THE INDIVIDUAL’S SUBJECTIVE TRUTH
Raised in a caring but extremely strict religiously fundamental family, Carl absorbed the potent ideological dogma of his parents. It was during a college trip to China – which Carl notes as “a most important experience” (Rogers, 1961, p.7) – that he witnessed how seemingly likeable people could exhibit ideological hatred between themselves. This permeated into Carls thinking around his own dogmatic upbringing and he proceeded to ideologically separate from the doctrines of his younger years. (Thorne, 2003, p.4).

THE IMPORTANCE OF EFFECTIVE AND MEASURABLE SOLUTIONS
As a boy Carl dedicated his free time into building up a foundation of scientific understanding, firstly in closely studying and breeding moths and later (still just around 14 years old) in learning in-depth methods to improve the efficiency of the breeding of livestock on the family’s farm. This imbued Carl with a deep respect for the scientific approach, research methodologies and the complexities involved in the testing of hypothesis (Thorne, 2003, p.3). This stood in stark contrast to the nine years Carl spent deploying a psychodynamic approach – from his mid 20s – where eventually he became aware of the “coercive or pushing” nature (Rogers, 1961, p.11) of interpreting a client’s behaviour.

THE CLIENT AS EXPERT
At 26 Carl took on his first professional Psychologist post at the busy Rochester Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and during this “exceedingly valuable” (Rogers, 1961, p.11) twelve years there was driven to innovate new approaches to deliver measurably better outcomes for the children. The principles outlined in his 1939 book The Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child reveal the result of his (post psychoanalytical) work and clearly shows the beginning of his formal journey towards the Person-Centered model – which include the conclusions that children are best helped when the relationship between the helper and parents is non-threatening and it’s one that facilitates the parents own reflective growth and solution generating capacity (Sanders, 2004, p.2)

NON-DIRECTIVE THERAPY AND THE DAWN OF THERAPEUTIC TRANSPARENCY
After his success at the RSPCC Carl gathered a team to develop further his radical new helping approach. They made much conceptual progress in non-directivity and and it was a lecture in 1940 entitled Newer Concepts in Psychotherapy that Carl considers to be the birthdate of Client Centered Therapy (Thorne, 2003, p.12). Carl’s second 1942 book Counselling and Psychotherapy: Newer Concepts in Practise broke more boundaries by including transcripts of full therapy sessions (Thorne, 2003, p.13) thereby dissolving the mystique of the therapeutic process and setting forth a precedent of openness and accountability.

CLIENT CENTERED THERAPY & THE NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT CONDITIONS
In 1949 Carl set up The Counselling Centre whilst at The University of Chicago and it was only two years later that the landmark volume Client Centered Therapy was published. Here was detailed not just the concept and application of the model, but also directions for its use in play and group therapies, and teaching and practitioner education. It also incorporated the first structured theory of personality (Rogers, 1951). The Chicago team continued their development of the model, and it was in papers published in 1957 and 1959 that articulated the theory’s most pivotal concept, The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Therapeutic Change.

THE DIVERGENCE OF THE PERSON-CENTERED APPROACH
Carl worked closely with Eugene Gendlin, who was key in developing a map of client growth through the therapeutic process, this was revealed as The Seven Stages of Process in the book On Becoming a Person (Rogers, 1961). Gendlin continued his work on inspecting the moments of client change and he called this phenomena Focusing. The work though carved a rift between him and the purist non-directive practitioners who questioned the applicability of directing client attention and on setting rigid process stage definitions and Focusing Therapy was born. Gendlin’s work was further elaborated by Leslie Greenberg, Germain Lietaer and others with a further emphasis on process depth by proposing interventions to aide the flow of client experiencing. This clear breach of non-directivity became the third leg of the newly emerging Person-Centered family stool and was labelled Experiential Therapy.