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Carl Rogers: a Critical Biography
COHEN, D., 1998
London: Constable
ISBN 0-09-477010-7 20
Reviewed by Colin Feltham, Senior Lecturer in Counselling, Sheffield Hallam University David Cohen has taken on the necessary but almost 'dirty' task of writing critically about one of the best loved of psychologists/counsellors-Carl Rogers (1902-87). It is one thing to knock Rogers' ideas, but to de-idealise the man is something that even Masson in Against Therapy barely attempted. One review of Cohen's book has already implied that, not having worked alongside Rogers in encounter groups and known his warmth and skill, he is not qualified to write about him!
Cohen manages in little over 200 pages to convey that Rogers-in addition to making serious contributions to 20th-century psychology and culture-was also a rather shrewdly ambitious man with a dark side concealed beneath the persona of humanistic saint. Essentially shy and bookish, Rogers carefully crafted a career by, among other things,...