A Conversation with Carl Rogers: The Job of a Therapist | Saybrook University

I have a very difficult and a very fascinating job serving as counselor and therapist to people with problems troubled individuals people in a good deal of distress and I'd like to tell you something about my job this is dr. Carl Rogers professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Wisconsin for more than 30 years I've been serving as a counselor to people with troubles a long line of them it seems to me some of them have been children some adolescents some parents some older adults and many college students and as I think back over

the years it seems to me that many of them are people like you and me people with problems in regard to their marriage or their family their home their schoolwork so on others are people with more serious disturbances people who have had really serious troubles in life who find themselves continually defeated by by life and its problems and whose are quite desperately in need of help others are people with even more serious difficulties people who have really withdrawn from the world and back into their own private world where they've left life because it's been too

difficult for them to face and have gradually gotten back into a world of their own where it's very difficult to to get at them now I think that there some things that I've learned in these years of work that I would like to try to tell you about I think that I've learned something about the kind of relationship that can be helpful in working with individuals and I'd like to share some of that with you I might say first of all that I've had a good deal of unlearning to do too when I first went

into this work feeling quite proud of my newly gained psychological knowledge I thought that I would surely be able to diagnose and understand the cause of a person's problems and try to explain that cause to him and be of help to him in that way al I found that I could often make a diagnosis of his difficulty I think that in many instances I was correct but I found that it didn't particularly help to try to explain to a person that cause of his difficulties then I also felt pleased with the fact that I would

be able to make suggestions to them that I would be able to having understood the cause of their problem to help an individual by giving him sound suggestions as to what he should do and the ways he should behave and course of action he should follow well I I did that and it seemed to me that times it was quite satisfying to me to make those good suggestions but again I found that it did not help people simply are not helped by advice if they were they would never have to come to a counsellor because

people with problems have had dozens of individuals giving them advice they've had advice from their friends and their families and their lawyers and their doctors if advice would help no one would ever come to a counselor because they would already have had plenty of good advice so I've gradually come to recognize that the most valuable kind of help I can give is the kind of psychological climate or psychological atmosphere that I can create and I'd like to a little bit about that let me make it quite specific suppose that a person is coming to see

this individual has made an appointment as called and says that he has a problem he wants to talk to me about he's coming for the first time I used to feel that I would want a great deal of information about this person before I began to work with him I thought I'd want a social case history I'd like to know his what his personal experience in his school experience and so on might be I'd want the results of tests that might give me a picture of his personality characteristics I thought I needed all that information

in order to start work with him as time has gone on I feel less and less need of that kind of information it's really not too important to me what brought him to his present state because the only thing that really matters is the kind of relationship that we can form right now and as I think about that and think about a person coming in for the first time I think maybe I'll digress a moment just a little bit too facetiously perhaps and try and explain to you the instruments that are a part of my

trade if you want to call it that they're all here and I'll point them out to you first of all there's a chair I do need a chair for my client it has to be firm and strong and comfortable if it fulfills those requirements I think it's adequate then second I use this tape recorder frequently I want to make a recording of the interviews that I am holding because it helps me to go back afterward and listen to the interview and perhaps catch some of the feelings that I wasn't quite aware of at the time

it also helps me to see where I've made mistakes or perhaps I haven't understood adequately it helps me to hear inflections and tones a voice that at the time I might not have thought because they were too subtle so a recorder is a helpful instrument in my work and then you may get a chuckle out of this but the third instrument is a box of Kleenex because as men and women get deeply into their problems and as they get below the surface and begin to deal with the things that really trouble them inside if the

rare person who doesn't share at least a few tears at some time or other the lows are three of the instruments the fourth instrument is me I have to face the fact that I'm the instrument which is most important in my work so what about me the chair doesn't very often fail I've never had one collapse the box of Kleenex that always stands up providing I have enough the recorder usually functions adequately though I I've had it go wrong but I'm the one that I better think most about it's my attitudes which are most important

the real question in my mind when a person comes into my office is will I be able to create this climate which can be of help to him I never can be sure but I can at least share with you some of the things that I feel go to make up that psychological climate of helpfulness the kind of relationship that seems to be effective in working with people I think the very first element in that is that I find that when I'm of the most help those are the times when I am genuine when I'm

real one word that I like to describe it is when I'm transparent when it seems as though there is nothing nothing hidden from this person that I'm working with now what I mean by that is that whatever I'm experiencing is really known to me it's open to me I know what I'm feeling and I would like for any feelings of mine that are really relevant to this relationship to be transparent in the relationship and to be known to the person I'm working with what are some of the feelings that unlikely to have well as I

work with individuals gradually I come to care I really come to care in regard to this person and I'd like for that to show another feeling that certainly is very often real in me is one of compassion because sometimes individuals have had lives a terrible loneliness and real real torment and I do feel compassionate toward them and I'd like that to show and then one thing that is almost certain to be present in me is interest people are fascinating and I and I am interested in them as individuals and I'd like that to show and

then I feel a desire to really understand understand them in a way that that seems to catch their point of view and I like that to show but then suppose I have other feelings suppose I feel somewhat bored with this individual well I'm not proud of it but I'd like that to show too or suppose I feel resentment I don't very often present my clients but if I do or when I do I would want that to be evident to the person to the point is that I don't believe a therapist can be helpful to

another person unless he can really be himself and being himself means letting any of his real feelings be present in the relationship now it doesn't mean that I'm going to talk a lot about these feelings that I've mentioned as a matter of fact I'm I'm pretty quiet on an interview I don't really say a great deal but I would like it for my feelings to really be visible and evident to this other individual I want to be real and open within myself so that I communicate just one message now that may sound a little strange

but often we communicate more than one message and that's very confusing suppose I resent the fact that a client of mine is taking too much time but I cover it up well then he hears one message but he's actually receiving another message too because he may sense my resentment I think we sense lots of things that we don't really understand easily or suppose I really care about this person but I cover that up by trying to take a strictly professional cool attitude and I don't let it show well then to the client is getting two

messages on the one hand there's this coolness on the other hand perhaps he does cinsay a warmth in me I like it to be just one message it may seem a little odd to you that I give so much stress to the therapist being real even when his feelings are not those that he would be very proud of I think perhaps I can illustrate the reason for that by telling you a story there was a counselor in our staff who one day received a message that one of his children had been hurt naturally he was

greatly upset and his first thought was that he would cancel the rest of his appointments for that day and go home and find out how serious the trouble was and then he got to thinking about his next client this was a client who came from a long distance way out of town and the counselor thought I can do that to him he's come a long ways I'll see this one person and then I'll go home so you have the client come in he tried to listen to him he tried to be sympathetic and understanding but

all the time his mind was really on his child and wondering how serious the accident had been and the interview didn't go well and finally he realized this can't go on so he said to the client I'm very sorry I keep trying to listen to you but I really am not adequately paying attention to you today and the reason is that my little boy has been hurt and I don't know how bad it is and I keep thinking about that all the time and the client set back in his chair and said oh it's you

I thought it was me I don't know when you get the real point of that story but you see when the counselor was not real and he was trying to put up a front of understanding and sympathy that he wasn't really feeling the clients sense that something was wrong but then directed all that feeling against himself and thought he must be the one who was doing something wrong so it was a great relief to him to this - when the therapist became real instead of trying to put up a false front so as I say

the first element in this relationship is that I want to be real I want to be genuine I want to be transparent now the second thing that I find of a great deal of help in working with my clients is if I prize the individual if I feel a real liking and acceptance and warmth toward this person here's a wife let's say who's full of bitterness toward her husband making all kinds of complaint some of them pretty extreme complaints can i really be accepting to this individual and I really accept her as she is with

all her bitterness and hate or here's a man who's obviously bright and yet who sits there telling me that how completely inadequate he is that he really can't do a thing it is utterly impotent to do neat life on any reasonable parents can I accept a person like that can I accept him as he is or here's a man who's stepping out with a woman not his wife going against the morals of the community can I accept that person as a yield it's that kind of question which continually comes to mind do I accept the

person in the way in which he really presents himself or do i form a judgment about him I think that acceptance means a willingness for a person to be separate now it's very very hard for most of us to let another individual be separate we want him to be someone like me we want to judge him we want to say things right well that's wrong or we want to say well I had an experience like that but I I wasn't depressed by it we continually try to see him through our eyes instead of letting him

be a separate individual with his own feelings his own attitudes and his own behavior and if there's one thing that I've learned in my experience it is that I want to value him as he is with the potentialities he has to be sure but I want to value and prize and accept him as he is a separate person with the right to his own feelings and his own behavior and his own way of seeing things and that last brings me to the third element in the kind of relationship I want to create can I understand

this person sensitively accurately can I understand it with empathy which means getting inside his world and seeing his world from his own point of view can I really sense the flavor of his fee and the attitude that he's talking about here's a bright attractive married woman who tells me that she finds life so hopeless that she often considers suicide can I really understand how with all her good qualities nevertheless life can seem that way to her that's that's what I mean by really understanding from within can I see how remote and alone and hopeless she

feels fight of what all the rest of us might think of as very positive elements in her life or a boy at the state hospital who gives me a confused story about property assessments of all things and tries to tell me how property is assessed and once it's assessed it stays that way for a long long time even though the property keeps changing and as I listen and listen to him talk about that I begin to sense the meaning that he's trying to tell me that though things remain the same on the surface yet things

are changing underneath and I'd like to really sense the way in which that seems to him and through his garbled talk to get the personal meaning that he's trying to communicate now it's simply incredibly difficult for most of us to simply understand without judging do you see the other person's point of view without making judgments about it we have absolutely no experience of that kind in our social conversation or in our ordinary life when you listen to this talk or when you listen to your friends speech you immediately begin to form judgments about it you

don't listen to try to get the other person's point of view you try to make judgments of it from your point of view that's why I find that in training counselors it's terribly difficult to get them simply to be willing to understand from within and to stop at that point I think people who do listen and understand and who don't judge are deeply valued in any community where they live they get to be known as people who who help people ask why does this help why it is just that if you just understand the person

doesn't that confirm him and what he's doing doesn't it make him settled in his problems no that's not so if I understand a mother who is rejecting her child or a parent husband or someone of that sort and can understand him accurately and accept him completely then that creates in him the most positive basis for change that I know that's the kind of climate which permits a person to change and makes it likely that he will change whereas without any understanding and without any acceptance individuals are often frozen into the very behavior patterns which they

wish they could leave behind so I would like to be a very sensitive instrument in understanding and sensing just the flavor and meaning of what this person is trying to tell me and letting them know that I do understand that and that I sent how it how it feels to him now a fourth element in this climate I'm trying to describe and this is the first element I have spoken of that has to do with my client is the question of whether the client can perceive in me some of these attitudes that I've spoken about

he doesn't have to perceive them all the time it is the question of whether he can at times perceive me as acceptance and understanding and real if he does perceive me in that way and if I have those attitudes then in my experience constructive change in this other person is almost inevitable he will move and change in ways that will help him to resolve his problems and we'll make him a socially more constructive person but sometimes that's very very difficult a one girl that I'm working with feels that what I'm really trying to do is

to find out how stupid she is and even though that's not my intent or my attitude yet that is the way that she sees me or I think of a man whom I'm working with at the present time - who says to me you don't really care to you I'm just a guinea pig you don't really care at all about me well he's sure that I have no concern about how tormented he is and yet actually in time perhaps he will be able to sense the attitude which I do hold toward or there's another girl

at the State Hospital with whom I'm working who thinks that she hears me calling her bad names now in other words she doesn't perceive that I care doesn't perceive that I have any regard for her and yet at times she does little by little we're getting to the point where she can sense in me some of the attitudes that will make it possible to for her to change and grow and be helped so even if I have achieved some of the attitudes that I have tried to talk about I can't be sure that they'll be

perceived by my client especially I can't be sure that they will be immediately perceived by people who feel hurt and long and unloved well I think those are the conditions which if they exist almost guaranteed the person will be helped now am I just talking in very personal terms is it just a fantasy or are there facts that would back up this point of view well I think you might be interested in one research study that I could tell you about doctor health kiti's at the University of Chicago took small bits of recorded interviews from

cases that have been helped a great deal and also from cases who had received relatively little help than working with a counselors and these various bits she had judged by judges who listened to them who knew nothing about the cases they simply listened to these brief excerpts from the interviews and then first they would rate what they listened to as to whether the counselor was genuine was he being real and then they would listen to it again and they would give a rating as to the degree of warmth and acceptance and positive regard that he

felt for the client and then they would listen still a third time and rate it as to the accuracy of his understanding of the clients meanings as they were being expressed she found that there was a clear association between these qualities in the therapist and the degree of success in in the clinic in other words the more the therapist had these attitudes that I've tried to describe the more likely it was that the person would find himself growing would find his problems resolved and so on so these attitudes that I have described as being distilled

out of my experience are also being confirmed by hard-headed research now in closing I want to read you something from a paper I recently wrote I wanted to sum up what it feels like to be a counselor to be a therapist and here's what I wrote the counselor it's a new venture in relating he feels here is this other person my client I'm a little afraid of him afraid of the depths in him as I am a little afraid of the depth in myself yet as he speaks I began to feel a respect for him

to feel my kinship doing I sense how frightening his world is for him how tightly he tries to hold it in place I would like to sense his feelings and I would like him to know that I understand these feelings I would like him to know that I stand with him in his tight constricted little world and that I can look upon it unafraid perhaps I can make it a safer world for him I would like my feelings in this relationship with him to be as clear and transparent as possible so that there a discernible

reality for him to which he can return again and again I realized that his own fears may make him perceive me at times as uncaring as rejecting as an intruder as one who doesn't understand I want fully to accept these feelings in him and yet I hope also that my own real feelings will show through so clearly that in time we can't fail to proceed most of all I want him to encounter in me a real person I don't need to be uneasy as to whether my own feelings or therapeutic what I am and what

I feel are good enough to be a basis for therapy if I can transparently be what I am and what I feel in relationship to him then perhaps he can be what he is openly and without fear