Person Centered Therapy

Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

  Philosophy of Person-Centered Therapy

We shall assume that clients have the resourcefulness for positive movement in therapy without the counselor assuming an active, directive, or problem solving role.

Important Goals for Therapist:

• Congruence - genuineness and realness in the therapeutic relationship
• Unconditional Positive Regard - acceptance of and caring for the client
• Accurate Empathetic Understanding - the ability to deeply grasp the subjective world of another person without becoming lost in it
• Focus on the client/therapist relationship as the prime determinant of the therapeutic outcome 

Important Goals for Client:

• An openness to experience
• A trust in themselves
• An internal source of evaluation
• A willingness to continue growing
• Striving for an actualizing tendency toward realization, fulfillment, autonomy, and self determination.

Carl Rogers placed great emphasis on the quality and equality of the relationship between the therapist and client and formulated his hypothesis on the following therapeutic core conditions (Cain, 2002):

1. Two persons are in psychological contact
2. The first, whom we shall term the client, is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious.
3. The second person, whom we term the therapist, is congruent (real or genuine) in the relationship.
4. The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client.
5. The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client's internal frame of reference and endeavors to communicate this experience to the client.
6. The communication to the client of the therapist's empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard is to a minimal degree achieved. 

If these core conditions are met and exist over a period of time, constructive personality change will occur. The conditions are both necessary and sufficient for this change to take place.

Contributions to the Evolution of Person-Centered Therapy

Natalie Rogers - Person Centered Expressive Arts Therapy

http://www.nrogers.com/PCExArtsArticle.pdf  

 William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick

Motivational Interviewing

http://www.motivationalinterview.org/Documents/1%20A%20MI%20Definition%20Principles%20&%20Approach%20V4%20012911.pdf 

    

References:

Corey, Gerald (2012). Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy. 9th ed. 

      Belmont,California: Brooks/Cole. (pp. 173-203).

 

Cain, D. J. (2002). Defining characteristics, history, and evolution of humanistic psychotherapies. In D. J. Cain & J. Seeman (Eds.), Humanistic psychotherapies: Handbook of research and practice (pp. 3-54). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.