Congruence

When I am studying a thinker, I always need to start by reading up about their life to get a sense of them as a human being.

It was significant for me to find evidence of Carl Rogers’ real-life congruence.

In the Three Approaches to Psychotherapy video series, the volunteer client, Gloria Szymanski, was filmed in a therapy session with three therapists. She developed a lifelong correspondence with one of them, Carl Rogers. According to Gloria’s daughter’s memoir, Living with ‘The Gloria Films’ by Pamela J. Burry (2013), Rogers:

“has a taste for humility, and is loath to be seen as a redeemer, and therefore, to my mind, he was the quintessential closet-Buddhist.”

There you go, he sounds OK doesn’t he?

Creativity and healing

The founder of counselling whose ideas led to humanistic psychology observed a link between creativity and healing.

He viewed creativity as embodying “the same tendency which we discover so deeply as the curative force in psychotherapy” (p. 350).

The creative pathway is unique, so naturally, embarking on it brings “the anxiety of separateness… I am alone. No one has ever done just this before” (Rogers, 1961, p. 356).

Rogers, C. (1960). On Becoming a Person. A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. First UK edition (1967). London: Constable. 60th anniversary edition (2020). London: Robinson.