Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1243 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Customer Reviews

Easy to understand where Rogers was coming from with book.
This was one of the first books I read when doing my course work in counselling skills training. It was easy to read, and understand what Carl Rogers was trying to get over about the need for the Core Conditions in the building of a therapeutic relationship. I felt it was more of an autobiography than a training manual, as reading it gave a small insight into how Roger's told of his own personal growth and how everyone can live life to their own maximum potential if they want to.

On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's view of Psychotherapy
Carl Roger's is one of the few theorists who you feel you really get to know through his writing, this book is no exception and helped me so much when I was training to become a counsellor. Roger's writes with ease and this book is essential for those trying to understand the importance of the Core Conditions to the therapeutic relationship. My copy is tattered now, read often and borrowed by many!

A humble masterpiece
This book by Carl Rogers on client-centered therapy may lack the drama, the force or the cleverness associated with some books on other forms of psychotherapy. What it doesn't seem to lack is a quiet wisdom that flowed from Rogers' many years of experience and sensitivity to his patients.

Despite some redundancy, being a collection of papers and presentations from Rogers over many years, "On Becoming A Person":

1) presents a branch of psychotherapy distinct from psychoanalysis and learning theories as well as from behaviorism, focused more on basically well people growing than on helping disturbed people get better.

2) is rooted in Roger's positive view of human nature as basically good and constructive, as he discovered in encounters with his patients. Roger's emphasis on empathic understanding, on not imposing theoretical speculations about the clients state of mind and on avoiding forceful interference would seem to avoid some of the abuses associated with some other psychotherapies.

3) presents ideas about the helping relationship that Rogers extended from psychotherapy into other areas such as education. Rogers's nondirective approach suggested to him the possibility of a progressive education free of examinations, of grades, of conclusions, and even of teachers.

4) despite its "fuzziness", Rogers does present some experimental evidence in favor of client-centered therapy as compared to those based on learning theory and behaviorism.

5) Rogers' shows appreciation of the growing power of the behavioral sciences but expresses concern less this science, like other sciences, becomes manipulated by politicians to the detriment of people. He basically wonders, if a culture is to be designed, as Skinner had suggested, what safeguards there are on the designer.

Rogers may seem too rosy and to be cherry-picking his results. The kind of measurements he presents, such as a psychological test measuring "changes in the self" based on self reporting may seem too fuzzy. How long it takes, compared to other available approaches, to get effective change seems not to have been a primary consideration for Rogers and may explain the rise of more recent approaches like Cognitive Therapy and Constructive Living. As a lay person, I respect the humane treatment Rogers recommended toward those entering psychotherapy as clients.

A major contribution by Rogers seems to be his recognition that his clients were not objects to do things to but rather fellow people whose experience he could share in.