Journal of Humanistic

Psychology
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Reply to Rollo May's Letter to Carl Rogers

Carl R. Rogers
Journal of Humanistic Psychology 1982 22: 85
DOI: 10.1177/002216788202200407
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REPLY TO ROLL0 MAYS LETTER

TO CARL ROGERS
CARL R. ROGERS

Dear Rollo:
Tom Greening has sent me your eloquent and scholarly letter dealing
with the problem of evil and evil behavior. Your thoughtful analyses and
arguments will provoke a lot of good thinking and I appreciate that.
Unfortunately, your material arrives on the eve of my departure for
Europe and by the time I return, the editors deadline will be at hand.
Consequently, this must be a hasty reply, which I regret. I cannot
possibly touch on all the issues that you raised.

I would like first to deal with a couple of lesser points in your letter,
ones on which my feelings are clear.
When you speak of the narcissism that has been fostered by humanistic psychology and how many individuals are lost in self-love, I feel
like speaking up and saying, Thats not true! Then I realize that what I
am saying is that it is not true in my experience, but my experience is
limited to clients and groups dealt with by my particular brand of
humanistic psychology and philosophy. In those groups I simply have not
seen the development of a harmful narcissism and certainly not of an
excessive self-love. If these characteristics have emerged in other facets
of the humanistic movement, I have not been in contact with them. 1
realize this is quite possible because I am not closely in touch with other
aspects of the humanistic movement.
In the groups with which Ive had contact, the truth is quite the
contrary. Such groups lead to social action of a realistic nature.
Individuals who come in as social fanatics become much more socially
realistic, but they still want to take action. People who have not been very
aware of social issues become more aware and, again, opt for realistic
Journal of Humumktu Pqchdogy, Vol. 22 No. 4, Fall 1982 85-89
0 1982 Association for Humanistic Psychology

85
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actions on those issues. We have had plenty of evidence of this in our

encounter groups and workshops. Irrational anger and violence are
sometimes defused, but action of a more realistic sort increases.
One amusing bit of personal evidence on this. When I received the
copy of your open letter, I was putting the finishing touches on a very
strong statement about nuclear war and what might be done to prevent
it. I am taking a stand against the policies of our government, which I
feel are making nuclear war more likely. This is but one example of the
fact that we agree in so many ways it is difficult to be exactly certain
where we differ. I am sure that you and I are both acting to do what we
can to prevent this monstrous evil of nuclear war.

You speak at length of the failure of people like myself and clientcentered therapy to recognize, accept, and respond to feelings of anger,
hostility, and negative feelings in general, perhaps especially those
directed toward the therapist. I think that to some extent this was
definitely true of me in the distaht past, although I have also published
examples of the way in which I dealt with bitter hostility toward me in
therapy. I have never quite agreed with the opinion of the outside
evaluators in our schizophrenic research, that we as a group dodged or
evaded the negative or hostile reactions. I have to recognize that possibly
the evaluators were correct. Certainly in recent years I feel that I have
responded much more adequately to such attitudes. The film, Carl
Rogers Counsels an IndividuaI: Anger and Hurt, of which considerable
portions are published in The Comprehensive Textbook of Pgychiatry/ZZI
(1980),show that I was responsive to both anger and to the pain that was
discovered to be underlying it. I believe I have learned to be acceptant of
anger toward me and toward others. There may be truth in what you say,
that client-centered therapists have a tendency not to accept or respond
to such feelings. If so, I regret this as much as you.
Now I would like to turn ta the more fundamental issue. You have
never seemed to care whether the evil impulses in man are genetic and
inherent or whether they are acquired after birth. For you they are just
there. For me their origin makes a great deal of difference philmphical1s;. I would like to try to clarify my reasons. I feel that the tendency
toward actualization is inherent, In this, man is like allother organisms.
I can count on it being present. It may take bizarre and futile forms. I
have given an example of the potatoes in a basement bin, sending their
feeble white sprouts upward in a futile effort to reach the light. I feel
similarly about the deprived ghetto youth whose only path to ego
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Carl R. RoQer8

87

enhancement is to be the best mugger or the most daring burglar in his

gang. My attitude is sifnilar toward the psychotic in a back ward who is
Jesus Christ. But the' basic, actualizing tendency operates toward
fulfillment.

I find in my experience no such innate tendency toward destructiveness, toward evil. I cannot count on the certainty that this individual is
striving consciously or unconsciously to fulfill an evil nature. 1 do not
find this in animals either. There is, however, one rare exception which
has stuck in my mind. I saw a television show of African wild dogs. There
was one female who was jealous of another. When the second female was
absent from her den, the first would go into the den, remove one of the
cubs, and kill it. This went on day after day until the litter was totally
destroyed. I can stiIl remember my shock at that, because it is so
uncharacteristic of animals. They kill, but normally only in the interest
of actualizing themselves. I gather that you feel the central tendency in
human nature is a dual one, aiming both toward creative growth and
destructive evil. With the exception I have just mentioned, I don't find
that describes animal behavior, or plant behavior, or human behavior. If
the elements making for growth are present, the actualizing tendency
develops in positive ways. In the human these elements for growth are
not only proper nutrition, etc., but a climate of psychological attitudes.
So, how do I account for the evil behavior that is so obviously present
in our world? In my experience, every person has the capacity for evil
behavior. I, and others, have had murderous and cruel impulses, desires
to hurt, feelings of anger and rage, desires to impose our wills on others.
I t is well to bear in mind that I also have a capacity to vomit, for example.
Whether I, or anyone, will translate these impulses into behavior
depends, it seems to me, on two elements: social conditioning and
voluntary choice. Perhaps we can use Hitler as an example. His early
personal life and social circumstances certainly made it natural that he
would try to fulfill himself by being a big-shot, a leader full of hatred
toward those he perceived as responsible for his humiliation. But beyond
that, in acts like the decision to exterminate the Jews, a personal choice
for which he was responsible was also a very real factor.
I believe that, theoretically at least, every evil behavior is brought
about by varying degrees of these elements.

I will admit that there is much I don't understand about some evil
behaviors. The experiments by Milgram and Zimbardo are a shocking

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88

Reply

puzzle to me, as they were to the experimenters. Certainly Milgrams

subjects were influenced by our education for conformity and Zimbardos subjects by our-training in prejudice. But I would agree with you
that those scarcely seem like adequate explanations.

It is interesting that in our decisions about what to do about evil

behavior and evil situations, we seem remarkably similar. We take the
best action we can see to oppose evil, to destroy the causes, to try to reach
people who are acting in hurtful ways. I am pleased that I had the
opportunity to work with groups composed of hostile and feuding
individuals whose evil intentions toward one another were very evident.
In a group we worked with from Belfast, which included both Catholic
and Protestant extremists as well as moderates. a Protestant young
woman said in one of the earlysessions, If a wounded IRA man were lying
before me on the street, I would step on him! This was typical of someof
the bitter feelings expressed. Yet in a climte of understanding and
acceptance those people changed so much in attitudes in a short sixteen
hours of contact that when they went back to BeIfast they worked in
teams of two to show the film to groups in the interest of reconciliation.
So I dont for one minute agree that humanistic psychology, at least my
kind of humanistic psychology, cuts the nerve of social action. It
enhances social action.
You talk at some length about the transformation that I believe is
coming to our world. Here I am much influenced by the thinking of men
like Prigogine. The current perturbations in our society and in our world
do seem to me to predict that there isan inevitablesocial transformation
coming. In chemistry, and I believe in our culture, these extremes of
perturbation lead to a reorganization, to a higher level of order. As to the
person of tomorrow, I think you quite misunderstand my description of
that person. I was speaking of the person who wouId be fit to live in the
transformed world, not the average person, and though I believe a
transformation is inevitable, it certainly will not be a socially constructive transformation unless we all give it every effort. There I think we
can agree.
Curiously enough there is one minor point on which I think you are
much too optimistic. You speak twice of our culture deteriorating or
disintegrating like the cultures of Greece and Rome. I think that is a
possible scenario, but it is not what will happen if we havea nuclear war.
In that case, our culture will be utterly obliterated. It will not simply
deteriorate or disintegrate.

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Curl R. Roger8

89

Rollo, you have raised many profound points and this is, I am well
aware, a hasty and ingequate reply. Yet I hope that between the two
documents people will be stirred to constructive thought. As1 said in my
earlier published remarks about you, you have been a great contributor
to humanistic psychology and I value you very much for that. I hold you
in affectionate regard.
Sincerely,
Carl Rogers

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