1902–1987

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST, PROFESSOR COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, Ph.D., 1931

Brief Overview

Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience.... Neither the Bible nor the prophets—neither Freud nor research—neither the revelations of God nor man—can take precedence over my own direct experience.

These words, from Carl Rogers's classic book On Becoming a Person, probably best describe Rogers's contributions to the study of psychology. Neither the Bible, from which his mother had taught him, nor the Freudian tenets so popular among his colleagues could make Rogers conform to the prevalent views of his time. He stubbornly refused to follow the perceptions of others. Rogers relied solely on his own personal experience rather than on dogma.

Carl Rogers practiced psychotherapy his way for...