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Person –
Centered Therapy
Carl Rogers developed Person–Centered Therapy
based on the concepts of humanistic psychology with the
basic tenet that clients are the ultimate agents of
self-change for their lives. This theory emphasizes the
importance of the therapeutic relationship as one built on
unconditional positive regard and accurate empathy. Rogers
believed people are innately trustworthy and have great
potential to understand themselves and resolve their own
problems without intervention by the therapist. This
approach is in direct contrast to Freud where clients
require significant time to freely associate their
experiences for counselor interpretation. Like the
existential approach, person-centered theory holds the same
basic assumption that individuals are able to find meaning
within themselves, inwardly capable of knowing best what
they need to do to resolve issues. In Rogerian therapy, the
client moves towards the goals of realization, fulfillment,
autonomy, self-determination, and perfection. This process
occurs within a critical and intense client-therapist
relationship built upon empathetic understanding and
unconditional positive regard.
Therapy with clients using the person-centered
model strives to develop a greater degree of independence
and integration for individuals in their surroundings and
the people in their lives. Clients prepare to be open to
the experience of counseling, to trust in themselves, to
evaluate themselves internally, and pursue a willingness
towards continued growth. Fear of any of these areas
requires addressing prior to moving forward with current
issues, as these will impede client growth. Clients will
experience therapy differently depending on perceptions of
both the past and the possibilities of future events.
Exploring a wider range of beliefs and feelings aids clients
during this process, helping clients to better appreciate
who they are and what they are capable of accomplishing.
Person-centered theory does not require that the
client be diagnosed in order to seek and realize
improvement. Furthermore, therapists avoid being directive,
taking the role that the client is responsible for his
direction instead. While the counselor-client relationship
is critical and very active, the ultimate role of the
Rogerian therapist is (according to the theory), passive in
nature as it merely serves to help clients to find their own
path and develop their own sense of self-worth. This
results in the client feeling enabled and empowered to
continued improvements without the need of the counselor.
Some important concepts in the Person-centered
approach are genuineness, congruence, unconditional positive
regard, and empathetic understanding. The need for
genuineness is met when the therapist provides an example to
the client of what it is to be real and authentic. The
sense of congruence that develops is important for the
client who is often plagued with a lack of genuineness
causing anxiety. This genuineness and congruence develop
through unconditional positive regard that the counselor
provides to the client. This acceptance may be the first
and only time the client does not feel judged with the
environment of the sessions providing the client with the
safety to explore their feelings and concerns. And finally,
Rogers identified accurate empathetic understanding as
another critical task of therapists. The counselor seeks to
understand in the moment how the client feels about their
situations and genuinely expresses this to the client to
encourage her to get closer to herself, recognizing and
resolving the incongruity that exists. The therapist
experiences the client’s situation as if it was their own,
seeing the world through the client’s eyes, and doing so
without becoming overly enmeshed in the feelings and
emotions of the situation.
Person-centered therapy is applicable to
individuals, groups, and families when dealing with
relationship issues, anxiety disorders, and personality
disorders. Further, this approach is especially useful as a
crisis intervention when focusing on the here and now and
identifying specific beliefs that may limit the integration
of information. It has many uses in traumatic incident
reduction due to its ability to create an environment that
is extremely safe for the client.
Limitations of this theory include the lack of
scientific study on the effects of this method when compared
with a control group who came to these realizations and
developments on their own. Another concern is the inability
of therapists to be appropriately challenging of clients
while being overly empathetic. A final concern with this
approach is the difficulty therapists have with allowing
clients to come to their own decisions without the directive
from the counselor. These criteria, specific to the
uniqueness of each counselor lead to the criticism that this
approach may not be as effective as it is explained.
Personal
Evaluation
I believe that the most powerful way for one to
learn is through discovery, or illumination. Lessons
learned through self-experience are much more effective than
a third party attempting to teach the same lesson. How much
more rich is the experience for a child to discover
something wondrous about the world, rather than it merely
being told to them in front of a TV. Because I believe in
the principle of discovery, I appreciate the philosophical
position Rogerian therapy takes on the non-directive role of
a counselor. Rogerian principles assert that clients find
the solutions on their own in the context of a safe and
accepting environment by the counselor. In all truth, I
agree entirely with this premise. Where I diverge is the
manner in which this assertion is carried out. While I
strongly believe that without illumination, client growth
will be minimal, I reject the idea that unconditional
positive regard is a necessary mechanism for this to take
place.
Fundamentally, Person-Centered therapy assumes that people
are basically good. Without even needing the Bible, simple
observation to me shows otherwise. People have the capacity
and willingness to commit harmful and selfish acts. Because
all people know right from wrong, yet do not always do or
even desire to do the right thing, they therefore live with
varying levels of guilt. It is natural for individuals to
seek to justify their harmful actions in order to relieve
guilt. Unconditional positive regard from an authority
figure (the counselor) has great potential to reinforce
destructive behavior by further enabling it. For example,
consider a man who is cheating on his wife and is seriously
considering leaving his wife and family to run off with his
mistress because he feels he genuinely loves her. Should
such a man receive unlimited reassurance and empathy from
the counselor? A man in this position may be incapable of
seeing the world from his wife’s point of view, let alone
his children’s. Yet if the only point of view that matters
is the client’s, and if that point of view is reinforced and
encouraged, the result of therapy could be devastating.
Because of
its emphasis on unconditional positive regard and its basic
assumption that humans are fundamentally good, Rogerian
therapy is weak in its ability in dealing with genuinely
destructive behaviors the client may be engaged in.
However, in areas of trauma where the client has been
victimized by extremely disturbing events, unconditional
positive regard can be a valuable tool in the counselor’s
arsenal because of its ability to create a place of great
safety for the client. I reserve Rogerian-style therapy as
valuable for traumas, while dismissing it for most other
types of counseling.
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