Scope and Content Note
The papers of Carl Ransom Rogers (1902-1987) span the years 1913-1999, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period 1952-1987. The collection contains a wide array of material documenting Rogers's career in psychology, psychotherapy, and education and his association with the Center for Studies of the Person. Included are family papers, correspondence, writings, book files, notes on workshops and other meetings, project files, academic files, research files, transcripts of therapy sessions, and administrative miscellany. The collection is organized in nine series: Family Papers; Correspondence File; Writings File; Meetings, Conferences, and Workshops File; Projects File; Academic File; Research File; Miscellany; and the 2022 Addition.
Rogers's papers trace his entire professional career, with the largest body of material focused on his association with the Center for Studies of the Person, a loosely organized group of advocates of humanistic psychology based in La Jolla, California. Rogers is recognized as a prime mover in the development and acceptance of humanistic psychology, sometimes referred to as a "third force" alternative to Freudian psychoanalysis and behaviorism. He originally developed his "client-centered" psychotherapy during his work in the 1930s with the Rochester Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in Rochester, New York. His client-centered approach to psychotherapy, also variously referred to as "person-centered" or "non-directive," requires the therapist to enter into an intensely empathic relationship with the client and serve as an agent for personality growth and self-determinism. In 1961, Rogers published On Becoming a Person, a seminal work in the humanistic psychology movement. Rogers's application of his therapeutic principles to group settings influenced the "human potential movement," which flourished in the 1960s and 1970s and included encounter groups, leadership training, sensitivity counseling, and assertiveness training. He encouraged the interdisciplinary application of his principles to such fields as education, business, medicine, and pastoral counseling.
In 1963, Rogers left the academic community because of his disaffection with its restrictive environment. He accepted a position as resident fellow with the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute (WBSI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to basic research and educational activities in the field of human relations. In 1968, he was a founding member of the Center for Studies of the Person. Through the center, he conducted workshops and seminars with businessmen, educators, psychotherapists, and political leaders. Ultimately Rogers sought to bring his message of empathic communication to intercultural and international disputes.
The Family Papers in this collection consist primarily of correspondence. Included are letters exchanged between Rogers and his immediate family as well as with his siblings and extended family. Noteworthy correspondents include his children, Natalie Rogers, a psychologist, and David E. Rogers, a medical educator. Their extensive correspondence illuminates the dynamics of the Rogers family and, together with selected writings also contained in the file, outlines their own professional development.
The Correspondence File is chiefly representative of Rogers's work with the Center for Studies of the Person and is grouped into personal, special, and general categories. Personal correspondence consists of communications with friends, admirers, and professional colleagues. Of particular interest are the numerous letters and messages from persons strongly affected by Rogers's published writings or public appearances. In many instances, these letters relate striking life experiences that Rogers incorporated into his writings and lectures. The special correspondence file includes communications with individuals associated with various projects. Noteworthy among them is Howard Kirschenbaum, Rogers's biographer, who wrote On Becoming Carl Rogers (Delacorte Press, 1979). The general correspondence is largely administrative in nature and includes routine inquiries, invitations, and some substantive material. Frequent or prominent correspondents include Charles Devonshire, Richard Evans Farson, Car Foster, T. Len Holdstock, Howard Kirschenbaum, William T. Powers, Orienne Strode, Gay Leah Swenson, Reinhard Tausch, and Thị Anh Tô.
The Writings File is subdivided into an Articles and Papers file and a Books file. Material in the Articles and Papers file covers the breadth of Rogers's career and includes published as well as unpublished writings. Early files typically contain printed or manuscript copies of his work together with occasional related correspondence. Later files may include research and background notes. Also included are a few published interviews with Rogers. The Books file contains production records for books produced from the 1960s to the 1980s. Among the noteworthy material are correspondence with colleagues and background research. Also included is an unpublished manuscript regarding Rogers's work with intercultural conflict in South Africa in the 1980s. Bibliographies of his published works are located at the beginning of the Articles and Papers file.
The Meetings, Conferences, and Workshops File is a record of Rogers's public activities principally from the late 1950s to the 1980s. Arranged chronologically by event, this file contains the correspondence, notes, and lectures related to his appearances before professional associations and to his work as a facilitator at encounter group workshops. Included are Rogers's working papers for a dialogue with behaviorist B. F. Skinner in September 1956 before the American Psychological Association's annual conference. Subsequent meetings between the two, in December 1960 and June 1962, are also represented in the file. The rapid growth and acceptance of encounter groups in the late 1960s and 1970s are well documented in the series, and it is rich in personal accounts by participants. Additional papers pertain to leadership training for the National Training Laboratories, training for Human Dimensions in Medical Education, which was a Center for Studies of the Person project, and various other workshops and seminars. Other significant material concerns intercultural conflict workshops led by Rogers in Ireland, South Africa, South America, and Austria during the 1970s and 1980s.
The Projects File contains material relating to extended undertakings by Rogers while he was with WBSI and the Center for Studies of the Person. Rogers's application of his theories to educational reform is reflected in papers concerning the Educational Innovation Project, the Ongoing Learning Program, and a Louisville, Kentucky, public schools project. The Carl Rogers Peace Project pertains to his efforts to reduce international conflict.
The Academic and Research files primarily depict Rogers's career in academia. As a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin at Madison in the late 1940s and 1950s, Rogers gained prominence through his systematic evaluation of the effects of psychotherapy. The Academic File contains correspondence, research papers, and notes pertaining to his academic courses and to counseling centers under his direction. Also included are notes and correspondence concerning dissertation committees on which he served. Transcripts in the Research File document his pioneer work in electronically recording therapy sessions for later study and analysis.
The Miscellany series contains administrative papers relating to the Center for Studies of the Person and the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute. Of particular interest is material from 1968 that documents Rogers's dissatisfaction with the institute's leadership and the role he played in establishing the Center for Studies of the Person. Transcripts of some of Rogers's motion pictures and sound recordings are included, as well as articles regarding his work.
The 2022 Addition contains correspondence, family and personal papers, writings, book files, notes on workshops and other meetings, project files, academic files, research files, transcripts of psychotherapy sessions, administrative papers, and miscellany. The personal file contains biographical information, material related to Rogers's death, and several pieces of Rogers's non academic writing, and is arranged alphabetically by topic. Many of the remaining files in the 2022 Addition are related to material found elsewhere in the collection, and every effort has been made to preserve a similar arrangement to series found in the original portion of the collection.