Some ElecTronic

Herbert Bryan was a young man in his late 20s who had come to the counseling center at Ohio State for help with what he saw as deepseated problems. It was not the first time he had sought help. In high school he had attended a behaviorally oriented institute for speech defects to work on a speech impediment, but he thought the treatment too superficial and found no benefit from it.

In college he went to a psychodynamically oriented university counselor to try to get to the root of his trouble, but this too provided no help. Mr. Bryan, an intelligent man who had read widely in psychology, then tried various techniques of self-therapy, ranging from an analysis of his childhood memories to a technique of behaving as if happy. He came to the counseling center at Ohio State with the feeling that all past methods had failed him and with the hope of finding a new and this time fruitful approach.

The audiotaped recording of the eight sessions of his psychotherapy would put at Rogers’ disposal the word-for-word record of a full case of therapy. A close analysis of the particular remarks made by the counselor and their influence on the course of the therapy would allow Rogers to assess the value of his nascent theoryof therapy.

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

The stylus cut an actual groove in the disk so that shavings had to be continually brushed away, and because of the flipping of the disks transcribing the interview required moving from face 1 on one disk to face 1 on another, then back to face 2 on the first disk and so on. It was a laborious process, but with the enthusiasm of graduate students and a new professor it was eagerly undertaken.

Rogers and his students thus began recording the therapy sessions conducted in the training program at Ohio State. From this process came the verbatim record of a complete therapy over eight sessions with a young man given the pseudonym “Herbert Bryan.”

When Rogers published the complete record of this case in Counseling and Psychotherapy (1942) it was the first such case ever to be fully recorded, transcribed, and published. An examination of the case reveals that it was an important source for illustrating Rogers’theory of therapy and for developing Rogers’ theory of persons.

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

At that time the published literature on psychotherapy consisted entirely of summary accounts of cases by therapists. Rogers found these accounts unsatisfactory from a scientific point of view, because they were potentially biased by the perspective of the therapist who made the summary.

Such accounts were also insufficient for the purpose of clinical supervision, because a supervisor could only evaluate what the trainee knew to report of his or her clinical work. Previously Rogers had written that verbatim records of full cases of therapy would be a valuable contribution to the field. But
recording technology at that time had made it difficult to capture verbatim records.

At Ohio State, Rogers found a graduate student with skill in radio and electronics, and with a grant from the department they were able to set up the necessary equipment and conditions to record clear interviews. The process required using two recording machines, alternating in use every 3 minutes, one recording on a 78-rpm disk for its 3 minutes while the disk on the other machine was being flipped or replaced to be ready for the next 3-minute interval.

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

In this account the therapist advised the client that his shyness was a defect and persuaded him to undertake a number of prescribed steps to change it. Rogers characterized the therapist’s approach in this case as “vicious” and
found it destined for disaster. On the one hand, he argued, for a client who has a tendency to be dependent, such an approach would drive him deeper into dependency and his growth would be impeded.

On the other hand, for a client who has a good deal of independence, such an approach would require him to reject the therapist’s suggestions in order to retain his own integrity. What Rogers did not say was that the therapist who had given this account was from the University of Minnesota and acting as Rogers’ host at that very moment.

It is no wonder that Rogers’ talk evoked the strong response that it did. He had come to an established program for directive methods of psychotherapy and had spoken out against such methods, even speaking out explicitly against one of the program’s own members. In thus speaking out against one of the main authorities of directiveness, Rogers revealed himself to be playing the part of the independent individual who rejects the directions of an authorityso as to retain his own integrity.

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

When Rogers moved to Ohio State and began to teach a graduate training course on techniques of psychotherapy, he began to explicitly distinguish his nondirective method of therapy from directive methods such as advice and persuasion or explanation and intellectual interpretation. He argued that directive methods operate by two basic assumptions: that the therapist is the one most competent to decide the goal of therapy, and that the therapist knows best how to get the client to the therapist-chosen goal.

The nondirective method holds a fundamentally different set of assumptions : that the client, not the therapist, knows best the goal for his or her therapy and also knows best the direction to take to reach this goal. Whereas directive approaches imply by their methods that the therapist is superior to the client, who is incapable of responsibly choosing his or her own goal, the nondirective approach implies by its methods a valuing of the client’s right and capacity to be independent and to maintain his or her own psychological integrity.

It is this argument that Rogers made when he addressed his listeners in the talk he gave to the counseling program at Minnesota. Introducing directive techniques as “outworn and discarded,” he illustrated the directive techniques of advice and persuasion in particular, using a therapist’s written account of an interview witha young man with social problems.

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

The third event occurred a few years after this one. Rogers had learned from his previous experiences to be more subtle in interpreting a client’s behavior, but he was still assuming that his role was to direct the client toward his own expert understanding of the material.

He had worked for many weeks with a mother who had a troubled son, trying to patiently lead her to the view he held of her case: that her early rejection of her son had led him to be the hellion that he was. But despite the client’s obvious intelligence, she was entirely unable to see the pattern Rogers persistently tried to direct her toward. He finally gave up, telling her that although they had tried they had failed, and they may as well stop their contacts.

The woman agreed and began to leave his office. But at the doorway she stopped and turned to ask him if he ever took adults for counseling. When he replied that he did she came back in, declared that she would like some help for herself, and sat down to pour out her despair about her marriage. This new direction resulted in a successful therapy for the woman and also for her son, and this convinced Rogers that it is the client who knows what direction to go in therapy. Thus, through this series of experiences, Rogers came to reject traditional directive approaches to psychotherapy and to develop a newer nondirective approach.

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

The second main objection to Skinner’s model has to do with its treatment of subjective phenomena. Skinner sought to explain observable behavior and saw subjective experience as merely epiphenomenal: That is, it is a by-product of behavior rather than something to be studied on its own terms. Yet some argue that in discounting inner states in this way, Skinner’s theory has failed to illuminate just those things that are most important to understandif we are to understand what it is to be a person.

In contrast to Skinner’s systematic bypassing of inner states, there are other theorists working with behavioral principles who have chosen to incorporate inner states into their theories. Albert Bandura incorporated thought into his model, arguing that the effect of environmental consequences on behavior is not direct but rather mediated by thinking; indeed we can be conditioned
without ever behaving at all but only by cognitive processes such as attention and representation.

Julian Rotter called attention to not only the role of cognitive expectancies but also the role of wishes or values, pointing out that people have different preferences for different environmental consequences and so will behave differently based on these preferences. Still, in these models the goal is to
predict behavior rather than to understand subjective experience itself. A wholly different approach is taken by phenomenological theorists, who focus on subjective experience as the essence of humanness. We turn to a pioneer of this approach, Carl Rogers, in the next chapter.

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

we can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled, though they are following a code much more scrupulously than was ever the case under the old system, nevertheless feel free … That’s the source of the tremendous power of positive reinforcement— there’s no restraint and no revolt… Restraint is only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn’t freedom. It’s not control that’s lacking when one feels “free,” but the objectionable
control of force.57

By adopting this method with his own children, then, Skinner could achieve the control he wanted but at the same time give his children the feeling of freedom they wanted, and thereby also escape any rage they might feel toward him as he had felt toward his parents. Skinner began writing Walden Two in conflict over his Burris and Frazier sides, but by the end of the book his Frazier side had fully won out. Skinner embraced the Utopian vision Frazier had applied and from that point on he produced policy-oriented writings on the application of behavior analysis to human concerns. In these writings he would emphasize the necessity of control and the impossibility of freedom, but he would argue that control must be applied in the form of reinforcement and not as punishment.

Skinner made this full identification with Frazier, however, at the cost of admitting those unappealing personal qualities to which the engineer at General Mills had referred. In a section toward the end of the book that Skinner reports he had written in “white heat,” Frazier accuses Burris of not liking him and Burris findshimself unable to counter the accusation. Frazier says:

“You think I’m conceited, aggressive, tactless, selfish. You’re convinced that I’m completely insensitive to my effect upon others, except when the effect is calculated. You can’t see in me any of the personal warmth or the straightforward natural strength which are responsible for the success of Walden Two … Well, you’re perfectly right,” he said quietly. Then he stood up, drew back his arm, and sent the tile shattering into the fireplace. “But
God damn it, Burris!” he cried, timing the “damn” to coincide with the crash of the tile. “Can’t you see? I’m—not—a—product— of—Walden—Twol” He sat down. He looked at his empty hand, and picked up a second tile quickly, as if to conceal the evidence of his display of feeling.58

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

Burris is a college professor, visiting a Utopian community that was founded by an old classmate of his from graduate school, Frazier. As a potential occupant of the community and a man who values freedom, Burris represents one side of Skinner, whereas as the man who built the community and whose idee fixe in life has been to have control, Frazier represents the other. Over the course of the book Frazier shows various aspects of the community to Burris in an effort to convert him. At the core of Walden Two
is a method of child-raising that protects the child from a host of negative forces.

Infants are raised in baby-tenders in a common nursery manned by those members of the community who enjoy child-rearing. When the question is raised whether the parents see their babies the reply is that as long as they are in good health they do, coming by every day or so to play with their children for a few minutes. “That’s the way we build up the baby’s resistance,”53 it is said, and it is not fully clear whether resistance is being built to infection or to the parents. The baby-tenders are touted for the protection they offer from infection, the freedom they give from the constriction of clothing and blankets, and the soundproofing that prevents
the infants from being disturbed by others. Frazier claims that thus when a baby graduates from the nursery it knows nothing of frustration, anxiety, or sadness. At that point, when the child is 3, the community begins applying behavioral engineering to build the child’s resistance against situations that evoke frustration and other negative emotions that are “wasteful and dangerous.”54 They are taught such strategies as “out of sight, out of mind” and “love your enemy.”

About the latter Frazier says it is a psychological invention for easing the lot of an oppressed people. The severest trial of oppression is the constant rage one suffers at the thought of the oppressor… If a man can succeed in “loving his enemies” and “taking no thought for the morrow,” he will no longer be assailed by hatred of the oppressor or rage at the loss of his freedom or possessions. He may not get hisfreedom or possessions back, but he’s less miserable.55

This may have been the best strategy Skinner could find for dealing with the oppression of his own upbringing. But when Frazier designs his own community in Walden Two, he goes furthe He does not, however, adopt freedom. Frazier says “If man is free, then a technology of behavior is impossible… I deny that freedom exists at all. I must deny it—or my program would be absurd.”56 What he does is to adopt control, but a benevolent form of control. Punishment is never used, and the use of force or threat of force is seen as incompatible with happiness. Instead control is always applied in the form of reinforcement. By this method, Frazier says,

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

We have seen how Rogers pointed to three events in his professional work as a therapist that fed into this rejection. But the autobiographical record also reveals that Rogers had shown a pattern of rejecting dogma and authority long before he had these experiences as a therapist. In his earlier studies in religion he had first selected the most liberal seminary in the country, next petitioned for a student-led seminar so that ideas would not be fed to him, and finally completely rejected the field because it required acceptance of a religious creed.

Rogers had rejected the authorities of religion before rejecting the authorities of psychology. We might thus suspect that we will find personal as well as professional sources for the aversion to direction by an external authority that was an important kernel of Rogers’ theory of therapy and his later theory of persons.

WORK
Rogers’ book Counseling and Psychotherapy (1942) was published 2 years after he arrived at Ohio State. It was based both on his work as a therapist before coming to Ohio State and on his work in articulating the process of therapy to his graduate students during his first 2 years there. To teach the process of therapy in an advanced seminar with graduate students, Rogers initiated a training method that had never been used before in an academic
setting: the analysis of recorded interviews of actual therapy sessions.

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest