Warner Scholar Analyzes Work of Renowned Psychologist
The 'Enduring Interest' of Carl Rogers

What became a fulfilling personal and scholarly relationship started for Howard Kirschenbaum with the cosmic question most doctoral students ask: Just what is the topic of my dissertation?

Kirschenbaum, then enrolled in an educational psychology program at Temple University, was intrigued by the life and work of Carl Rogers, arguably America's most influential counselor and psychotherapist. The opportunity hit him squarely: No Rogers biography had been written, Rogers was alive and stellar with his "client-centered" approach to therapy, and he was accessible.

At the time, Kirschenbaum, now chair of counseling and human development at the Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, interviewed Rogers extensively, gathered information from more than 100 former colleagues and associates, and read everything Rogers wrote.

They also became colleagues and friends. "He led workshops at a conference center I directed in the Adirondacks," says Kirschenbaum, who is Frontier Professor of School, Family and Community Relations. "He stayed at my home and I at his."

"As it turned out, Rogers lived for 15 very productive years after I started my work in 1971," he says. "Now 15 years after his death, I've got a whole quarter century of perspective."

And with that long view, Kirschenbaum presented new material this year, the 100th anniversary year of the birth of Rogers (1902-1987). One of the leading authorities on the psychotherapist's work, Kirschenbaum published the first biography, On Becoming Carl Rogers (and is currently working on a revision), and coedited The Carl Rogers Reader and Carl Rogers: Dialogues. He is doing further research and writing on the current influence of Rogers's client-centered/ person-centered approach. Also under way is a multimedia presentation on Rogers's work that could develop into an educational film. (Kirschenbaum presented it this summer as a keynote speaker at the Third World Congress on Psychotherapy in Vienna, one of several this year where he's given papers on Rogers.)

The practitioner who popularized the term "client," Rogers was the first to record counseling sessions. And, Kirschenbaum underscores, Rogers conducted more empirical research on counseling and psychotherapy than had ever been done before. He helped spread counseling and psychotherapy to many other helping professions beyond medicine and clinical psychology.

When people think of famous names in psychology, Sigmund Freud invariably comes to mind. "They'll also think of B. F. Skinner," says Kirschenbaum. "And if they're at all aware of humanistic psychology, they'll think of Rogers, a giant in the history of psychology."

As his career was just beginning, Rogers found work as a clinical psychologist in Rochester, where he moved in 1928 with his young family. He headed a section of what was then the Rochester Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children; he later directed the Rochester Child Guidance Center.

As many as 700 children a year were sent to the society for a range of behavior and personality disorders. From them, Rogers gathered case studies and treatment methods that led to his own nondirective, client-centered approach. He spent a number of years teaching part time in the psychology and social work departments at the University before he left in 1940.

In his later years, Rogers applied the person-centered approach to resolving intergroup and international conflict.

Kirschenbaum is finding that the psychologist's work attracts huge numbers of followers today in newly emerging democracies such as Russia, Brazil, South Africa, and in Eastern Europe. About 175 centers worldwide support Rogers's method to helping relationships.

"I believe that's because the person-centered approach is very consistent with their national aspirations," points out Kirschenbaum, "There's always going to be a tension between the control and assessment-oriented approaches versus those that empower individuals like Rogers's. I think Rogers and his work have an enduring interest."

Sharon Dickman

Maintained by University Public Relations
Please send your comments and suggestions to:
Rochester Review.