Rogers' Seven Stages

Authentic Counselling Training

Questions to help elucidate
Rogers' seven stages of personality change in psychotherapy

[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.

The person-centred approach of Carl Rogers places considerable value on the phenomenological reality of the client, emphasising the irreducible uniqueness of the client as a person, the client’s experience and the meaning a client gives to their experience. Consequently, within this phenomenological framework, it can feel strange to consider aspects of the client in an abstracted and objective fashion. Rogers developed a theoretical structure, based on empirical study, to conceptualise the changes that take place in the behaviour and experiencing of a client through the process of psychotherapy.

In Client Centred Therapy, Rogers considered at length the process of psychotherapy (1951, pp.131-196). “In every therapeutic orientation people are helped. They feel more comfortable within themselves. Their behaviour changes, often in the direction of better adjustment. Their personalities seem different, both to themselves and to others who know them. … What are the psychological processes by which change comes about?” (Rogers, 1951, p.131). The purpose of psychotherapy is to help a client in their journey towards fuller functioning. Personality change towards fuller functioning does not, however, require psychotherapy, and may take place in response to all manner of significant or banal life experiences. A conceptual structure for personality change in psychotherapy can, therefore, also be considered more broadly as a model for psychological development.

Through empirical research, Rogers was able to recognise identifiable features that characterise positions on a continuum of personality change effected by the process of psychotherapy. In On Becoming a Person (Chapter 7: A Process Conception of Psychotherapy, pp.125-159), Rogers describes the poles of this continuum, and whilst acknowledging that it may be possible to discriminate any number of stages between these two poles, describes seven stages. Importantly, “… a given client … usually exhibits behaviours which cluster about a relatively narrow range on this continuum.” (Rogers, 1961, p.131). The significance of this is two-fold: a) just as it is not possible simultaneously to be in London and Edinburgh, a client is unlikely to exhibit behaviours and conceptualise experiences that are typical of different points on the continuum [this differs from work regarding personality dissociation, e.g. the work by John Rowan on sub-personalities]; b) Rogers’ instrument is sufficiently precise to gauge personality change.

Progress through Rogers' seven stages of psychological development is characterised by:

· movement from internal rigidity (fixity) towards increased internal fluidity (flowingness);

· a deepening sense of self and one’s internal life, and internal fluency;

· a progressive awareness of, acknowledgement of, and acceptance of one’s own feelings;

· a widening realisation that far from being simple and clear cut, the world, other people, and oneself involve complexity and ambiguity.

The questions that follow attempt to address issues that are characteristic of the stage to which the questions apply.

Stage One

1. To what extent are you able to talk about yourself, versus having a preference for communicating about externals?

2. To what extent do you spend time considering what is going on inside yourself?

3. a) To what extent are you comfortable with ambiguity?

b) In what ways do you manage and cope with ambiguity?

Stage Two

4. To what extent do you consider how you feel about people, things, events and circumstances? (Be careful to consider feelings (emotions) rather than thoughts / prejudices / beliefs.)

5. To what extent do you prefer circumstances to be one thing or the other?

6. To what extent do you comfortably own personal responsibility, versus perceiving problems as external to yourself? (Be careful to avoid equating personal responsibility with blame.)

Stage Three

7. To what extent do you talk (about yourself) in the first person ("I"), versus speaking in the second person ("You"; e.g. "If your career is important to you then you make the personal sacrifices required."), or speaking in the third person ("One", "People", "Everyone"; e.g. "One does what one can."; "People love a bit of gossip.")?

8. a) To what extent are you aware of what you are feeling now (in real time), rather than focusing on only feelings you have felt in the past?

b) How comfortable are you talking about what you are feeling now (in real time), rather than talking only about feelings you have felt in the past?

Stage Four

9. To what extent are you typically willing to bring into your awareness what you are feeling right now?

10. When you are aware of what you are feeling right now, how willing are you to:

a. Acknowledge to yourself your own mild / convenient feelings?

b. Acknowledge to yourself your own intense / inconvenient feelings?

c. Talk about a) and/or b) with a trusted person?

d. Put your feelings into action (e.g. to cry if you feel very sad; to rage if you feel anger; to embrace if you feel love)?

11. To what extent are you typically aware of inconsistencies and contradictions within yourself?

How willing are you to talk about such inconsistencies and contradictions within yourself?

How enthusiastic are you about addressing inconsistencies and contradictions within yourself?

12. How much of a risk is it for you to share something of yourself in a new close relationship?

Stage Five

Many of the questions relating to Stage Four also apply to Stage Five. Many of the features of Stage Five, particularly regarding feelings, represent a loosening of, and willingness to experience, what was held more rigidly, and experienced more reluctantly, in Stage Four.

13. How eager are you to embrace an awareness that what you feel, however unacceptable, is, at least in part, who you really are?

14. How enthusiastic are you to approach in yourself what you do not know about yourself, with the attendant risk that you might like / dislike what you discover?

15. How eager are you to achieve precision in your understanding and description regarding how you feel / are feeling?

16. To what extent do you engage in an internal dialogue (words and/or images) when faced with internal contradictions and inconsistencies?

Stage Six

Stage Six represents a further and significant loosening of feelings, awareness and experience. In addition to the fullness and richness of each of these, there is a sense of complete immersion in them while addressing them (e.g. in the counselling room).

17. To what extent can you allow yourself fully to be yourself, to feel and experience without reservation, while at the same time recognising what is taking place?

18. To what extent are you aware of the processes that underlie your surface responses – your own deeply-held values and motivations?

19. How eager are you to suppress your own tears, sighs and chuckles, unless convenient?

It is not easy to formulate questions that relate to Stage Seven. This final stage simultaneously represents both a culmination of the processes that have been taking place from Stage One, and also the final and complete loosening of rigidities.

Bibliography

Rogers, C.R. (1951) Client Centred Therapy, Constable, London.

Rogers, C.R. (1961) On Becoming a Person, Houghton Mifflin, Boston.

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Peter Hughes: introduction

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