He was able to demystify therapy; to focus on the person of the counsellor and the client (as against a concentration on technique and method); and crucially to emphasize honesty and the destructiveness of manipulation. For his professional work he received the Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Psychology from the APA in 1972. combined three quantitative variables: citations in professional journals, citations in textbooks, and nominations in a survey given to members of the Association for Psychological Science, with three qualitative variables (converted to quantitative scores): National Academy of Sciences (NAS) membership, American Psychological Association (APA) President and/or recipient of the APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, and surname used as an eponym. The degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself. Porter used Rogers's transcripts to devise a system to measure the degree of directiveness or non-directiveness a counselor employed.

Facilitating their awareness and increasing the acceptance of their own experience which builds their congruence and thus their sense of authentic self… the proof of whether this facilitates change or not is in the therapeutic process. First, there is an interest in looking at the particular issues, questions and problems that participants bring (this is not a strongly curriculum-based orientation and has some parallels with the subsequent interest in self-direction in learning). The central tenet of Rogerian, person-centered politics is that public life need not consist of an endless series of winner-take-all battles among sworn opponents; rather, it can and should consist of an ongoing dialogue among all parties. Rogers suggested that the incongruent individual, who is always on the defensive and cannot be open to all experiences, is not functioning ideally and may even be malfunctioning. The educational situation which most effectively promotes significant learning is one in which (a) threat to the self of the learner is reduced to a minimum and (b) differentiated perception of the field is facilitated" (Rogers, 1951).The meeting was notable for several reasons: it brought national figures together as people (not as their positions), it was a private event, and was an overwhelming positive experience where members heard one another and established real personal ties, as opposed to stiffly formal and regulated diplomatic meetings. Yet the application, it is suggested, has more direct validity to the therapeutic relationship as Roger’s demonstrates how using the studies, by comparing them to our own experience to test our own personal relationships, can be fruitful for both theory and practice (Rogers, 1961. P.42), this may read as speculation to Phenomenology and the structure of experience as their reality, rather than subjectivity as reality as far as the client is concerned. Notions of wholeness overlap with what Carl Rogers describes as congruence or ‘realness’; and the attitude embodied and conveyed by educators may be accepting and valuing of the other (Rogers 1951). Rogers's last years were devoted to applying his theories in situations of political oppression and national social conflict, traveling worldwide to do so.

Rogers (1961) did not claim this to be the only a process of change, rather what he witnessed to occur after the client is consistently experiencing themselves as 'fully received’. A growing openness to experience: they move away from defensiveness and have no need for subception (a perceptual defense that involves unconsciously applying strategies to prevent a troubling stimulus from entering consciousness).This is particularly important for introverts, but everyone needs some time to themselves, at least sometimes. The role of the therapist in PCT is facilitating a process of growth already inherent in the organism by providing the therapeutic conditions. Rogers believed people possess inherent goodness and that people are driven by the actualizing tendency.

Thorne argues that it is not too simplistic to, ‘affirm that the whole conceptual framework of Carl Rogers rests on his profound experience that human beings become increasingly trustworthy once they feel at a deep level that their subjective experience is both respected and progressively understood’ (1992: 26). The client recognises their own and others’ process towards self-actualisation: ‘I accept that pain within me, and what I and others did. People will not speak about feelings openly, and tend to blame others for causing their pain, rather than take responsibility for themselves: ‘If only my friend would stop doing that, I’d feel better. But the first step is learning more about recognizing anger and knowing what to do when you feel angry in your life.

They can also minimize the stress we experience in relationships, making these relationships stronger. You can even end up creating more problems for yourself by reacting poorly rather than responding from a place of calm inner strength. It is a way of not defining the client by their “problem” the human organism has a richness, man is man.