Client Centered Therapy

12 Key excerpts on "Client Centered Therapy"

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  Counseling and Psychotherapy Theories in Context and Practice

  Skills, Strategies, and Techniques

  • John Sommers-Flanagan, Rita Sommers-Flanagan(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Additionally, in all aspects of his life, he strove to be a genuine and open person; he strove to be himself. As he engaged with clients, he put himself so deeply into their worlds that he could sometimes feel their feelings right along with them. What Is Person-Centered Therapy? Person-centered therapy is a humanistic or existential-humanistic approach. Person-centered therapy includes the following characteristics: (a) The therapist trusts the client. (b) Therapists hold attitudes toward clients of congruence, unconditional regard, and empathic understanding. (c) The therapeutic relationship is the mechanism of change. (d) Therapists don’t educate clients, interpret their con-flicts, or identify faulty thoughts or behaviors; instead, they establish relational conditions that allow clients to engage in natural self-discovery and personal growth. Person-centered therapy isn’t a good fit with the medical model. This is partly because person-centered therapists view clients (and not therapists) as the ulti-mate experts. Other professional helpers, even existential theorists, sometimes viewed Rogers’s optimistic perspec-tive as frustratingly naïve. For example, Rollo May, who regarded Rogers quite highly, once wrote to Rogers: You paint a seductive and enticing picture, and anyone would like to believe it. But I recall the words of Warren Bemis in the film of you and him, when he characterized Counseling and Psychotherapy Theories in Context and Practice: Skills, Strategies, and Techniques, Third Edition. John Sommers-Flanagan and Rita Sommers-Flanagan. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Companion website: www.wiley.com/go/sommers-flanagan/theories3e 114 CHAPTER 5 PERSON-CENTERED THEORY AND THERAPY Teachers College to study clinical psychology. His train-ing was squarely within the domain of American aca-demic psychology. At the time, Columbia University was a bastion of John Watson’s behaviorism (see Chapter 7).

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  The Paradox of Countertransference

  You and Me, Here and Now

  • Carol Holmes(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  CLIENT-CENTERED PSYCHOTHERAPY 123 Historically, I think the first term that Rogers used was ‘client-centered’. What he meant by that was (which is hard to believe now but at the time was a revolutionary theory) that each of us has within ourselves the ability to grow and to understand as opposed to an expert coming in from the outside to do it for us – and that’s the basic premise. If I can create that atmosphere of trust and understanding, then the client will find their own direction. ‘Person-centered’ versus ‘client-centered’ has to do with the idea of separating out the idea of a client from a patient (which means someone who is ill) from a person who is my equal and the idea that we are exploring and making a journey together. ‘Client-centered’ and ‘person-centered’ both come under the heading of humanism; but there are also other branches of that. Gestalt is one branch that I am interested in. Something that I have discovered since I have been here from the States is that an Existential approach is also one of the branches that comes under the heading of humanism. Existentialism certainly informs my work with clients in a humanistic way, whereas in this country it is seen as separate field, unlike in America where it is seen as a facet of the humanistic approach. My next question was concerned with whether client-centered therapy had a concept that could be viewed as in any way comparable with the notion of countertransference. Harris explained that although Rogers did not incorporate the term into his model, he did talk a lot about knowing oneself and of the need for the therapist to be genuine and congruent. She said she understood this to mean that the therapist needed to have ongoing therapy and supervision in order to remain aware of their own issues as these arose in the clinical situation. The thing about actualizing and growing is that it is never completed.

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  Foundations of Counseling and Psychotherapy

  Evidence-Based Practices for a Diverse Society

  • David Sue, Diane M. Sue(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Humanistic therapies, with their focus on the client-therapist relationship and collaborative work with clients, have had a profound effect on the way therapy is conducted. Consistent with the humanistic philosophy, Hubble, Duncan, and Miller (1999) and Duncan and Miller (2000) believe that psychotherapy should be individualized and client directed. They believe that therapy is most effective when therapists:

  1. Work in a collaborative manner with clients

  2. View the change process as self-change

  3. Assess the client’s perspective regarding problems and their causes

  4. Tailor therapy to the client’s goals and solutions

  5. Utilize client competencies in therapy and credit them for making constructive changes

  6. Openly ask clients to give feedback regarding the therapist’s performance

  Although client-centered techniques continue to influence therapist-client relationship variables emphasized in many manualized, evidence-based therapies, the humanistic therapies are threatened by experimental designs that stress objective measures. The advent of managed care—with its emphasis on clearly defined goals—along with the movement toward the use of empirically supported techniques, has greatly reduced the number of individuals who identify themselves as humanistic therapists. In a randomly selected group of psychotherapists, less than 6 percent identified themselves as having a primarily humanistic orientation (existential, Gestalt, client-centered) while the percentage was 14 percent in 1981 (Norcross, Hedges, & Castle, 2002). Although the pure forms of humanistic therapies are no longer widely practiced, many other therapeutic approaches incorporate their techniques and assumptions.

  The Client-Centered Approach

  The form of psychotherapy introduced by Carl Rogers (1942) was revolutionary because of its contrast to the two main schools of therapy at the time—psychoanalytic therapy, with its emphasis on unconscious intrapsychic conflicts, and behavioral therapy, with the focus on stimulus and response. While humans were viewed as either “evil” or impulse driven in psychoanalysis or “neutral” in behavioral therapy, Rogers perceived human nature as “good” and humans as having the potential for self-actualization

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  Modern Psychotherapies

  A Comprehensive Christian Appraisal

  • Stanton L. Jones, Richard E. Butman(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • IVP Academic

    (Publisher)

  As coparticipants in a process of change and discovery, the client-therapist relationship is egalitarian, informal and nonauthoritarian. Formal assessment of the presenting concerns or underlying dynamics in the forms of psychological testing or psychiatric diagnosis are seen as inappropriate and unnecessary. Techniques, of which there are few in person-centered therapy, are secondary to the therapist’s attitudes, sensitivities and skills. Active listening, clarification and reflection of feelings, personal presence and coparticipation are seen as the only necessary tools in the repertoire of the person-centered therapist, coupled with a profound respect for process and inner-directedness. It is assumed that the client will freely choose to translate the changes experienced in the intimate context of therapy to outside relationships with others.

  Change occurs in person-centered therapy when new understandings of self and others emerge from the “creative process” of therapy. Described as “more of a process of creation than of repair” (Bohart, 2003, p. 131), person-centered therapy allows the client to creatively explore his or her thoughts, feelings and perceptions in a supportive, empathic relationship, and to “try on” new behaviors (Bohart, 2003).

  While many person-centered therapists continue to be purists in their commitment to nondirectivity and trust in the client’s growth direction, some person-centered therapists provide an empathic, genuine, egalitarian relationship, but utilize more directive techniques from other approaches to therapy (Bohart, 2003). Emotion-focused approaches to therapy, which will be reviewed in chapter eight, are examples of integrative therapies that incorporate person-centered therapy with contemporary research and practice.

  Christian Critique

  The debate continues in contemporary Christian theological and psychological literature regarding Carl Rogers as a “friend” or “foe” in his influence on Judeo-Christian thought in the culture and in the church. Thorne (1998), a committed Anglican, emeritus professor and trained person-centered therapist, articulates the challenges of maintaining allegiance to both the church of England and the work of a Rogerian therapist as that of being branded a “liberal heretic doing Lucifer’s work” by fellow Christians, and “loss of credibility at best and total rejection at worst” by the psychology community (p. x). Rogers’s views of the person, in particular, have influenced the field of pastoral care, the church and the theological anthropology of many Christian thinkers (Browning & Cooper, 2004; Thorne, 1998). In this appraisal of person-centered theory we will draw from a diversity of Christian perspectives to evaluate the congruence of the theory and practice of person-centered therapy with Christian thought.

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  Handbook of Educational Theories

  • Beverly Irby, Genevieve H. Brown, Rafael Lara-Aiecio(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Unconditional positive regard, congru-ence and genuineness, and empathy are the three atti-tudes the counselor must possess in therapy to make it successful (Rogers, 1957c). A person-centered counselor does not require tech-niques or specific treatment for therapy to be success-ful. For Rogers, counselors should avoid techniques and focus instead on building relationships with clients to bring about change (Elliott & Freire, 2007; Rogers, 1957c). Through the use of the basic skills of therapy (reflecting content, reflecting feelings, minimal encour-agers, clarification, and active listening, coupled with empathy, unconditional positive regard, and congru-ence), the client is free to move toward self-actualiza-tion and congruence. The relationship between the counselor and client is the most important healing modality. Using these skills and meeting the conditions necessary and sufficient for change and will allow for clients to meet their goals (Elliott & Freire, 2007; Rogers, 1957c). V ALIDATION OF P ERSON -C ENTERED T HEORY Person-centered theory has been researched and thor-oughly scrutinized throughout the more than 60 years of its existence. Before Rogers’s death, he was the pri-mary publisher and creator of person-centered theory. He discouraged the formation of organizations and institutes because of the importance of individuality of the therapist in the therapeutic relationship. Therefore, after his death other person-centered therapists began publishing and forming organizations, increasing the prevalence and research base of person-centered the-ory in a wide variety of journals and publications. Cur-rently, more than 200 organizations and training centers have been developed specifically for the propa-gation of person-centered theory (Kirschenbaum & Jourdan, 2005).

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  Person-Centred Counselling in a Nutshell

  • Roger Casemore(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  I do want to state here that I strongly respect the beliefs and value the good practice of counsellors from the psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioural approaches. I have had good personal experience of therapy from counsellors trained in those approaches. However, I do not feel able to practise those approaches myself because they do not sit well with my personal belief system about the nature of humanity, or with my nature and personality. In simple terms, the person-centred approach seems to fit me and to work well for me and the clients with whom I work.

   

  The basic philosophical assumptions

  In my view, Rogers developed the person-centred approach to therapy from three distinctive philosophical beliefs: Humanism, Existentialism and Phenomenology. I believe that in order to understand the theory he developed, it is essential to understand and accept those philosophical roots, which I would like to briefly outline below.

   

  Humanism

  This philosophy is based, first of all, on a fundamental attitude that emphasises the dignity and worth of each individual human being. Secondly, it is based on the belief that people are rational beings who possess within themselves the capacity for truth and goodness. The humanistic concept of the person is based on a model of growth, in which the person is seen as always striving to create, achieve or become. The need for self-fulfilment or self-actualisation is regarded as a fundamental human drive. From a humanistic point of view, fulfilment and growth are achieved through the search for meaning in life and not through supernatural claims. The humanistic view of the person as actively seeking meaning and fulfilment puts a strong focus on the concept of process. Self-actualisation or fulfilment is a continual challenge or journey to be experienced, not an end-state to be attained.

  This view of the nature of humanity directly contrasts with the conflict model implicit in psychodynamic theory, and the problem management or coping model implicit in behaviourism. It clearly figures in Rogers’ development of the concept of ‘A Way of Being’ and his notion of ‘Becoming a Person’, the titles of two of his most well-known books (Rogers, 1961,1980).

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  Theories of Psychotherapy & Counseling

  Concepts and Cases

  • Richard Sharf(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Some individuals may be so lacking in awareness that they find it difficult or impossible to initiate the thera-peutic process. They may have rigid views of themselves that cut them off from relationships with others, including the therapist. With progress in therapy, indi-viduals come to understand how they have contributed to their own problems and may not blame others for them. Experiencing genuineness, acceptance, and empathy from the therapist leads to changes in how the individual relates to oth-ers. There is greater openness to intimacy, including more spontaneous and confi-dent interactions with others. As clients progress, not evenly or neatly, but gradually through stages of ther-apeutic progress, they come closer to Rogers’s description of the fully functioning person. Sharing their fears, anxiety, and shame in the presence of the therapist’s genuine caring helps individuals trust their own experience, feel a sense of rich-ness in their lives, become physiologically more relaxed, and experience life more fully (Rogers, 1961). Psychological Disorders Rogers believed that his six necessary and sufficient conditions for change applied to all psychological disorders. Regardless of the client’s disorder, if the therapist is genuine, has unconditional positive regard, and is empathic with the client, improvement in psychological disorders takes place. Some critics have remarked that person-centered therapists apply the same approach to all clients. In response, person-centered therapists reply that they use a different approach with each client, reflecting the uniqueness of the cli-ent’s humanness. Although some person-centered therapists may diagnose a client’s disorder, it is usually for the purpose of insurance reimbursement or agency requirements. In this section, illustrations of the application of person-centered therapy are given for depression, grief and loss, and borderline disorders.

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  Person-Centred Therapy

  The Focusing-Oriented Approach

  • Campbell Purton(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  1

  Rogers and the Development of Person-Centred Therapy

  Rogers’ work

  In his book Counselling and Psychotherapy : Newer Concepts in Practice , published in 1942, Carl Rogers presents what he sees as a new method of therapy ‘in which warmth of acceptance and absence of any form of coercion or personal pressure on the part of the counsellor permits the maximum expression of feelings, attitudes, and problems by the counsellee . . . In this unique experience of complete emotional freedom within a well-defined framework the client is free to recognise and understand his impulses and patterns, positive and negative, as in no other relationship’ (Rogers, 1942, p. 113). The book contains the first complete recorded transcript of a series of therapy sessions, with a commentary by Rogers on how the therapist’s responses in the session embodied the non-directive principles which Rogers was advocating.

  During the following few years, while Rogers was based at Ohio State University, he and other therapists applied the principles of non-directive responding in a variety of contexts, including work with the adjustment problems of servicemen returning from wartime activities. It was in his next book (co-authored with John Wallen) Counselling with Returned Servicemen (1946) that Rogers first used the term ‘client-centred’, along with ‘non-directive’, as characterising his approach. It is the client’s frame of reference which is emphasised, while ‘[i]t is the counsellor’s function to provide an atmosphere in which the client, through the exploration of his situation, comes to see himself and his reactions more clearly and to accept his attitudes more fully’ (Rogers and Wallen, 1946, p. 5). What the counsellor actually did

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  Current Psychotherapies

  • Danny Wedding, Raymond Corsini(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  C., & Tallman, K. (2010). Clients as active self-healers: Implications for the person-centered approach. In M. Cooper, J. C. Watson, & D. Hölldampf (Eds.), Person- centered and experiential therapies work: A review of the research on counseling, psychotherapy and related practices (pp. 91–131). Ross-on-Wye, UK: PCCS Books. Bozarth, J. D. (1996). The integrative statement of Carl Rogers. In R. Hutterer, G. Pawlowsky, P. F. Schmid, & R. Stipsits (Eds.), Client-centered and experiential psychotherapy: A paradigm in motion (pp. 25–34). Berlin: Peter Lang. Bozarth, J. D. (1998). Client-centered therapy: A revolutionary paradigm. Ross-on-Wye, UK: PCCS Books. Bozarth, J. D. (2002). Empirically supported treatment: Epitome of the “specificity myth.” In J. C. Watson, R. N. Goldman, & M. S. Warner (Eds.), Client-centered and experiential psycho-therapy in the 21st century: Advances in theory, research, and practice (pp. 168–181). Ross-on-Wye, UK: PCCS Books. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 152 | Chapter 4 Bozarth, J. D., & Wilkins, P. (Eds.). (2001). Rogers’ therapeutic conditions: Evolution, theory and practice. Volume 3: Uncondi-tional positive regard. Ross-on-Wye, UK: PCCS Books. Bright, C. (2004). Deconstructing reparative therapy: An exam-ination of the processes involved when attempting to change sexual orientation . Clinical Social Work Journal , 32 (4), 471–481. Brodley, B. T. (1994). Some observations of Carl Rogers’s be-havior in therapy interviews. Person-Centered Journal, 1 (2), 37–47. Also in K. A.

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  On Becoming A Person

  A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

  • Carl Rogers(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Mariner Books

    (Publisher)

  Another reason for whatever effectiveness the system has had in mediating research, is that the constructs have generality. Because psychotherapy is such a microcosm of significant interpersonal relationship, significant learning, and significant change in perception and in personality, the constructs developed to order the field have a high degree of pervasiveness. Such constructs as the self-concept, or the need for positive regard, or the conditions of personality change, all have application to a wide variety of human activities. Hence such constructs may be used to study areas as widely variant as industrial or military leadership, personality change in psychotic individuals, the psychological climate of a family or a classroom, or the inter-relation of psychological and physiological change.

  One final fortunate circumstance deserves mention. Unlike psychoanalysis, for example, client-centered therapy has always existed in the context of a university setting. This means a continual process of sifting and winnowing of the truth from the chaff, in a situation of fundamental personal security. It means being exposed to the friendly criticism of colleagues, in the same way that new views in chemistry or biology or genetics are subjected to critical scrutiny. Most of all it means that the theory and the technique are thrown open to the eager searching of younger minds. Graduate students question and probe; they suggest alternative formulations; they undertake empirical studies to confirm or to disprove the various theoretical hypotheses. This has helped greatly to keep the client-centered orientation an open and self-critical, rather than a dogmatic, point of view.

  It is for reasons of this sort that client-centered therapy has built into itself from the first the process of change through research. From a limited viewpoint largely centered on technique, with no empirical verification, it has grown to a ramifying theory of personality and interpersonal relations as well as of therapy, and it has collected around itself a considerable body of replicable empirical knowledge.

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  Developments in Psychotherapy

  Historical Perspectives

  • Windy Dryden(Author)
  • 1996(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Zimring and Raskin (1992) divided the first fifty years of the person-centred approach into four major periods. Other equal ly qualified students of this orientation would differ about what is significant historically. Unavoidably, I was influenced by my own experience; each of us has a store of personal knowledge derived from our own participation and observation. The fact that I have been part of the movement from its beginning is advantageous in that not only do I know about the steps in its unfolding; I was present at or close to these events that have occurred over a span of fifty-five years. A close relationship with Carl Rogers for forty-seven years has provided a similar benefit. Rogers's ideas, from the beginning, were revolutionary and , as a truly client-directed approach to counselling and psychotherapy, remain unique, perhaps even more than before , because of an increasing reliance on experts, and of pressures from insurance companies and health organiz-ations to specify problems and treatments. Extremely impressive, too, is the fact that what began simply as a practical new way of trying to help an individual in therapy and seemed very much like an American phenomenon within a tradition of logica l positivism, evolved into an international movement af fecting education , organiz ational structure, and many other human relations settings, as well as a philosophy and a way of being for non-professionals. Notwithstanding a decline in influence in the United States, the importance of the concepts of self and of experiencing, of empathic listening, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard , and the usefulness of verbatim typescripts and tapes of individual interviews and group sessions, are unlikely to disappear from psychotherapy and other areas of human relations. Support for this view comes from an unexpected source: psychiatrist Peter Kramer, author of the well-known book Listening to Prozac (1993).

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  Core Approaches in Counselling and Psychotherapy

  • Fay Short, Phil Thomas(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  • describe how the therapist uses genuineness, transparency and self-disclosure to demonstrate the core condition of congruence

  • describe how the therapist uses a non-judgemental approach and sensitive cultural awareness to demonstrate the core condition of unconditional positive regard

  • describe how the therapist enters the client’s frame of reference by using primary and advanced empathy to demonstrate the core condition of empathic understanding

  Absence of techniques

  Successful therapy is not dependent on techniques

  Successful therapy is dependent purely on the nature of the therapeutic relationship Constructive personality change requires only that the client and therapist engage in a positive therapeutic relationship Person-centred therapy involves simply being with the client No use of games, exercises, activities, homework, etc. Various methods can be taught and utilised to improve skills in communicating the core conditions of congruence, unconditional positive regard and empathy But these are simply interpersonal skills, rather than specific therapeutic techniques to be followed according to the instructions

  As noted by Thorne (1996), Rogers was horrified to find that the focus on the responses of the therapist became a list of techniques – the whole purpose of person-centred therapy is to be genuine in that moment, rather than to follow a set of protocols according to the book

  Therapeutic relationship is more important than therapeutic techniques

  Research exploring common factors across multiple types of therapy has often focused on the core conditions of person-centred therapy (Lambert & Barley, 2001)

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