Person-Centered Theory

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Person-Centered Theory

• a.k.a., Humanistic or Rogerian Therapy

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Person-Centered Therapy (A reaction against the
directive and psychoanalytic approaches)

• Challenges
• The assumption that the counselor knows best
• The validity of advice, suggestion, persuasion,
  teaching, diagnosis, and interpretation
• The belief that clients cannot understand and
  resolve their own problems without direct help
• The focus on problems over persons

Theory and Practice of Counseling and
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Overview

• Founder Carl Rogers. Born in Oak Park,
  IL-1902. Trained at University of Wisconsin and
  Columbia University. His educational background
  was in agriculture, science, philosophy,
  theology, education and psychology. Fundamental
  shift in theory from helper-to-client to
  person-to-person.

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Person-Centered Therapy

• Emphasizes
• Therapy as a journey shared by two fallible
  people
• The persons innate striving for
  self-actualization
• The personal characteristics of the therapist and
  the quality of the therapeutic relationship
• The counselors creation of a permissive, growth
  promoting climate
• People are capable of self-directed growth if
  involved in a therapeutic relationship

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Major philosophies and nature of humans

• Human beings are essentially rational,
  constructive, positive, independent, realistic,
  cooperative, trustworthy, accepting, forward
  moving and full of potential. Humans, like all
  organisms, naturally tend toward actualization of
  their full potential. (Gilliland James, 1998)
• Experience is key to Rogerian theory. Because
  each persons perception of his or her own
  experience is unique, the client is the only
  expert on his or her own life.

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Major constructs

• Actualizing tendency. The inherent tendency of
  the person to develop in ways that serve to
  maintain or promote growth.
• Conditions of worth. A persons worth is
  conditional when his or her self-esteem is based
  on significant others valuation of experience.
• Congruence. The state of consonance among the
  persons acting, thinking and feeling states.
  When experiences are wholly integrated into the
  self-concept.
• Empathic understanding. One perceives as if one
  were the other person but without ever losing the
  as if condition.

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Major constructs

• Experience (noun). All the cognitive and
  affective events within the person that are
  available or potentially available to his or her
  awareness.
• Experience (verb). To receive the impact of all
  the sensory or physiological events happening at
  the present moment.
• Genuineness. The state where there is no
  difference between the real and the perceived
  selves.
• Organismic valuing process. The process whereby
  experiences are accurately perceived, constantly
  updated, and valued in terms of the satisfaction
  experienced by the person.

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Major constructs

• Positive regard. The perception of the
  self-experience of another person that leads the
  individual to feel warmth, liking and respect for
  the acceptance of that person.
• Positive self-regard. A positive attitude toward
  the self that is not dependent on the perceptions
  of significant others.
• Self-actualization tendency. The tendency of the
  person to move toward achieving his or her full
  potential.
• Self-Concept. The persons total internal view
  of self in relation to the experiences of being
  and functioning within the environment.

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Major constructs

• Self-Experience. Any event in the individuals
  perceptual field that he or she sees as relating
  to the self, me, or I.
• Unconditional Positive Regard. The individuals
  perception of another person without ascription
  of greater or lesser worthiness to that person.
  It is characterized by a total rather than a
  conditional acceptance of the other person.
• Unconditional self-regard. The perception of the
  self in such a way that no self-experience can be
  discriminated as being more or less worthy of
  positive regard than any other self-experience.

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The Self

• According to Rogers, the Self
• Is organized and consistent
• Includes ones perceptions of all that comprises
  I or me
• Includes the relationship among I or me an other
  people and features of life, as well as the value
  and importance of these relationships
• Is available to consciousness but it is not
  always conscious at any given moment
• The shape of the self is constantly changing, yet
  always recognizable

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A self actualized person has the following
characteristics

• Open to experience
• Aware of all experience
• Deal w/change in creative ways
• Socially effective
• Lives existentially
• Lives in the here and now
• Trusts self

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Major personality constructs

• Personality theory has not been of major concern
  to person-centered therapists, rather the manner
  in which change comes about in the human
  personality has been the focus. (Gilliland
  James, 1998)
• Each person is unique and has the ability to
  reach his or her full potential.
• Once the self-concept is formed, two additional
  needs are acquired
• the need for positive regard from others
• the need for positive self-regard

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Nature of maladaptivity

• Rogerian theory speaks primarily of
  incongruence as the primary maladaptivity.
  Maladaptivity relates to the blocks that are put
  in the road to actualization. (Gilliland James,
  1998)
• Also, external locus of control and looking to
  others for worth are seen as maladaptive.

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Major goals of counseling

• The central focus of counseling is the clients
  experiencing of feelings.

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A Growth-Promoting Climate

• Congruence - genuineness or realness
• Unconditional positive regard- acceptance and
  caring, but not approval of all behavior
• Accurate empathic understanding an ability to
  deeply grasp the clients subjective world
• Helper attitudes are more important than knowledge

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Major techniques/strategies

• The most important technique in person-centered
  counseling is the establishment of the
  relationship between client and counselor as one
  of mutual trust and safety. The relationship is
  the beginning, the main event and the end of the
  counseling. The counselor deals directly, in the
  here and now, with the clients feelings and
  experiences rather than intellectualize about the
  experiences.
• Person-centered theory is a phenomenological
  approacheach person is unique.

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Six Conditions (necessary and sufficient for
personality changes to occur)

• 1. Two persons are in psychological contact
• 2. The first, the client, is experiencing
  incongruency
• 3. The second person, the therapist, is congruent
  or integrated in the relationship
• 4. The therapist experiences unconditional
  positive regard or real caring for the client
• 5. The therapist experiences empathy for the
  clients internal frame of reference and
  endeavors to communicate this to the client
• 6. The communication to the client is, to a
  minimal degree, achieved

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Major roles of counselor and client

• Because of the essential nature of the
  relationship, the major role of counselor is to
  create an atmosphere of genuineness,
  unconditional positive regard and empathic
  understanding and to reflect content to the
  client.
• The reflection may include the counselors own
  feelings so long as they are genuine and the
  counselor owns them as his or her own.
• The challenges for the counselor lie in his or
  her willingness to also be changed by and grow
  through the counseling relationship and to be
  open and transparent to the client.

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Major roles of counselor and client

• The clients role is to do, think, say or feel
  whatever they are experiencing in the moment.
• Within the atmosphere of unconditional positive
  regard, the client will be able to experience his
  or her feeling about the experiences and the
  incongruence in his or her life and will by
  nature, know and choose the course toward growth
  and actualization.

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The Therapist

• Focuses on the quality of the therapeutic
  relationship
• Serves as a model of a human being struggling
  toward greater realness
• Is genuine, integrated, and authentic, without a
  false front
• Can openly express feelings and attitudes that
  are present in the relationship with the client

Theory and Practice of Counseling and
Psychotherapy - Chapter 7 (5)