Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902 – February 4, 1987) was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of humanistic psychology and was known especially for his person-centered psychotherapy.

[3] Based on a 1982 survey of 422 respondents of U.S. and Canadian psychologists, he was considered the most influential psychotherapist in history (Freud ranked third).

After being raised in a strict religious environment as an altar boy at the vicarage of Jimpley, he became isolated, independent, and disciplined, gaining knowledge and an appreciation for the scientific method in a practical world.

At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he joined the fraternity Alpha Kappa Lambda and initially planned to study agriculture before switching to history and finally settling on religion.

At age 20, following his 1922 trip to Beijing, China, for an international Christian conference, Rogers started to doubt his religious convictions.

Brian Thorne, who knew and collaborated with Rogers throughout the latter's final decade of life, writes: "In his later years his openness to experience compelled him to acknowledge the existence of a dimension to which he attached such adjectives as mystical, spiritual, and transcendental".

As an intern in 1927–1928 at the now-defunct Institute for Child Guidance in New York, Rogers studied with psychologist Alfred Adler.

[12] Later in life, Rogers recalled: Accustomed as I was to the rather rigid Freudian approach of the Institute—seventy-five-page case histories, and exhaustive batteries of tests before even thinking of "treating" a child—I was shocked by Dr. Adler's very direct and deceptively simple manner of immediately relating to the child and the parent.

From 1935 to 1940, he lectured at the University of Rochester and wrote The Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child (1939), based on his experience in working with troubled children.

[13][14] In 1940, Rogers became professor of clinical psychology at Ohio State University, where he wrote his second book, Counseling and Psychotherapy (1942).

In it, Rogers suggests that by establishing a relationship with an understanding, accepting therapist, a client can resolve difficulties and gain the insight necessary to restructure their life.

One of his graduate students at the University of Chicago, Thomas Gordon, established the Parent Effectiveness Training movement.

Another student, Eugene T. Gendlin, who was getting his Ph.D. in philosophy, developed the psychotherapeutic method of focusing based on Rogerian listening.

[19] Rogers continued teaching at the University of Wisconsin until 1963 when he became a resident at the new Western Behavioral Sciences Institute (WBSI) in La Jolla, California.

In his later years, Rogers focused on applying his theories to address political oppression and social conflict globally.

He facilitated dialogue between Protestants and Catholics in Belfast, Blacks and Whites in South Africa, and people transitioning to democracy in Brazil.

At 85, his final trip was to the Soviet Union, where he conducted workshops that promoted communication and creativity, impressed by the awareness of his work among Russians.

In 1987, Rogers suffered a fall that resulted in a fractured pelvis; he had life alert and was able to contact paramedics.

Incongruent individuals, in their pursuit of positive regard, lead lives that include falsity and do not realize their potential.

Their personality becomes disorganised and bizarre; irrational behavior, associated with earlier denied aspects of self, may erupt uncontrollably.

The first empirical evidence of the client-centered approach's effectiveness was published in 1941 at the Ohio State University by Elias Porter, using the recordings of therapeutic sessions between Rogers and his clients.

[28] Porter used Rogers's transcripts to devise a system to measure the degree of directiveness or non-directiveness a counselor employed.

[30][31] The application to education has a large robust research tradition similar to that of therapy, with studies having begun in the late 1930s and continuing today (Cornelius-White, 2007).

Rogers described the approach to education in Client-Centered Therapy and wrote Freedom to Learn devoted exclusively to the subject in 1969.

[32] Rogers had the following five hypotheses regarding learner-centered education: In 1970, Richard Young, Alton L. Becker, and Kenneth Pike published Rhetoric: Discovery and Change, a widely influential college writing textbook that used a Rogerian approach to communication to revise the traditional Aristotelian framework for rhetoric.

[33][34] The application to cross-cultural relations has involved workshops in highly stressful situations and global locations, including conflicts and challenges in South Africa, Central America, and Ireland.

[35] Rogers, Alberto Zucconi, and Charles Devonshire co-founded the Istituto dell'Approccio Centrato sulla Persona (Person-Centered Approach Institute) in Rome, Italy.

The meeting was notable for several reasons: it brought national figures together as people (not as their positions), it was a private event, and was an overwhelming positive experience where members heard one another and established real personal ties, as opposed to stiffly formal and regulated diplomatic meetings.

[43] Theorists of a specifically Rogerian, person-centered approach to politics as dialogue have made substantial contributions to that project.

[38][44] From the late 1950s into the '60s, Rogers served on the board of the Human Ecology Fund, a CIA-funded organization that provided grants to researchers looking into personality.