfy its needs as experienced, in the field as perceived. “Present … needs are the only ones which the organism endeavours to reduce or satisfy.” “Behaviour is not ‘caused’ by something which occurred in the past.”

VI. Emotion accompanies, and in general facilitates, such goal directed behaviour, the kind of emotion being related to the seeking (unpleasant and/or excited feelings) versus (or: followed by) the consummating (satisfaction) aspects of the behaviour. The intensity of the emotion is related to the perceived significance of the behaviour for the maintenance and enhancement of the organism.

· In what activities do you engage that involve anxiety, or even fear, then reward you with satisfaction?

VII. The best vantage point for understanding behaviour is from the internal frame of reference of the individual himself.

· To what extent do you hold to this tenet in the counselling room?

· To what extent do you hold to this tenet with your own (or a relative’s) children?

VIII. A portion of the total perceptual field gradually becomes differentiated as the self.

· In what ways are you (physiologically, psychologically, sociologically, culturally) what you eat?

· When does a slice of toast become part of who you are at that moment?

· In what respects is the air that you breathe a part of who you are at that moment?

· What happens to who you are when you bleed? When you are given a blood transfusion? When you write using your own blood as ink? When you give a blood sample?

· DNA testing showed that the semen on Monica Lewinsky’s dress was identifiably and uniquely that of President Bill Clinton. Your genes control almost every physical aspect of you. To what extent do your genes make you who you are?

· When your foot ‘goes to sleep’, to what extent is it still a part of you although you experience no sensation from it? Would you remain you were you to lose all your limbs? Your face? Your sight? Your hearing? (Dalton Trumbo, 1935?, Johnny Got His Gun)

· When you are asleep, in what ways do you remain you? In what ways are you less you?

· Were you to fall into a coma, in what ways would you no longer be you?

· When you wake up from having been asleep, are you always sure that you are you? (Desmond Bagley, 1967, Landslide)

· Were you to lose your memory/memories, to what extent would you cease to be you? (e.g. Alzheimers)

· What are typically ‘you’ things to do? In what ways has who ‘you’ are changed through time?

IX. As a result of interaction with the environment, and particularly as a result of evaluational interaction with others, the structure of the self is formed - an organised, fluid but consistent conceptual pattern of perceptions of characteristics and relationships of the "I" or the "me", together with values attached to these concepts.

· Were you to be shipwrecked alone on a desert island for ten days, ten months, ten years, how would the ‘before’ you and ‘after’ you differ? (Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks)

· How much of ‘who you are’ belongs to the relationships you currently experience?

· In what ways do you become a different person in different relationships and situations?

· To what extent do you use the same thought patterns and language in the classroom as you use with a sexual partner?

X. 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.

· Which football (rugby, cricket, tennis or athletics) team do you support? The judicial system of which country is fairest? With which religion do you most readily identify? How important is it for you to have a pet?

· To what extent are the values that you express merely the values of the people who raised and educated you?

· What things about you irritate you?

XI. As experiences occur in the life of the individual, they are either, a) symbolised, perceived and organised into some relation to the self, b) ignored because there is no perceived relationship to the self structure, c) denied symbolisation or given distorted symbolisation because the experience is inconsistent with the structure of the self.

· What things about you do you find it difficult to hear about yourself?

· What compliments do you find it hard to accept?

· When you feel anxious, how typically do you attempt to place responsibility for your anxiety outside yourself? (e.g. “He makes me nervous” instead of “I feel nervous in his presence.”; “I have these desires, and I just can’t help myself.”)

XII. Most of the ways of behaving that are adopted by the organism are those that are consistent with the concept of self.

· What instances can you think of when you might have said: “I don’t understand why I said that” or “I don’t know what got into me.”?

XIII. Behaviour may, in some instances, be brought about by organic (i.e. lived) experiences and needs which have not been symbolised. Such behaviour may be inconsistent with the structure of the self but in such instances the behaviour is not "owned" by the individual (“I didn’t know what I was doing.” “It was as though someone else took over, and I stood aside and watched myself.”)

· Have you personal experience, in the face of great danger, of your own unexpected heroism or unanticipated dysfunction/incompetence?

XIV. Psychological maladjustment exists when the organism denies to awareness significant sensory and visceral experiences, which consequently are not symbolised and organised into the gestalt of the self structure. When this situation exists, there is a basic or potential psychological tension.

· What feelings (emotions) do you enjoy having?

· What feelings (emotions) do you easily accept that you feel?

· What feelings (emotions) do you dislike having?

· What feelings (emotions) do you consider it inappropriate or unacceptable to feel?

XV. Psychological adjustment exists when the concept of the self is such that all the sensory and visceral experiences of the organism are, or may be, assimilated on a symbolic level into a consistent relationship with the concept of self.

XVI. Any experience which is inconsistent with the organisation of the structure of the self may be perceived as a threat, and the more of these perceptions there are, the more rigidly the self structure is organised to maintain itself.

XVII. Under certain conditions, involving primarily complete absence of threat to the self structure, experiences which are inconsistent with it may be perceived and examined, and the structure of self revised to assimilate and include such experiences.

· When you have been offered the core conditions, what have you learned about yourself?

XVIII. When the individual perceives and accepts into one consistent and integrated system all his sensory and visceral experiences, then he is necessarily more understanding of others and is more accepting of others as separate individuals.

· To what extent do you feel more tolerant and accepting of other people when you feel at peace with yourself?

XIX. As the individual perceives and accepts into his/her self structure more of his/her organic experiences (i.e. experiences of living), s/he finds that s/he is replacing his/her present value system - based extensively on introjections which have been distortedly symbolised - with a continuing organismic valuing process.

Epilogue

The material presented defines the person centredness of Carl Rogers. Each writer (Mearns, Merry, Thorne, etc.) has their own version of person centredness that differs, at least in emphasis, to a greater or lesser degree, from the version proposed by Carl Rogers. Over the decades when he was writing, Carl Rogers changed his own emphasis several time. Your own person centredness is unlikely to be identical to that of Carl Rogers. This was fine by him because person centredness is about a way of being, and not about the rigid adherence to a catechism and canon of writing.

· With which of Rogers 19 propositions did you most easily resonate? Does this tell you anything about you?

· Which of the propositions did you consider least significant, or perhaps even wrong? Does this tell you anything about you?

· What have you learned about your own philosophical/theoretical base? How ready are you to write your own list of propositions? How confident would you feel defining yourself as a person centred counsellor?

· In your opinion, which of the propositions are so important that non-adherence to them would place a counsellor outside the person centred fold?

· What have you learned about the core conditions?

· What thoughts have you about this exercise?

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