This special double issue brings the promised comprehensive bibliography of the work of Carl Ransom Rogers in English and in German translation. It provides a complete chronological and alphabetical catalog of original editions and German translations, including both, writings and films, from 1922 to the present and indices of names and titles. It has been in the works for some years, and we are now proud to bring it to readers. We hope and expect that it will be of lasting usefulness to clinicians and scholars. We are especially pleased at the timing, which provides this resource to members of our new organizational subscriber, the British Association for the Person-Centred Approach, in their inaugural year with the journal.

Carl Rogers’ huge and influential output brings home the paradox of what was sometimes regarded as an antischolarly position. Rogers was often at odds with academia, though he was part of it for over 20 years in the middle of his career. Rogers often felt constrained by scholarly stuffiness and eventually (in 1964) left academia for Western Behavioral Science Institute and The Center for Studies of the Person in La Jolla — non-rigid institutions where he expected to have more freedom. At times he complained about a pervasive intellectual conservatism among academics, yet he was an astonishingly productive scholar and has had a huge impact on thinking in many academic fields.

Like the antischolarly side of Rogers, person-centered and experiential theorists and therapists have sometimes considered research and scholarship as dehumanizing. Perhaps psychological research’s frequent focus on mechanical cause and effect and on linear relations among quantified variables can appear to constrict the understanding of human experience.  A sad consequence, we think, is that the therapies have been studied less than they should have been.

We believe that this view of research is too narrow — based partly on a mistaken impression that psychological research must imitate research in chemistry or engineering.  As Rogers has abundantly shown, and as documented in this special issue, thinking need not oppose feeling. Intellectual, scholarly, scientific activity can be consistent with, and indeed can facilitate and elaborate, humanistic and person-centered values. Whether research or scholarship is humanizing or dehumanizing depends on the quality and content of the thinking, the thoughtfulness and design of the research, and the care and sensitivity of the scholarship. Rogers (1985a) offered a vision of a more human science of the person and pointed towards ways of research that seem more consistent with person-centered anthropology and epistemology.

In publishing this bibliography, as in publishing this journal, we position ourselves with the side of Rogers that believed the facts are friendly and that intellectual, scholarly, scientific activity can be consistent with humanistic and person-centered values. We take our task to be bringing the tools and fruits of theory, research, scholarship and practice to those who want to get closer to the ideas that Rogers developed and the values that he lived by. By getting closer, we suggest, we can gain a better view of the details, form a more differentiated and accurate judgment, and contribute to a wider understanding.

Compiling this bibliography has been a massive project and a labor of love by our coeditor Peter F. Schmid, who has worked on it over a period of nearly 20 years drawing on his own archive and many sources. Many readers will have seen the website version. Preparing it for publication has presented some challenges for several people, including our publisher, PCCS Books, which they have met in good and generous spirit. We particularly thank Pete Sanders, Sandy Green and Beth Freire for the mammoth job of editing this into APA style.

One of the possible advantages of this bibliography is that the distinctive number attributed to each publication can contribute to academic writing and exchange by unmistakably identifying a piece of work by Rogers, for reference in future publications. To make best use of the many special features of the bibliography, we encourage you to read Peter’s introduction on pages 154–159 and the description of symbols and conventions on page 161.

We believe this bibliography will serve as a valuable resource for anyone interested in person-centered theory or therapy. This double issue of PCEP will also be available separately for non-subscribers to the journal. Copies should be on every person-centered and experiential scholar’s and clinician’s bookshelf.

Dave Mearns, Robert Elliott, Peter F. Schmid, William B. Stiles

December 2005