Person-Centered Therapy Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

In human beings, there is an actualizing tendency, a trust in a constructive directional flow toward the realization of each individuals full potential.

The Person-Centered Approach

Assumes that clients can be trusted to select their own therapists, to choose the frequency and length of their therapy, to talk or to be silent, to decide what needs to be explored, to achieve their own insights, and to be the architects of their own lives.

Person-Centered Theory of Personality

Carl Rogers was concerned about the way people treated each other and how they cared for or didn't care for each other. He believed that children would develop a good sense of their own self-worth or self-regard if others (parents, teachers, or friends) treated them as valuable and worthy. When individuals treated others in a way that was sometimes harsh, manipulative, or self-serving, then the person was treated conditionally. Conditions of worth (conditionality) develop from conditional positive regard form other. Such conditions can make it difficult for a person to become a fully functioning person.

Conditionality or Conditions of Worth

The process of evaluating one's own experience based on values or beliefs that others hold. Conditional positive regard
Receiving praise, attention, or approval from others as a result of behaving in accordance with the expectations of others.

Fully functioning person

A person who meets his or her own need for positive regard rather than relying on the expectations of others. Such individuals are open to new experiences and not defensive.

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Change

1. Psychological contact A relationship must exist so that two people may have impact on each other. 2. Incongruence in the client For change to take place, a client must be in a state of psychological vulnerability. There is a discrepancy between individuals' views of themselves and their actual experience. Included would be depression, anxiety, or a wide variety of problems. Although individuals may not be aware at first of their incongruence or vulnerability, they will be so if therapy continues.

3. Congruence and genuineness Therapists are aware of themselves. They are aware of their feelings, their experiences as they relate to the client, and their general reaction to the client. Therapists are open to understanding their own experiences as will as those of the client.

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Change

4. Unconditional positive regard or acceptance The therapist does not judge the client but accepts the client for who he or she is. Accepting the client does not mean that the counselor agrees with the client. With acceptance often comes caring and warmth.

5. Empathy The therapist enters the world of the client, leaving behind, as much as possible, his or her own values. Since it is not possible to be "value free," the therapist monitors his or her own values and feelings. The therapist tries to understand the experience of the client, what it is to be the client. Caring and warmth are expressed often in statements of empathy.

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Change

6. Perception of empathy and acceptance Not only must the therapist unconditionally accept and understand the client, the client must perceive that he or she is being understood and accepted. Therapists' voice tone and physical expression contribute to the communication of empathy and acceptance. Thus, they are apart of the client's perception of empathy.

The Clients Experience in Therapy

1. Experiencing responsibility. 2. Experiencing the therapist. 3. Experiencing the process of exploration. 4. Experiencing the self. 5. Experiencing change.

Person-Centered Goals in Therapy

Become more self-directed. Increase positive self-regard. The client chooses the goals.

Assessment

Assessment occurs as therapists empathically understand clients.

Constructivist Trends
Rogers did not impose his perception on others, but let theirs develop. Rogers uses a non-expert role, Withholds his advise, Does not let his own experiences influence the way he helps clients change their narrative.