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ROGERS’S PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY: APPLICATIONS, RELATED THEORETICAL CONCEPTIONS, AND CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH
1. QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED IN THIS CHAPTER
1. Self-Experience Discrepancy
1. Therapeutic Conditions Necessary for Change
2. Outcomes of Client-Centered Therapy
3. Presence
3. CASE A CASE EXAMPLE: MRS. OAK
1. Semantic Differential: Phenomenological Theory
5. RELATED THEORETICAL CONCEPTIONS
1. The Human Potential Movement
1. Abraham H. Maslow (1908–1970)
2. The Positive Psychology Movement
1. Classifying Human Strengths
2. The Virtues of Positive Emotions
3. Flow
1. The Existentialism of Sartre: Consciousness, Nothingness, Freedom, and Responsibility
2. Contemporary Experimental Existentialism
6. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THEORY AND RESEARCH
1. Discrepancies Among Parts of the Self
2. Fluctuations in Self-Esteem and Contingencies of Worth
3. Authenticity and Internally Motivated Goals
4. Cross-Cultural Research on the Self
1. Cultural Differences in the Self and the Need for Positive Self-Regard
1. Scientific Observation: the Database
5. Applications
6. Major Contributions and Summary
9. REVIEW
Chapter Focus
A good friendship has qualities that are both wonderful and mysterious. If you’re stressed out, if life is giving you too much to handle, talking to a friend—simply discussing your problems and having the person listen carefully—can make you feel better. It’s hard to know why. Even if your friend doesn’t have any specific advice, even if he or she doesn’t offer any solutions to life’s problems, the mere fact that the person is there for you, ready to listen, can make things feel better.
And what does your friend make you feel better about? School? Relationships? Maybe. But if you’re lucky, your friend makes you feel better about that most important of things: you. By letting you explore and express your feelings, your friend somehow improves your sense of self. You end up accepting your limitations and appreciating your strengths.
Providing this type of relationship, and accomplishing this sort of change in self-concept, was Carl Rogers’s goal in his client-centered therapy. His therapeutic approach, which was a foundation on which he built his theory of personality (Chapter 5), is one focus of this chapter. As you will learn, in therapy Rogers tried to discover how his clients denied and distorted aspects of their everyday experience. He then created a therapeutic relationship—a kind of trusting friendship in a therapeutic setting—within which clients could abandon these distortions, explore their true self, and thereby experience personal growth.
In addition to learning about this clinical application of Rogers’s theory of personality, a sec