We are more like locomotives than we realize. A train doesn’t think about where it is going, it simply follows the rails. We tend to believe that we are thoughtful about who we are and what we do, but, as noted in an earlier posting, culture has a greater shaping influence on us than we realize. Our culture provides the rails on which we run our lives. Often we do not consciously adopt those rails any more than a train decides what rails to travel, and often we are unaware of what they are. We absorb these beliefs from our environment and accept them as valid guiding concepts.
The ideas of Carl Rogers have gained acceptance and maintained power because they make good rails for a culture to run on. By good rails, I do not mean that they are necessarily valid concepts. I do mean that they are sufficiently accessible and have broad enough application to provide guiding principles for life. The central, unifying concept in the Rogerian theory is that unconditional acceptance allows for unconditional self-acceptance (non-performance based self-esteem), which produces a wholesome personality. Therefore, the change agent and the essence of a wholesome environment is unconditional acceptance. This concept has become the cornerstone of our culture. We embrace it and its tenets as self-evident truths and apply them to virtually every aspect of life. The fact that the Rogerian theory has become embedded as the set of rails along which our culture runs gives these ideas great power and durability.
Rogers’ ideas have been good candidates for adoption as cultural rails because of their accessibility. Anyone can grasp them and make the application to his life. This is not the case with some other theories, such as Freudian psychology, which requires a professional for accessibility. Only a highly trained therapist can extract and understand what is going on in the individual’s unconscious. This discovery process, requiring frequent visits over several years, makes this approach to life financially and practically inaccessible to most people.
It is not so with Rogers’ ideas, which, because they are within the reach of the individual, became the impetus for the self-help movement. Though therapists use these concepts, the self-help movement invited the individual to read a book and apply Rogers’ ideas to his own life. For example, people can work on their own self-esteem, and parents can seek to accept their children unconditionally. This accessibility also spawned the therapy group movement, which encouraged individuals to apply Rogerian concepts to the lives of one another. A group can work toward the unconditional acceptance of its members, seeking to eliminate any judgmental attitudes, thus enhancing one another’s self-esteem. Therefore, the applicability of Rogers’ ideas made them candidates for a populist movement, as opposed to the elitist nature of Freudianism, making them a good fit for the American democratic orientation.
Rogers’ ideas are not only easily accessible; they are also broadly applicable. They lend themselves to virtually every aspect of life. They can be used as foundational tenants in educational philosophy, and they have. Books have been written revealing the pervasive influence of self-esteem in American education. They are applicable to marriage, the ideal marriage being described by secular and evangelical counselors as two people who accept each other unconditionally. They are applicable to parenting, the secret to raising psychologically healthy children being an atmosphere of unconditional acceptance, which promotes self-esteem. They are applicable to morality: to accept regardless of performance is moral, and to condemn is not, consequently the change in attitude toward homosexuals and homosexuality across the previous several decades. They are applicable to our judicial system, recognizing that condemning criminals only represents a continuation of the conditional acceptance that made them criminals in the first place, the solution being the conveyance of unconditional acceptance. Rogers’ concepts may also be applied as the elixir to virtually every behavioral, emotional, and relational malady. Oppression ultimately finds its source in the failure of significant others to accept unconditionally, crushing the individual’s self-esteem. The solution is unconditional acceptance, enabling the individual to accept himself as he is.
Because of this accessibility and applicability, the concepts of Rogers have become the self-evident truths guiding American culture. To judge or condemn is wrong. To accept and approve is right. Regardless of the answer, using a red pen to grade is a bad thing. The student must not be made to feel judged. The answer on the paper is his answer and therefore must be valued. In so doing the student will feel valued and grow up to be a healthy personality. After all, this is the ultimate objective, isn’t it? Is conforming to society’s rules on grammar really more important than that? American culture says no, and that because of Carl Rogers.
In our next post, we will consider the synergy between Rogers’ ideas and the evangelical worldview.