Carl Roger’s

Person-
Centered
Therapy
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
—Carl R. Rogers, Father of Person-Centered Counseling
 INTRODUCTION

● The person-centered approach is based on concepts from humanistic

psychology.
● Carl Rogers stands out as one of the most in influential figures in
revolutionizing the direction of counseling theory and practice.
● The basic assumptions are that people are essentially trustworthy, that
they have vast potential for understanding themselves and resolving their
own problems without direct intervention on therapist’s part, and that
they are capable of self-directed growth if they are involved in a specific
kind of therapeutic relationships.
 INTRODUCTION

● Attitude and personal characteristics of the therapist and the quality of

client-therapist relationship is the prime determinants of the outcome of
the therapeutic process and also the therapist’s knowledge of theory and
techniques.

● Self-healing is contrasts to beliefs of other therapist that’s why Rogers

revolutionized the field of psychology with his theory that centered on
the client as a key for self-change.
 FOUR PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT APPROACH

1940s Nondirective Counseling

Provide a powerful and revolutionary alternative to the directive and
interpretative approaches to therapy then being practiced.

1950s Client-Centered Therapy

To reflect its emphasis on the client rather than on non-directive methods and
started the Counseling Center and University of Chicago

1970s On Becoming a Person

Research publication which addressed the nature of “becoming the self that one
truly is”.
1980s -
1990s Person-Centered Therapy
Roger’s ever-widening scope of influence, including his interest in how people
obtain, possess, share, or surrender power and control over others.
 Person-Centered
Therapy Conclusion

Nondirective Therapy Therapeutic Relationship

To increase understanding,
01
greater self-exploration and
improved self concept, the
client is in charge instead of
the therapist.
02 Later a shift from clarification of
feelings to a focus on the client’s frame
of reference developed. There was
strong evidence for the value of the
therapeutic relationship and the clients

Core Conditions
03
Therapist with empathetic understanding and
nonjudgmental stance to the client are found to
have a successful therapy outcome
 EXISTENTIALISM & HUMANISM
● Share a respect for client’s subjective
experience, uniqueness and individuality of
each client and a trust in the capacity of the
client to make positive and constructive
conscious choices.
● Emphasis on freedom, choice, values,
responsibility, purpose, meaning.
● Both approaches place little value on the
role of techniques in therapeutic process
and emphasize the importance of genuine
encounter.
● According to Existentialist, we faced with
the anxiety of choosing to create an identity
in a world that lacks intrinsic meaning.
● Existential therapist refers themselves as
existential-humanistic practitioners.
● According to Humanist, each of us has a
natural potential that we can actualize and
through which we can find meaning.
 EXISTENTIALISM HUMANISM

● There is nothing that we “are”, no internal ● Automatically grow in positive ways, pushed
“nature” we can count on We are faced at naturally toward its actualization as an oak
every moment with a choice about what to
make of this conditions.
 KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

● Basic common trust in client’s ability to move forward in a
constructive manner if conditions fostering growth are present.
● People are trustworthy, resourceful, capable of self-understanding,
and self-direction, able to make constructive changes and able to
live effective and productive lives.
● When therapists are able to experience and communicate their
realness, support, caring and nonjudgmental understanding,
significant changes in the client are most likely to occur.
 THREE THERAPIST ATTRIBUTES THAT
CREATE A GROWTH PROMOTING CLIMATE

UNCONDITIONAL ACCURATE EMPATHETIC

CONGRUENCE POSITIVE REGARD UNDERSTANDING
01 Genuineness, or
02 Acceptance and 03 Ability to deeply grasp
realness caring the subjective world of
another person
 KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

● Human beings are essentially forward-moving organisms drawn
to the fulfillment of their own creative natures and to the pursuit
of truth and social responsiveness.
● The basic drive to fulfilment implies that people will move
toward health if the way seems open for them to do so.
● Actualizing Tendency is a directional process of striving forward
toward realization, fulfillment, autonomy, self-determination and
perfection.
● Therapy is rooted in the client’s capacity for awareness and self-
directed in attitudes and behavior.
 THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Therapeutic Goals

● The person-centered approach aims toward the client achieving a greater

degree of independence and integration.
● The focus is on the person, not on the person’s presenting problem.
● The aim is not to solve the problem but to assist the client in their growth
process so clients would better cope with their current and future problems.
● Before clients are able to work toward that goal, they must first get behind the
masks they wear, which they develop through the process of socialization.
Clients come to recognize that they have lost contact with themselves by
using facades.
SELF ACTUALIZED PEOPLE HAVE:

An openness to experience

A trust in themselves

An internal source of evaluation

A willingness to continue growing

 THERAPIST’S FUNCTION
AND ROLE
● The therapist must be willing to be real in the relationship with
clients by being congruent, accepting, and empathetic, the
therapist is a catalyst for change
● Instead of viewing clients in preconceived diagnostic categories,
the therapist meets them on a moment-to-moment experiential
basis and enters their world.
● Through the therapist’s attitude of genuine caring, and
understanding, clients are able to loosen their defences and rigid
perceptions and move to a higher level of personal
functioning.
 CLIENT’S EXPERIENCE
IN THERAPY

● Client’s come to the counselor is a state of incongruence; that is, a discrepancy

exists between their self-perception and their experience in reality.
● One reason client seek therapy is a feeling of basic helplessness, powerlessness and
n inability to make decision or effectively direct their own lives. They may hope to
find “the way” through the guidance of the therapist. Within the person-centered
framework, however, clients soon learn that they can be responsible for themselves
in the relationship and that they can learn to be freer by using the relationship to
gain greater self-understanding.
● As counseling progresses, clients are able to explore a wider range of beliefs and
feelings.They can express their fears, anxiety, guilt shame, and other emotions that
they had deemed too negative to accept and incorporate into their self-structure.
 CLIENT’S EXPERIENCE
IN THERAPY
● With therapy, people distort less and move to a greater acceptance and
integration of conflicting and confusing feelings.
● As clients feel understood and accepted, they become less defensive
and become more open to their experience .
● Because they feel safer and are less vulnerable, they become better to
be able to understand and accept others. Individuals in therapy come to
appreciate themselves more as they are, and their behavior shows more
flexibility and creativity.
● They become less concerned about meeting others expectations and
thus begin to behave in ways that are truer to themselves.
● The therapy relationship provides a supportive structure within which
clients self healing capacities are activates.
 “Clients then are the magicians with the special healing
powers. Therapists set the stage and serve as assistant who
provide the conditions under which this magic can operate ”

—TALLMAN AND BOHART

 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
THERAPIST AND CLIENT

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 therapists empathic understanding and
unconditional positive regard is to a minimal degree achieved.
 CONGRUENCE OR
01 GENUINENESS
● Congruence implies that therapists are real; that is they are genuine,
integrated, and authentic during therapy hour.
● Through authenticity the therapist serves as a model of human being
struggling toward greater realness
● Being congruent might necessitate the expression of anger,
frustration, liking, attraction and etc. This does not mean that the
therapist should impulsive share all their reactions, for self-
disclosure must also be appropriate and well times.
● Roger’s concept congruence does not imply that only a full-self
actualized therapist can be effective counseling. Because therapists
are human, they cannot expected to be fully authentic.
 UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE
02 REGARD AND ACCEPTANCE
● Therapist needs to communicate deep and genuine caring for the
client as a person, or a condition of unconditional positive regard.
● The caring is non possessive and it is not contaminated by
evaluation or judgment of the client’s feelings, thoughts, and
behavior as good as bad.
● Acceptance is the recognition of client’s rights to have their own
beliefs ad feelings; it is not the approval of all behavior. All overt
behavior need not to be approved of or accepted.
● The greater the degree of caring, prizing, accepting and valuing of
the client in a non possessive way, the greater the chance that
therapy will be successful.
 ACCURATE EMPATHETIC
03 UNDERSTANDING
● One of the main tasks of the therapist is to understand client’s
experience and feelings sensitively and accurately as they are
revealed in the moment-to-moment.
● The therapist strives to sense the client’s subjective experience,
particularly in the here and now.
● The aim is to encourage clients to get closer to themselves, to feel
more deeply and intensely adn to recognize and resolve the
incongruity that exists within tem
● Empathy is a deep and subjective of the client with the client. It is
not same with sympathy or feelings sorry.
 APPLICATION: THERAPEUTIC
TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES

Early Emphasis on Reflection of Feelings

● Roger’s original emphasis was on grasping the world of the client and
reflecting this understanding.
● Rogers and other contributors to the development of the person-centered
approach have been critical of the stereotypic view that this approach is
basically a simple restatement of what the client just said.
 APPLICATION TO GROUP
COUNSELING

● The person-centered approach emphasizes the unique role of the

group counselor as a facilitator rather than a leader.
● The primary function of the facilitator is to create a safe and healing
climate—a place where the group members can interact in honest and
meaningful ways. In this climate members become more appreciative
and trusting of themselves as they are and are able to move toward
self-direction and empowerment
 PERSON - CENTERED EXPRESSIVE
ARTS THERAPY
● Natalie Rogers (1993) expanded on her father, Carl Rogers’s (1961),
theory of creativity using the expressive arts to enhance personal growth
for individuals and groups. Rogers’s approach, known as expressive arts
therapy, extends the person-centered approach to spontaneous creative
expression, which symbolizes deep and sometimes inaccessible feelings
and emotional states.
● Person-centered expressive arts therapy represents an alternative to
traditional approaches to counseling that rely on verbal means and may be
particularly useful for clients who are locking in intellectual ways of
experiencing
Techniques in
Therapy
Active listening,
Reflection of feelings,
Clarification,
“Being there" for the client, and
Focusing on the moment-to-moment experiencing of the client.
—---END—---