Carl Rogers and the Phenomenology' Reception in American Psychology

Abstract

We aim to revisit Rogers' relationship with the reception movement of Phenomenology in American Psychology. We use the historiographical notion of reception to investigate what was contacted in its internal-external historical aspects. Based on the Rogers mentions to the Phenomenology, we identify seven moments of such relationship, among 1940-1970. The Phenomenology that Rogers mentions does not derives from the European Philosophy, but it rather comes from a paradigm alternative to the hegemonic positivism in the behaviorism. In the clinic, Rogers perceived the implications of this movement for the development of research and interventions on the self. In the philosophy, he outlined a knowledge theory, based on tacit and pre-conceptual experiences. In the research, he was sympathetic to the development of empirical phenomenological investigations but did not develop any. We conclude that the phenomenological Philosophy did not influence Rogers directly, but the phenomenological movement in American Psychology did.