Tomorrow’s Person: A Reflective Essay on Carl Rogers’ Brave New World

Carl Rogers (1980), a founding figure in humanistic psychology, concluded his seminal work A Way of Being with a future-oriented chapter titled “The World of Tomorrow, and the Person of Tomorrow”. Written during a period of significant global change and an American-led counterculture, Rogers set forth a hope-filled yet grounded picture of the social, psychological, and existential world he envisioned. In contrast, and in a parallel universe far, far away, I was beginning my life as a child of the 1970s in regional New South Wales, Australia. The idea that people my age and younger might be his “tomorrow’s people” resonates deeply with me. The following reflective essay considers the philosophical underpinnings of Rogers’ vision of tomorrow’s people and wonders out loud—or at least on the page—about its implications for contemporary society and its alignment with current counselling and psychotherapy praxis in Australia.