Carl Rogers’ Covert NLP Influencing Skills

© Richard Bolstad (1995, 2021)

Carl Rogers’ Model

In studying Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls and Milton Erickson, the developers of NLP observed three of the most exceptional therapists of their time.  Any list of effective and influential therapists of that era would also, in my opinion, need to include Dr Carl Rogers.  Rogers, and his model “Client Centred Therapy” was the source from which the collection of approaches called counselling sprang.

Because Rogers’ own model of what he did was simplistic, there has been a tendency to dismiss his “nondirective” therapy as naive.  Rogers claims (in a filmed case study and commentary which I intend to examine through the NLP lens) that successful therapy only requires that the therapist convey three qualities:

  • genuineness (realness, honesty with her/himself);
  • prizing ( a non-possessive love or caring for the client);
  • empathic understanding of the inner world of the client.

If, he claims, the therapist conveys these qualities, then two things will happen.  Firstly, the client will model them.  Sensing a realness in the therapist, they’ll be more real with themself.  Feeling valued/loved by the therapist, they’ll value themself more.   Being understood by the therapist, they’ll listen more to their own meanings.

Secondly, Rogers’ research found that clients exposed to genuineness-prizing-empathy would change in their way of describing their experience, in five ways.  They would shift:

  • from being remote from their life, to being aware of how they feel in the immediate moment: immediacy;
  • from being disapproving of themself, to being more accepting;
  • from being afraid of relating, to wanting a more direct relationship;
  • from viewing life in black and white terms, to being willing to adopt more tentative descriptions;
  • from using an external frame, to using an internal frame for evaluating their life.

Rogers found these metaprogram shifts, to use an NLP term, were the “natural” result of clients’ relating to him.  All he did was verbally pace their concerns, and share his own response.

Frequently, counsellors criticise NLP for failing to adequately empathise with and value the client “as they are”; for being too “directive”.  Carl Rogers is the paragon of non-directive counselling, and his success is often held up as evidence of how very simple it all is.  Just “be with the person” and they’ll heal.

A quick examination of Dr Rogers’ actual technique tells a very different story.

What Isn’t Explained In the Model?

Robert Carkhuff, virtually the founder of counselling training, studied under Carl Rogers at Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute in the early 1960s.  He believed that research would reveal several other ingredients in therapeutic effectiveness.  He quotes (1976, p13) the conversation after which he left Rogers.  To abbreviate,

“Dr Rogers, you can open your position up and account for many if not most of the ingredients of therapeutic effectiveness.”

“I’m not interested in opening the position up.  The ingredients I have postulated are necessary and sufficient for therapeutic personality change … I am interested only in providing the experiential conditions which help the client to change.  The clients evolve in their own unique ways … I am interested only in helping the clients to achieve what they want.”

“But Dr. Rogers, they want so little.”

Carkhuff himself proposed a model of therapy based on learning.  As the learner explores, the helper initially responds to where she/he is (Rogers’ empathic listening).  As the learner seeks to create understanding of what was explored, the helper personalises (guides the learner to experience themself as at cause in the situation).  As the learner plans action based on this understanding, the helper guides them in defining goals and initiates the steps to achieve these goals.  This model, by the way, has some obvious similarities with the first five steps of my RESOLVE model for NLP:

  • Resourceful state (the practitioner begins resourceful).
  • Establish rapport.
  • Sort and specify the outcome.
  • Open up the client’s model of the world, putting them at cause.
  • Leading (initiating NLP change processes).
  • Verify change.
  • Exit processes, including futurepacing.

What’s missing in Carl Rogers’ original model, of course, is all the active stuff; the “directive” processes that enable people to achieve what they never thought possible.

So, was Rogers just a poor therapist?  How come his research shows such success?  Let’s return to a specific example of his work, where we’ll see that Rogers uses skills which go far beyond either his own or Carkhuff’s explanation.

Rogers Begins His (Subtle) Work

In a 1965 film, Carl Rogers, spends half an hour with a client called “Gloria”.  Gloria begins by exploring an issue between her and her daughter, where she has been keeping her sexual relationships secret in case it upsets the daughter.  Over the half hour, she shifts to exploring her inner conflict about what’s right for her, and announces an experience of having resolved the whole dilemma.  She then discusses her valuing of the openness and willingness to listen which she has with Dr Rogers.

Amazingly, in half an hour Rogers has apparently enabled Gloria to gain more immediacy, more acceptance, to relate more directly to accept more tentative descriptions, and to use an internal frame for making a decision.  How does just being genuine, caring and empathic achieve that?  Well the truth, I believe, is that it doesn’t.  Here, in rather stilted early 1960s style is the transcript of the start of the interview.

CR:      Good morning.
G:        How are you Doctor?
CR:      [overlapping her comment] I’m Doctor Rogers.  You must be Gloria.
G:        Yes, I am.
CR:      Won’t you have this chair? [They sit down] Well now; we have half an hour together, and I really don’t know what we’ll be able to make of it, but I hope we can make something of it, I’d be glad to know whatever concerns you.
G:        Well, I’m … Right now I’m nervous; but I feel more comfortable the way you’re talking in a low voice, and I don’t feel like you’ll be so harsh on me.  But, ah …
CR:      I hear the tremor in your voice, so I’m aware …
G:        Ah, well the main thing I want to talk to you about is: I’m just newly divorced and, ah, I had gone in therapy before and I felt comfortable when I left and all of a sudden now the biggest change is adjusting to my single life.
CR:      Mm hm, Mm hm.
G:        And ah, one of the things that bothers me the most is especially men, and having men to the house, and how it affects the children, and …
CR:      Mm hm.
G:        ah, the biggest thing I want, the thing that keeps coming to my mind I want to tell you about is I have a daughter, nine, who at one time I felt had a lot of emotional problems … and I wish I could stop shaking …
[Gloria laughs a little and Rogers laughs with her.  In NLP terms rapport seems now well established]
G:        … and ah, I’m real conscious of things affecting her.  I don’t want her to get upset; I don’t want to shock her.  I want so bad for her to accept me.  And we’re real open with each other, especially about sex … and the other day she saw a girl that was single but pregnant and she asked me all about “Can girls get pregnant if they’re single?”  And the conversation was fine, and I wasn’t un-at-ease at all with her, until she asked me if I’d ever made love to a man since I’ve left her daddy.  And I lied to her; and ever since that it keeps coming up to my mind, ’cause I feel so guilty lying to her; ’cause I never lie, and I want her to trust me.  And I want, I almost want an answer from you; I want you to tell me if it will affect her wrong if I told her the truth, or what.
CR:      … and it’s this concern about her, and the fact that you really aren’t; that this open relationship that has existed between you, now you feel is kind of damaged.
G:        Yes, I feel like I have to stay on guard.

Rogers’ Five Reframes

This second to last sentence is Rogers’ first actual therapeutic intervention after establishing rapport.  It’s a remarkable sentence, particularly because all it seems to be doing is pacing Gloria, checking he has understood her meaning.

In fact, Rogers has reshaped Gloria’s statement in five ways.

  • His description is more immediate.  He talks mainly about how she feels now, emphasising that word; instead of what happened then (in a previous conversation) or what might happen in the future (if she tells her daughter the truth).
  • He restates her experience without referring to anything she might have done “wrong” in her own eyes.  He says she is operating from “concern” about her daughter, on the one hand, and desire for an open relationship on the other.  Rogers has chunked up, in NLP terms, to a positive intention for each side of the conflict.  His frame is accepting of both aspects of her, in a way she was unable to be.
  • He focuses on her open, direct relationship, emphasising those words.
  • His description is more tentative than hers.  Gloria emphasises the intensity of her feeling about her daughter (“… I don’t want her to get upset; I don’t want to shock her.  I want so bad for her to accept me …”) while Rogers talks of her “concern”.  Gloria says “…I lied to her … I never lie, and I want her to trust me”, but Rogers description of this is more cautious, or more acknowledging of the uncertainty of any problem.  He says “… you feel [your open relationship] is kind of damaged” (emphasis mine).
  • She asks him to make a decision for her.  Gloria’s statement has a strong external frame.  “I want you to tell me …”.  Rogers replies as if she had an internal frame.  She says “decide for me” and he replies “so what you are deciding about is this …”.  His focus in his reply is on Gloria’s concern and Gloria’s feeling about the relationship.

In short, Carl Rogers’ first intervention is not so much a “reflective” or “understanding” reply, as it is a massive reframe.  The five new frames he offers Gloria are the same five personality shifts that he says are characteristic of therapy.  As well they might be, when the therapist packs them all into virtually every sentence!

And it Works!

Notice that Gloria’s immediate reply is “Yes”; as if Rogers has accurately described her situation.  As he has, because she is in the process of  accepting his reframe.  Why?  For the very reason Rogers himself alludes to.  He says himself that if he can convey genuineness; caring and empathy, then these five shifts will “almost certainly” occur.  In NLP terms we would say if he can create rapport, then these five reframes will almost certainly be accepted.

Later on in the interview Rogers is more direct with his reframe.  Gloria tells him “I want you very much to give me a direct answer …” and his reply (still forcing an internal frame) is:

CR:      I guess; I am sure this will sound evasive to you, but it seems to me that perhaps the person you are not being fully honest with is you; because I was very much struck by the fact that you were saying, “If I feel alright about what I have done, whether it’s going to bed with a man or what, if I really feel alright about it, then I do not have any concern about what I would tell Pam, or my relationship with her.
G:        Right.  Alright.  Now I hear what you are saying.  Then alright, then I want to work on accepting me then. I want to work on feeling alright about it.  That makes sense.  Then that will come natural and then I won’t have to worry about Pammy …

This process works.  And one thing it surely is not is “nondirective, client centred therapy”.  From his first comment, Rogers has shaped Gloria’s framing of her problem ever more persuasively, until she defines her goals in his framework!  In Carkhuff’s terms, he has now “personalised” Gloria’s goal: in NLP terms, he has put her “at cause”.  This is no mystical “process” where Gloria “discovers” a deeper personal issue behind her concern for her daughter.  Rogers shifts the issue with his reframes.

Getting the Job Done

So how is Gloria going to “work on accepting me” then, now that she has set her outcome?  The breakthrough which resolves her “presenting problem” of what to tell Pammy happens as a result of what we in NLP call the “As if” frame.  Firstly, Rogers teaches Gloria this frame, in the following section:

G:        Right, I ah, I really know you can’t answer it for me and I have to figure it out myself, but I want you to guide me, or show me where to start, or … so it won’t look so hopeless.  I know I can keep living with this conflict and I know eventually things would work out, but I like feeling more comfortable with the way I live, and I’m not.
CR:      One thing I might ask: “What is it you wish I would say to you?
G:        I wish you would say to me to be honest and take the risk that Pammy’s going to accept me.  And I also have a feeling if I could really risk it with Pammy of all people then I’d be able to see “Here’s this little kid that can accept me; and I’m really not that bad, if she really knows what a demon I am and still loves me and accepts me”.  It seems like it would help me to accept me more; like – “It’s really not that bad.”  I want you to say to me “Go ahead and be honest”.  But I don’t want the responsibility that it would upset her.  See that’s where I don’t want to take responsibility.
CR:      So you know very well what you’d like to do in the relationship.

The two of them discuss Gloria’s fear of responsibility, and then Gloria brings up the specific example again.  Now she uses the “as if” frame.

G:        I talked with Pammy about a month ago, and it keeps coming into my mind.  I don’t know whether to go back and talk to her about it, or wait.  She may even have forgotten what she asked me but, ah, it just …
CR:      But the point is you haven’t forgotten.
G:        I haven’t.  No. Mm-mm.  I haven’t. And I’d like to at least be able to tell her that “I remember lying, and I’m sorry I lied and it’s been driving me bugs because I did!”  [Gloria signs, smiles, and gestures with wide symmetrical arm movements quite unlike the single hand movements she has been making]; I did it!  Now I feel, “Now that’s solved!”, and I didn’t even solve a thing, but I feel relieved.  I, ah, I do feel like you’ve been saying to me – you’re not so much giving me advice, but you’re saying “You really wanna; you know what pattern you want to follow Gloria, and go ahead and follow it.”:  I sort of feel a backing up from you.
CR:      I guess the way I sense it is, ah, you’ve been telling me that you know what you want to do, and yes I do believe in backing up people in what they want to do.

Gloria displays the classic physiological shift we find in successful NLP changework, simply as a result of rehearsing congruently what she will say to Pammy; in the new context supplied by her understanding that saying that to Pammy means Gloria can accept herself.  (A complex equivalence Gloria makes in the previous section quoted above).

What Can NLP Practitioners Learn From Carl Rogers?

Carl Rogers has a style of work which conversationally achieves the NLP outcome frame. While apparently listening to “whatever concerns the person” and “backing up people in what they want to do”, he filters their description through a series of powerful reframes.  The “as if” frame is already understood in NLP, and Rogers’ question follows the usual format: “What would it be like if you had already reached your solution now?”

The other five frames are incorporated by Rogers in almost every “empathic” sentence he says, by a careful selection of words.

  • Immediacy frame.  The word “now” is used.  “Now you feel …”.
  • Acceptance frame. Rogers chunks up to the positive intention of the person’s behaviour and presupposes it in his “empathic reply”.  He connects discordant intentions with the word “and” e.g. “… this concern about her, and … this open relationship”.
  • Direct relationship frame.  Rogers uses the words “open relationship” or “direct relationship” to describe the person’s aims.  He sorts their goals for suggestions that they could benefit from direct relationship, and restates these.
  • Tentative frame.  The words “kind of”, “almost”, “sort of”, “perhaps”, “I guess”, “it seems to me”, “I might”, convey this.
  • Internal frame.  Use of the second person pronoun as the subject of the sentence.  “You feel …” “The way you see it …”.  Rogers also directly asks “What is it you wish …” and directly tells Gloria about this frame.

Rogers’ techniques enable you to offer these reframes while appearing to be simply pacing the person’s exploration.  Combined with rapport, these reframes significantly speed up the initial phases of changework.  Learning this subtle empathic reframing process will add enormously to your ability to do seamless/seemless NLP.

What Can Counsellors Learn from An NLP Study of Carl Rogers?

Sorry folks: there’s no such thing as a non-directive empathic therapy.  Every counsellor comment has a multitude of frames implicit in it, so every reply influences the client.  And being caring, genuine and empathic only increases the power of this influence (rapport is the basis from which leading is successful). So the real questions are:

1)         Are you fully aware of the frames you’re using?  For example, while mediocre counselling often uses a problem frame, Carl uses an outcome frame from his very first sentence (“So your intention/s are …”).
2)         Do you use these frames to support goals the client has set, or goals which meet their higher intentions; or merely goals you want to reach?  And yes, this is a grey area (or is that just my tentative frame?).  The answer to this question about “whose goals?” is a measure of what NLP trainer Genie Laborde calls “Influence with Integrity”.

Carl Rogers As An Analyst

One of the indications of Carl Rogers’ greatness is that future generations of helpers can identify new patterns and new techniques in the “intuitive” responses he made.  His own model of his success remains valuable, but for me Rogers is above all else an expert reframer.  He skilfully guides clients to an “as if”/outcome frame.  He builds immediacy, acceptance, directness, tentativeness and an internal decision-making frame.  NLP gives us the precision to replicate this skill.

The session had a profound positive impact on Gloria’s life. She was very moved by Rogers’ empathy, and over the next 15 years, she wrote to him a couple of times a year. They spent time together at least once in 1965, a year after the original session, when she also established a friendship with Rogers’ wife (Weinrach, 1990). Ten years after the session, with Rogers’ knowledge, she attended a psychotherapy training where he presented the video of the session as a model session.

In Stephen Weinrach’s 1990 analysis of the film he noted that the last few minutes of dialogue had been cut from the original film (in order to make a more powerful end point?) – I have included it below as an appendix. Here we can see that Rogers is actually surprisingly analytical, rather than merely reflective, and he is well aware of the significant “transference/countertransference” issues that many have discussed after watching the movie (the fact that Gloria wishes she could transfer her needs for a loving father into the therapeutic interaction rather than resolve them in her daily life). For Rogers, as he says in his post-session comments, to assess the interaction entirely in this way would be to ignore the very real “I-Thou” relationship they had. However, I also think that for him to deny that she is transferring longings that emerged in her relationship with her father and trying to meet those needs in his therapy … to deny that is to deny her own words.

We can also see here in this final section that he is still dealing with a surprisingly ambivalent client. Rogers suggests that her dating men she doesn’t respect may be motivated by her wanting to “slap her father in the face”. This is something she did imply in a previous comment where she said “I almost gloated, writing him a letter the other day and telling him ‘I’m a waitress’ which I expect him to disapprove of, and I, ‘I go out at nights’, I almost gloated, hitting him back like ‘Now how do you like me?’ … and yet I really want acceptance and love from him.” However, after hearing this fed back to her in this last section, Gloria quickly “accuses” Rogers of suggesting that merely by “wanting mature men” she is trying to hurt her father. He clarifies “No, by going out with those who are quite unlike the ones you’d really want.” Her last comment is actually deeply disempowered. “But I don’t mean to [go out with men who are quite unlike the ones I’d really like]. I don’t understand why they keep coming around.”

She has resolved the situation about being honest with Pammy, but not the more central issue with her getting into sexual relationships that she regrets, and perhaps not the situation of wanting love and approval from older men as a substitution for a lifetime of unsatisfactory interaction with her own dad. Obviously her continuous contact with Rogers can also be seen as her pursuit of an unrealistic relationship with an older man OR as a genuine friendship between two human beings, OR as both. Mostly, I agree with Rogers on this. It is also important to notice that Gloria’s relationship with him is not, at least in this first half hour, like a “real life” intimate relationship, because his entire focus is on her needs. Friendship with a therapist compares to real friendship much like a paid relationship with a courtesan compares to a marriage. Most psychotherapists see it as a fundamental part of their role to help the client notice the one sided nature of the parental needs they “transfer” into therapy, and to finally “grow up” and confront the challenges of real world mutual relationships. Rogers belief is that by his congruence (being honest) and positive regard, he can effect the same kind of growth in a far more loving way.

To give Carl Rogers the final word, “As Rogers said in reference to their 30-minute filmed interview: (1984, p. 425) “It is good to know that even one half-hour can make a difference in a life.” (Weinrach, 1990, p 287).

Dr Richard Bolstad, learn@transformations.org.nz

References:

  • Shostrom, E. (Ed). Three Approaches to Psychotherapy (Film No I). Orange, California: Psychological Films, 1965.
  • Carkhuff, R. And Berenson, B. Teaching as Treatment. Amherst, Massachusetts: Human Resource Development Press, 1976.
  • Weinrach, S.G. Rogers and Gloria: The Controversial Film and the Enduring Relationship, Psychotherapy Volume 27, Summer 1990, No. 2, p 282-290

Appendix: Edited section (The following discussion was edited out from the very end of the original video. It is an ongoing discussion about Gloria’s wish for a father who understood her).

Gloria: Well, O.K., I’d like more of it [fatherly love] I guess.
Rogers: Do you feel as though that’s a big need, that it would take a lot of caring and a lot of understanding to fill it up?
Gloria: Exactly. And I have been so busy trying to get rid of my neurosis, I’d like to have this one neurosis filled. I’d like to just find someone who is going to love me like a father. I even want this in boy-friends. I always want to get an older man that’s caring and more mature and not so flip.
Rogers: One of the things you really deeply want is to find a father whom you would love and respect and who would really like you as you are, and not to just like perfection.
Gloria: That’s right. And it seems ironic that since I have been away from my husband, the only type of men I go out with are the kind I don’t respect—are the young, flip, not caring, ‘smart alec’ kind of guy. Not somebody that’s really, you know, that I can respect. That seems like such a big thing.
Rogers: The phrase that comes to my mind—I don’t know if it is appropriate or not—you’re slapping your father in the face, aren’t you?
Gloria: Oh? By wanting mature men?
Rogers: No. By going out with those who are quite unlike the ones you’d really want.
Gloria: But I don’t mean to. I don’t understand why they keep coming around.