Understanding the 19 Propositions: Personality & Behaviour Explained

Carl Rogers' 19 Propositions: A Plain English Summary

If you are a counselling student...

If you are here there is a good chance you are currently studying to become a counsellor or psychotherapist and are hoping to understand Carl Roger's 19 Propositions. Hopefully, you've found it helpful. I know you're probably under a lot of time pressure to get work completed, case studies submitted and presented, client work, supervision, your own personal therapy - so decided the best approach was just to lead with it rather than have a 10 paragraph preamble repeating stuff you already know.

If you are just curious about therapy...

And if you aren't a student and have found your way here for other reasons, hopefully, the words I have written above have given you an idea about the why/how therapy works and how change happens (in the simplest way I am able to explain the process).

During my own counselling studies, as a thought experiment, I wanted to see if I could take the 19 propositions and explain it in the fewest amount of words I possibly could. My tutor really loved it and it helped some of the other students, also doing the course, so now that I have a website/somewhere to put it I thought I would share it.

Scroll below to see the original 19 propositions reproduced for comparison.

The Problem with the 19 Propositions

I have seen some other attempts to explain the 19 propositions, which try to reword them into modern language or group them into themes (1-3 mean this / 4-7 are about this). However, they still felt like it could be made simpler - and therefore less daunting to tackle for people.

I think some people struggle because of its presentation - a daunting list of 19 statements talking about the organism doing this / the organism doing that. Rogers was trying to describe the fluid, dynamic process of being human using a static, numbered list. It’s like trying to describe your favourite song - you lose the feeling without the music.

By stripping away the list and the academic language, I hope you have the "feel" of it and the core to human experience it is trying to explain.

Hopefully, if you take my simplified version, you might be able to view the 19 propositions in a new light and appreciate them for what they are intended to be: a humanistic explanation of behaviour change. Fundamentally, all therapists should have a concept of how behaviour actually changes to understand the work they are doing and what might be happening for the client (even if your experience of what happens in the therapy room can only ever be your experience and the client's can only ever be theirs).

The Original 19 Propositions (Carl Rogers 1951)

1. Every individual exists in a continually changing world of experience of which he is the center.

   
   

2. The organism reacts to the field as it is experienced and perceived. This perceptual field is, for the individual, "reality."

   
   

3. The organism reacts as an organized whole to this phenomenal field.

   
   

4. The organism has one basic tendency and striving - to actualize, maintain, and enhance the experiencing organism.

   
   

5. Behavior is essentially the goal-directed attempt of the organism to satisfy its needs as experienced, in the field as perceived.  

   
   

6. Emotion accompanies and in general facilitates such goal-directed behavior, the kind of emotion being related to the seeking versus the consummatory aspects of the behavior, and the intensity of the emotion being related to the perceived significance of the behavior for the maintenance and enhancement of the organism.  

   
   

7. The best vantage point for understanding behavior is from the internal frame of reference of the individual himself.

   
   

8. A portion of the total perceptual field gradually becomes differentiated as the self.

   
   

9. As a result of interaction with the environment, and particularly as a result of evaluational interaction with others, the structure of self is formed - an organized, fluid, but consistent conceptual pattern of perceptions of characteristics and relationships of the "I" or the "me," together with values attached to these concepts.

   
   

10. The values attached to experiences, and the values which are a part of the self structure, in some instances are values experienced directly by the organism, and in some instances are values introjected or taken over from others, but perceived in distorted fashion, as if they had been experienced directly.  

    
    

11. As experiences occur in the life of the individual, they are either (a) symbolized, perceived and organized into some relation to the self, (b) ignored because there is no perceived relationship to the self-structure, (c) denied symbolization or given a distorted symbolization because the experience is inconsistent with the structure of the self.

    
    

12. Most of the ways of behaving which are adopted by the organism are those which are consistent with the concept of self.  

    
    

13. Behavior may, in some instances, be brought about by organic experiences and needs which have not been symbolized. Such behavior may be inconsistent with the structure of the self, but in such instances the behavior is not "owned" by the individual.  

    
    

14. Psychological maladjustment exists when the organism denies to awareness significant sensory and visceral experiences, which consequently are not symbolized and organized into the gestalt of the self-structure. When this situation exists, there is a basic or potential psychological tension.  

    
    

15. Psychological adjustment exists when the concept of the self is such that all the sensory and visceral experiences of the organism are, or may be, assimilated on a symbolic level into a consistent relationship with the concept of self.  

    
    

16. Any experience which is inconsistent with the organization or structure of self may be perceived as a threat, and the more of these perceptions there are, the more rigidly the self-structure is organized to maintain itself.  

    
    

17. Under certain conditions, involving primarily complete absence of any threat to the self-structure, experiences which are inconsistent with it may be perceived, and examined, and the structure of self revised to assimilate and include such experiences.  

    
    

18. When the individual perceives and accepts into one consistent and integrated system all his sensory and visceral experiences, then he is necessarily more understanding of others and is more accepting of others as separate individuals.  

    
    

19. As the individual perceives and accepts into his self-structure more of his organic experiences, he finds that he is replacing his present value system - based so largely upon introjections which have been distortedly symbolized - with a continuing organismic valuing process.  

    
    

About Martin Middleton

Martin Middleton is a clinical therapist based near Leicester and Hinckley, specialising in anxiety, shame, and confidence building. As a therapist with dyslexia, Martin understands the "hidden struggle" firsthand—from the anxiety of reading aloud in school to the pressure of perfectionism in adulthood. He combines Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Hypnotherapy to help clients silence their inner critic and move from "surviving" to "thriving." Martin offers judgment-free sessions online across the UK and in person.