ung adult Rogers had few close friends and, until he attended college at the University of Wisconsin, developed no long-term attachments. At the university he majored in agriculture and was inspired by the evangelical movement on campus and decided to enter the ministry. During this time, he also married a childhood acquaintance and moved to New York City, where he enrolled in Union Theological Seminary (Kirschenbaum, 1979).
During his initial training in the seminary, Rogers became discouraged by some of the more rigid aspects of ministerial training. He switched his major to counseling psychology and transferred to Teachers College, Columbia University, receiving his doctorate in 1931. "He later acknowledged that his shifting from agriculture to ministry to counseling psychology could be explained in no small part by his personal need for closer human contact within a structured situation" (Kirschenbaum and Henderson, eds., 1989, p. 4).
Between 1928 and 1940, Rogers worked in Rochester, New York, as a staff member, and eventual director, of the Rochester Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Rochester Child Study Center. It was during this time, under pragmatic conditions, that Roger's treatment of hundreds of children and their families helped him clarify his theoretical basis for counseling (Goldsmith, 1989). "Here he [Rogers] came to recognize the resources individuals have within them for solving their own problems, and that the counselor can serve as helpful companion rather than director in that process" (Kirschenbaum and Henderson, eds., 1989, p. 4).
During the next 23 years, Rogers worked at Ohio State University (1940 1944), the USO (1944 1945), the University of Chicago (1945 1957), and the University of Wisconsin (1957 1963). At each school, Rogers pursued pure research, clarified his theory of psychotherapy and personality change, and developed additional methods for counseling and psyc...