On Becoming a Person

On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

60 pages2-hour read

Nonfiction

Reference/Text Book

Adult

Published in 1961

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Key Figures

Carl R. Rogers

The author, Carl R. Rogers (1902-1987), was a prominent American psychologist and the founder of client-centered therapy, a humanistic approach that offered a significant alternative to the dominant schools of psychoanalysis and behaviorism in the mid-19th century. On Becoming a Person is a collection of his key essays from 1951 to 1961, which articulate his therapeutic philosophy and its implications for living. Through a direct, accessible authorial voice, using the first-person “I,” Rogers presents himself fellow traveler, grounding his theories in decades of clinical experience and his own personal journey toward authenticity.

Rogers uses his autobiography in the first chapter, “This is Me” (3), to establish his credibility through shared experience rather than professional clinical distance. He presents his path from a strict, religious upbringing through studies in agriculture and ministry, as a means to explain his prioritization of intellectual freedom and firsthand knowledge in his practice. Citing his work with youths living with mental health conditions in Rochester, Roger’s uses a case study from his own experience to exemplify the limits of more traditional authoritative, intellectualized methods. Emphasizing that real change happens when the therapist trusts that “it is the client who knows what hurts, what directions to go, what problems are important” (11-12), Rogers frames his relationship with clients—and the reader—as a partnership for mutual understanding. This principle organizes the conditions Rogers describes throughout the book: genuineness, unconditional positive regard, and empathic understanding.

Rogers’s purpose is to explain how these conditions facilitate client-led growth. He states that his most significant learning is that individuals have a “basically positive direction” (26). When provided with a safe, accepting relationship, they naturally move toward self-actualization. For Rogers, the “good life” is a continual process of becoming more fully and honestly oneself.

Sigmund Freud

Rogers engages closely with the theories and work of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the leading founder of psychoanalytic techniques and theories from the late 1800s onwards. Strongly influenced by Darwinian theory of the “survival of the fittest,” Freud developed a theory of the “id”—atavistic inner impulses—and the “ego”—the veneer of conditioned or socialized control—arguing that humans are driven by basic needs which have destructive or selfish effects.

Rogers’s therapeutic model diverges from the prevalent Freudian theory significantly, rejecting Freudians’ premise that mankind’s “basic nature, had best be kept under control or under cover or both” (91) because of the destructive, competitive urges of evolutionary drive. In contrast, the humanistic principles of On Becoming a Person asserts the inherent positive qualities of the human individual, and their potential to effect beneficial change on themselves and one another; as Rogers observes, mankind is more “self-preserving and social,” than “untamed and antisocial (91-92).

Rogers’s practical focus on the improved welfare of the patient leads him to further critique Freudian theory, presenting psychoanalysis as more of an intellectual and conceptual model for understanding human patterns of thought, than a beneficial and effective tool for improving an individual’s happiness. In citing the lack of “objective evidence of constructive personality change” (230), Rogers dismisses psychoanalysis as an academic, rather than therapeutic, method.

Søren Kierkegaard

Rogers quotes and references the 19th-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) as a key philosophical predecessor whose existentialist ideas resonate with the goals of client-centered therapy, i.e., the therapeutic approach in which the client, not the therapist, directs their own growth. Rogers explicitly grounds this view of personal development in Kierkegaard’s framework.

Rogers borrows the philosopher’s iconic phrase “to be that self which one truly is” (163) as the title of Chapter 8, arguing that the ultimate aim of a happy life is to realize one’s true self and therapy as a process through which individuals can move toward this goal. For Rogers, this existentialist principle connects to the book’s core theme of Becoming a Person Through Experience. By aligning his work with Kierkegaard, Rogers positions the struggle for personal authenticity as a universal human quest, connecting his therapeutic message to a broader philosophy of life.

B. F. Skinner

Rogers uses the work of B. F. Skinner (1904-1990), a leading figure in behaviorist psychology, as an intellectual counterpoint to his own views. Viewing human behavior as a response to environmental stimuli, Skinner’s studies explored social engineering and programmed learning, in which reward is used to encourage desired behaviors.

Skinner’s deterministic view of human behavior, developed through his research on operant conditioning, clashed with Rogers’s humanistic and phenomenological (i.e., focused on an individual’s subjective experience) approach. The two men engaged in public debates, highlighting a central conflict in 20th-century American psychology regarding freedom, control, and the purpose of science. On Becoming a Person continues this exchange in textual form. Rogers presents Skinner’s vision of a society in which behavioral science is used to control and manipulate individuals toward predetermined goals like being “happy, informed, skillful, well-behaved, and productive” as a dangerous path toward a world where personhood is lost (387). By explicitly refuting Skinner’s views, Rogers argues for an approach that releases human potential and enhances individual freedom.