Person-Centred Audio - Listen While You Browse!

If you look over to the right in the sidebar, you'll see the LISTEN WHILE YOU BROWSE section of our site. Here's some more information about our playlist:

TRACKS 1-4: Carl Rogers - Being Yourself (Audio Book) - first released as a 4 cassette series in June, 1977.

TRACK 5: A selection from Carl Rogers' Some Observations on the Organization of Personality - narrated by John Lescault.

TRACK 6: Don Goewey, author of Mystic Cool, discusses neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to grow neurons) as it relates to stress, fear and addiction. Don gives an explanation of mirror neurons and their role in the social brain’s ability to learn from participating in support groups such as 12-Step programs. Don ends with some easy to use tips for healthy brain development using some tools he learned from his long time friend, psychologist Carl Rogers.

TRACK 7: Dr Wade Hannon – The Person Centered Approach in Counseling (talk with CounselorAudioSource.net's Dr. Jill Nelson (both from North Dakota State University).

TRACK 8: Dr. Juergen Kriz on Self-Actualization and Person-Centred Psychotherapy - fascinating 3-way discussion with the brilliant person-centred systems theorist.

TRACK 9: Person-centered therapy - from the Social Work Podcast series, hosted by J.B. Singer (February 12, 2007).

TRACK 10: Carl Rogers - AHP Keynote Address from 1983 - Although it has had a major impact on culture, Humanistic Psychology has had too little impact on mainstream psychology.

TRACKS 11-12: Carl Rogers - AHP talk from 1974, Do We Need “A” Reality - Part 1 features Carl discussing social constructivist theory as a promising resource for learning and growth; Part 2 is a follow-up Q&A session.

TRACK 13: Carl Rogers - To Be the Self That Truly Is (1957) - citing Soren Kirkegaard, Carl discusses psychology and a meaningful life.

TRACKS 14-15: Carl Rogers - New World / New Person (22 February 1981) - Part 1 features Carl discussing a world in turmoil and travail – chaos, terrorism and confusion - and his predictions on how persons will be able to live in an uncertain future; Part 2 is a follow-up Q&A session.

TRACK 16: Maureen O'Hara - Carl Rogers Award Presentation Podcast: Psychological Literacy for Transformational Times. On August 18, 2007 Maureen received the Carl Rogers award for "outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of humanistic psychology" from the American Psychological Association's Division of Humanistic Psychology at the APA convention in San Francisco and delivered this presentation.

TRACK 17: Dr. Jeffrey Zeig, Director of the Milton Erickson Foundation (http://www.erickson-foundation.org/), architect of The Evolution of Psychotherapy Conferences (http://www.evolutionofpsychotherapy.com/), and editor or author of more than 20 books (http://www.zeigtucker.com/), tells his reminiscences about Carl Rogers.

TRACK 18: Dr. Ed Neukrug talks about an unexpected response from Carl Rogers when he asked him a question. Entitled: "Oh my God, he doesn't like me!"

TRACK 19: Dr. Howard (Howie) Kirschenbaum, well-known biographer of Carl Rogers, tells a story about the "second" Rogers-Skinner debate.

TRACK 20: Dr. Sam Gladding, Wake Forest University and the past-president of the American Counseling Association tells a story about "The Harder Side of Carl Rogers".

TRACK 21: Dr. Gay Swenson Barfield, co-founder with Carl Rogers and former Director of the Carl Rogers Peace Project, tells a story about Carl: "Where he Walks his Talk".

The Trajectory Of The Non-Directive Paradigm

To all,

“We” in community at ADPCA in Rochester had a fight and I feel sad in the wake of it. I guess I was already sad and not up to the argument in the first place because I found in the course of it that I had no words with which to argue my point in the battle within what I believe has been a thirty, forty or fifty year war within the approach.

I haven’t really had my words for this ongoing fight since Barbara Brodley died. I more completely lost my words and my energy when my own mother died. I was trying to pick up my pieces when Nat died — he died about a month after I wrote an email about death to the ADPCA listserv — an email that had words but was incomprehensible.

I woke up this morning, the last day of a much needed vacation for me and Bert. We spent our vacation walking in forests (but sleeping in motels). So as I write (still to a far degree without my words) I see forest shadows with little sprinkles of sunshine, green moss, and mud, vermillion, yellow and white mushrooms, green leaves, pine needles, dying growth, stricken and dead trees, friendly chipmunks and endless mosquitoes.

So I woke up thinking about the ADPCA fight and about Carl Rogers.

To me Rogers’ theory has a trajectory that soars into the netherworlds of philosophy and post-modernism.

The 1959 theory statement is a crystalline work of art.


Embedded as it is in the Koch book with the Koch mission, the theory seems grounded in science (social science). But, within that chapter, Rogers states that we do not know what the far philosophical reaches of the statement will come to mean. The theory, in 1959, is crystalline, embedded as if in rock, with a symmetrical diagram no less. But the crystal is like coral reef — it is alive and moving, delicate and ephemeral like a snowflake, lost but not gone, but the moment has died, or is it dead? Is it particle or wave?

Is it a bird, a plane? It is certainly not Superman. It is as flickering as each of our capacity to experience the attitudinal conditions from moment to moment. But it is also in the cracks of our fatigue and prejudices — in our incongruence as well as our congruence.

So back to our war within the approach. How do we survive? Are we incapable of compromise and resolution? I say, yes, I am incapable even though I don’t want to fight. I think to myself thoughts like, “They” don’t understand Rogers, “they” don’t get the theory, “they” don’t register the trajectory of the theory. Particle and wave? With all of the space in the universe, doesn’t “it” have to be more wave than particle — or is it really all emptiness and death?

There’s a good bit of the rub. It’s with this death stuff. That’s what I’ve been learning these last three years since my deaths began. It’s a lot in all the stuff, the left-over papers and artifacts. The wonderful inheritances and solid treasures I can touch and feel strengthened by, filled within into a sense of my own landedness in my own power. But really all I’m left with is my own attachments and my own moods and fears.

So I woke up thinking about Rogers and that “they” don’t get the man the way I do (even though some of them actually knew and rubbed shoulders with him and I never did). But it’s not really about the man. It’s about the trajectory of a theory, of words, of an idea, of an example of how to be in constructive rather than destructive relationship with another. The idea did not start with Rogers, but he, with his words and ways and personal growth brought it to psychology (and to groups, and to all the helping professions, and the predatory professions, and to peace conferences) in a unique way. He brought us the glimmers and flickers of sunlight and photosynthesis within the darkness of entropy and the hope within relatedness. But entropy does not have to be dark, and relationship can be deadly.

My next thought was that Rogers’ did not have the energy to protect the wave trajectory of his theory. He didn’t feel he owned the theory, and the theory is about not controlling others, so it would be a theoretical lie to fight to protect the public clarity of the trajectory. And, after all, the essential ideas of the trajectory are older than Rogerian theory.

There are those who get the paradigm and want to preserve it within the mainstream. Those who want to band together for greater effectiveness and political/economic survival. This mission is real to them and who am I to badger and hinder them. Again, the rub. Rogers did not say before his death, as I might wish he had, — “Shut up, you over-active crusaders and self-serving revisionists. Don’t you see that you are on a slippery slope of snowflakes. If you do this and take that and use it, then our dreams are back to mud on the particles of old physics and you’ve obfuscated the trajectory of the life’s breath of the Person.” Maybe Rogers didn’t say it because it is all true. The life is in the mud, in the dust when the water is evaporated, or is it still in the air within the water?

At any rate he didn’t say something to arrest the march of the good soldiers who want to take the banner to the mountain and stake out some economic territory for the person-centered approach.

But the good soldiers are my mosquitoes. The flag of the person-centered approach does not, because it cannot, declare all the stars in my universe. It’s presence, like a billboard on the horizon where others see it, where some apparently hope it is maybe going to finally force the “mainstream” to recognize our entitlement to the territory we’ve claimed, and some apparently think the banner can represent the philosophy of person-centeredness. This rag of a flag that does not belong on my horizon, is blocking the trajectory of my personal truth and is an inaccurate representation of the trajectory of Rogerian theory. But that’s not true. I’m no more lasting than a mosquito and my personal truth just is, except when it isn’t.

Rogers is dead. My lament is for myself. For my own mosquito life and my wish to enjoy and bask in my flicker of sunshine and relationship to my world. How long is the shelf life of the packaging of an idea? Longer than my own capacity to experience its way of being within a single therapy session. Not true. The being is in the incongruence as well as in the congruence.

Both the base and the top of many columns in ancient Greece were decorated with the eternal circle of the egg and the sword. 0I0I0I0I0I0I0I

The moss and the chipmunks and Bert’s and my escape into greenness have helped me find some of my words.

The mosquitoes in Michigan’s upper peninsula were unrelenting but the chipmunks were more playfully “in relationship” with us.

Kathy (Moon)



Editor's Note: Thanks to Kathy Moon for her kind permission to reproduce this item (and for sharing the photographs too).

It first appeared as a post to the international listservs (email lists), which remain perhaps the best sources of discussion about the Person-Centred Approach.

There are three lists - PCINTL, NDSU-CCT-C-PCA and ADPCA - although membership and posting is to a great extent interchangeable.

They are not advertised publicly, but if anyone reading this is inspired to join these lists, please email for further details.

Carl Rogers & the CIA

Carl Rogers was a pioneer and leader in the humanistic psychology movement. Although his many professional activities and accomplishments are well known, the story of his association with the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology - a front organisation for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - is barely known and has never been explored in any depth...until this article by Stephen P. Demanchick and Howard Kirschenbaum, which attempts to tell that story in the context of America during the 1950s, Rogers' academic career, and the mission of the CIA.

Download: Carl Rogers & the CIA

Carl Rogers' Transcripts

Transcripts of Carl Rogers' Therapy Sessions
Edited by Barbara T. Brodley and Germain Lietaer
[Completed in December, 2006]

To facilitate psychotherapy research and the education of students in client-centred therapy, the editors have compiled as complete a record as possible of transcripts of Carl R. Rogers' sessions with actual and demonstration clients.

A full description of this project is available in an article by Germain Lietaer and Barbara T. Brodley, "Carl Rogers in the Therapy Room: A Listing of Session Transcripts and a Survey of Publications Referring to Rogers’ Sessions," published 2004 in Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 2(4), pp. 274-291.

A supplemental list of more recent publications referring to Rogers’ sessions is included with the collected transcripts.

To facilitate access to this collection, PCAyorks – the regional network for the Person-Centred Approach in Yorkshire & the Humber (UK) – has, since 2007, provided webhosting for this resource. Prior to that, the 17 documents were being emailed as separate attachments, in response to individual requests only.

From correspondence with the principal editorial assistant to the project, we were informed that: “…Barbara and Germain are not in favor of "posting" them publicly on the web. But if what you are doing is more a personal thing to be followed up upon only by word of mouth I think that is fine. Thank you for your kind offer [...] “That is really fantastic. It worked in seconds when I clicked on it directly from your email message. I am quite overwhelmed.”

Whilst she was still working on the transcripts, Barbara Brodley informed us that she fully supported the efforts we were making to promote the Person Centred Approach through the private distribution of such key papers: “… especially Rogers' transcripts which I think belong to the world” [5 July 2006].

If you would like to receive the download link to the full transcript collection, please contact us at pcayorks@yahoo.co.uk, stating that you understand and accept that they are being made freely available as Microsoft Word documents for purposes of research, study and teaching and may not be sold.

The Person Centred Approach / CCT has always been at the forefront of evidence based practice and the availability of this collection will enable students, teachers, practitioners and researchers to study in detail the work of Rogers with his own clients. We at PCAyorks are delighted to play a small, but significant part in promoting and facilitating the Approach in this way.

We look forward to hearing from you if you would like to take advantage of this offer.