ABSTRACT
In the years before he died he was excited to see that his findings in the science of psychotherapy were reflected in other fields such chemistry and mathematics and with the emergence of ‘Chaos theory’. In other words, the fully-functioning person is ‘an open system’ – a principle in Chaos theory – interacting with their environment and integrating these new experiences to adapt, as they proceed. There are clear implications in his later work that, although as yet scientifically untestable, Rogers’ personal experience had led him to apprehend a spiritual reality; that he saw this as part of our evolution as a species, or our potential as individuals, but that he did not believe he could responsibly convey this without sufficient empirical evidence. It could well have been that Rogers would have gone on to use ‘open systems’ theory to begin to synthesise the scientific with the spiritual.
