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Chapter 5. Person-Centered Therapy. Person-Centered Therapy. Created by Carl Rogers in the early 1940s. Initial emphasis is non-directive and lets the client take the lead in initiating the direction that change should take. Carl Rogers.
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Chapter 5 Person-Centered Therapy
Person-Centered Therapy • Created by Carl Rogers in the early 1940s. • Initial emphasis is non-directive and lets the client take the lead in initiating the direction that change should take.
Carl Rogers • Born in 1902 in Oak Park, Illinois, and was the 4th of 6 children. • Studied briefly with Alfred Adler. • Found that the psychoanalytical approach to working with troubled individuals was time-consuming and often ineffective. • Established the Center for the Study of Persons in 1968.
View of Human Nature/Personality • People are essentially good. • They are characteristically positive, forward-moving, constructive, realistic, and trustworthy. • Each person is aware, inner-directed and moving toward self-actualization.
Rogers’ View on Human Infants • Whatever an infant perceives is reality. • Infants are born with a self-actualizing tendency that is satisfied through goal-directed behavior. • Everything an infant does is interrelated. • The experience of an infant may be seen as positive or negative according to whether the experiences enhance the actualization tendency. • Infants maintain experiences that are self-actualizing and avoid those that are not.
Concepts of Carl Rogers’ Beliefs • Self-actualization is the most prevalent and motivating drive of existence. • Each person is capable of finding a personal meaning and purpose in life. • Phenomenological Perspective – what is important is the person’s perception of reality rather than an event itself.
Concept of Self • The self is an outgrowth of what people experience and an awareness of self helps individuals differentiate themselves from others. • For a healthy self to emerge, people need positive regard – love, warmth, care and acceptance.
Ideal Self and Real Self • Ideal Self – what the person is striving to become. • Real Self – what the person is. The further the ideal self is from the real self, the more alienated and maladjusted persons become.
Roles of the Counselor/Therapist • Take on a holistic role in their work. • Establish a free and comfortable environment for their clients. • Work as facilitators rather than as directors. • Make limited use of psychological tests. • The use of diagnosis is avoided because the diagnosis is philosophically incompatible with the objectives of this approach.
Goals • Geared to clients as people, not their problems. • Assist people in learning how to cope with situations. • Learn to not have need for defense mechanisms.
Rogers’ Goals for Clients Clients will become: • More realistic in their self-perception. • More confident and self-directing. • More positively valued by themselves. • Less likely to repress aspects of their experiences. • More mature, socialized, and adaptive in their behavior. • Less upset by stress and quicker to recover. • More like the healthy, integrated, well-functioning person in their personality structures.
Primary Goal • The primary goal is to bring about a harmony between the client’s self-concept and his or her perceived self-concept.
Evolution of Person-Centered Processes • Non-Directive Period (1940-50) • Emphasis on forming a relationship. • Main techniques were acceptance and clarification. • Reflective Period (1950-57) • Emphasis on creating nonthreatening relationships. • Main techniques included responding to clients’ feelings and reflecting underlying affect back to clients. • Increased focus on the therapeutic relationship.
Evolution of Person-Centered Processes • Experiential Period (1957-80) • Began with Rogers issuing his statement on the necessary and sufficient (core) conditions of counseling: • EMPATHY – the ability to feel with clients and convey this understanding back to them. • POSITIVE REGARD – acceptance; a deep and genuine caring for clients and persons. • CONGRUENCE – the condition of being transparent in the therapeutic relationship by giving up roles and facades.
Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for a Counseling Relationship • Two persons are in psychological contact. • The first person, the client, is in a state of incongruence and is vulnerable or anxious. • The second person, the counselor, is congruent, or integrated, in the relationship. • The counselor experiences unconditional positive regard for the client. • The counselor experiences an empathic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference and attempts to explain his/her experiences to the client. • There is at least a minimal degree of communication to the client of the counselor’s understanding and unconditional positive regard.
Methods that Help Promote the Counselor-Client Relationship • Active and passive listening. • Accurate reflection of thought and feelings. • Clarification. • Summarization. • Confrontation. • General or open-ended leads.
Multicultural and Gender Sensitive Issues • Mixed reviews for appropriateness to a multicultural context. • Some elements are not universal in application. • Mixed reviews for gender issues as well. • Rogers did not truly address the gender issue. • Some question as to whether one gender can truly empathize and relate to the opposite gender.
Strengths and Contributions • Revolutionized the counseling profession by linking counseling with psychotherapy. • Applicable to a wide range of human problems. • Has contributed to the field by generating a great deal of research. • Effectiveness of the approach. • Focuses on the open relationship established. • Relatively quick to learn. • Positive view of human nature.
Limitations and Criticisms • Provided few instructions for counselors on how to establish relationships with clients and bring about change. • Depends on bright, insightful, hard-working clients for best results. • Ignores diagnosis, the unconscious, and innately generated sexual and aggressive drives. • Seen by critics as limited because it is directed by clients and may only deal with surface issues.
The Case of Linda: Person-Centered Therapy • How would you conceptualize this case using Person-Centered therapy? • What would be your treatment plan for this client using a Person-Centered approach?