1. Person-Centered Therapy
Theory Review
Person-Centered Therapy
Carl Rogers
Dean Owen, Ph.D., LPCC

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4. Carl Rogers
(1902‑1987)
Rogers believed that the most important factor in successful therapy was not the therapist's skill or training, but rather his or her attitude.

5. In search of the fully functioning individual
Theory Overview
In search of the fully functioning individual

6. Key Figure: Carl Rogers
Key Figure: Carl Rogers. As a brand of existential‑humanistic psychology that stresses a phenomenological approach to the study of persons, it was originally a nondirective approach developed in the late 1940's as a reaction against psychoanalytic therapy. Based on a subjective view of human experience, it stresses the client's resources for becoming aware and for resolving blocks to personal growth. It put the client and not the therapist at the center of therapy.

7. Philosophy and Basic Assumptions: The approach is grounded in a positive view of humanity that sees the person as innately striving toward becoming fully functioning. The basic assumption is that, in the context of a personal relationship with a caring therapist, the client experiences previously denied or distorted feelings and increases self‑awareness. The client actualizes inner potential for growth, wholeness, spontaneity, and inner‑directedness.

8. Key Concepts: One can direct one's own life
Key Concepts: One can direct one's own life. The client has the capacity for resolving effectively life problems without interpretation and direction from an expert therapist. The approach focuses on experiencing fully the present moment, learning to accept oneself, and deciding ways of change. It views mental health as a congruence between what one wants to become and what one actually is.

9. Therapeutic Goals: The major goal is to provide a climate of safety and trust in the therapeutic setting so that the client, by using the therapeutic relationship for self‑exploration, can become aware of blocks to growth. The client tends to move toward more openness, greater self‑trust, more willingness to be a process as opposed to a fixed product, and living more by internal standards as opposed to taking external cues of what he or she 'should' or 'ought' to be.

10. Therapeutic Relationship: The relationship is of primary importance
Therapeutic Relationship: The relationship is of primary importance. The qualities of the therapist that determine the relationship include genuineness, nonpossessive warmth, accurate empathy, unconditional acceptance and respect for the client, permissiveness, caring and the communication of those attitudes to the client. The client is able to translate his or her self learnings in therapy to outside relationships with others.

11. Techniques and Procedures: Since the approach stresses the client‑therapist relationship, it specifies few techniques. Techniques are secondary to the therapist's attitudes. The approach minimized directive techniques, interpretation, questioning, probing, diagnosis, and collection history. It maximizes active listening and hearing, reflection of feelings, and clarification.

12. Applications: The approach has wide applicability to many person‑to‑ person situations, in both therapy and learning. It is a useful model for individual therapy, group counseling, student‑centered teaching and learning. parent‑child relations, and human‑relations training labs.

13. Contributions: One of the first therapies marking a break from traditional psychoanalysis, it stresses the active role and responsibility of the client. It is a positive and optimistic view of persons and calls attention to the need to account for a person's inner and subjective experiences. It makes the therapeutic process relationship‑centered rather that technique‑centered. It focuses on the crucial role of the therapist's attitudes. The model has generated a great deal of clinical research to study both the process and the outcomes of therapy, which in turn has led to refining the tentative hypotheses.

14. Limitations: A possible danger is the therapist who, by merely reflecting content, brings little of his or her own personhood into the therapeutic relationship. People in crisis situations often need more directive intervention strategies. The approach has limited use with nonverbal clients. It does not give enough attention to the influence of the therapist's values and personhood. Difficulties lie in grasping the subjective and inner world of the client. As an ahistorical approach, it tends to discount the significance of the past.

15. The healthy and happy individual was called the fully function individual
Humans naturally strive toward a state of self-actualization
The origin of difficulty lies in incongruence.

16. Person-Centered Theory
19 Propositions
(The self-concept)

17. All individuals (organisms) exist in a continually changing world of experience (phenomenal field) of which they are the center.
The organism reacts to the field as it is experienced and perceived. This perceptual field is "reality" for the individual.
The organism reacts as an organized whole to this phenomenal field.
A portion of the total perceptual field gradually becomes differentiated as the self.
As a result of interaction with the environment, and particularly as a result of evaluational interaction with others, the structure of the self is formed - an organised, fluid but consistent conceptual pattern of perceptions of characteristics and relationships of the "I" or the "me", together with values attached to these concepts.

18. The organism has one basic tendency and striving - to actualize, maintain and enhance the experiencing organism.
The best vantage point for understanding behaviour is from the internal frame of reference of the individual.
Behavior is basically the goal directed attempt of the organism to satisfy its needs as experienced, in the field as perceived.
Emotion accompanies, and in general facilitates, such goal directed behaviour, the kind of emotion being related to the perceived significance of the behaviour for the maintenance and enhancement of the organism.
Values experienced directly by the organism, and in some instances are values introjected or taken over from others, but perceived in distorted fashion, as if they had been experienced directly.

19. As experiences occur in the life of the individual, they are either, a) symbolized, perceived and organized into some relation to the self, b) ignored because there is no perceived relationship to the self structure, c) denied symbolization or given distorted symbolization because the experience is inconsistent with the structure of the self.
Most of the ways of behaving that are adopted by the organism are those that are consistent with the concept of self.
In some instances, behaviour may be brought about by organic experiences and needs which have not been symbolized. Such behaviour may be inconsistent with the structure of the self but in such instances the behaviour is not "owned" by the individual.
Psychological adjustment exists when the concept of the self is such that all the sensory and visceral experiences of the organism are, or may be, assimilated on a symbolic level into a consistent relationship with the concept of self.
Psychological maladjustment exists when the organism denies awareness of significant sensory and visceral experiences, which consequently are not symbolized and organized into the gestalt of the self structure. When this situation exists, there is a basic or potential psychological tension.

20. Any experience which is inconsistent with the organization of the structure of the self may be perceived as a threat, and the more of these perceptions there are, the more rigidly the self structure is organized to maintain itself.
Under certain conditions, involving primarily complete absence of threat to the self structure, experiences which are inconsistent with it may be perceived and examined, and the structure of self revised to assimilate and include such experiences.
When the individual perceives and accepts into one consistent and integrated system all his sensory and visceral experiences, then he is necessarily more understanding of others and is more accepting of others as separate individuals.
As the individual perceives and accepts into his self structure more of his organic experiences, he finds that he is replacing his present value system - based extensively on introjections which have been distortedly symbolized - with a continuing organismic valuing process.

21. The Twelve Steps in the Helping Process

22. The individual comes for help.
The helping situation is usually defined.
The counselor encourages free expression of feelings in regard to the problem.
The counselor accepts, recognizes, and clarifies these negative feelings.

23. When the individual’s negative feelings have been quite fully expressed, they are followed by the faint and tentative expressions of the positive impulses which make for growth.
The counselor accepts and recognizes the positive feelings which are expressed, in the same manner in which he/she accepts and recognizes the negative feelings.

24. This insight, this understanding of the self and acceptance of the self, is the next important aspect of the whole process.
Intermingled with this process of insight (and it should again be emphasized that the steps outlined are not mutually exclusive, nor do they proceed in a rigid order) is a process of clarification of possible decision, possible courses of action.

25. Then comes one of the fascinating aspects of such therapy, the initiation of minute, but highly significant positive actions.
There is, first of all, a development of further insight…more complete and accurate self-understanding as the individual gains courage to see more deeply into his/her own actions.

26. There is increasingly integrative positive action on the part of the client. There is less fear about making choices, and more confidence in the self-directed action.
There is a feeling of decreasing need for help and a recognition on the part of the client that the relationship must end.
Rogers, Counseling and Psychotherapy, pp 76-77

27. Core concepts
There are six conditions in client centered therapy, if all these conditions are not met change cannot occur, they include:
A dyad: a relationship between client and therapist
Client is in a state of incongruence: client is vulnerable and anxious
Positive feedback: the therapist is genuine/authentic, not pretending and they are not fixed on their own problems
Unconditional positive regard: withholding judgment, no disapproval or approval, just acceptance
Empathetic understanding: the therapist understands the client, they open up and tell them what they see from their perspective, and understand where the client is coming from
Communication: the client recognizes the acceptance and empathy that the therapist feels for them

28. Core Facilitative Conditions
Warmth
Genuineness
Unconditional Positive Regard
Accurate Empathic Understanding