Theories of Counseling and Psychotherapy
Fourth Edition
Chapter 5
Person-Centered Therapy
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Learning Objectives (1 of 2)
5.1 Review the case study and its relevance to personcentered therapy
5.2 Describe the relevant background information and
historical aspects of person-centered therapy
5.3 Describe how person-centered therapy presents human
nature and human motivation
5.4 Identify and describe the central constructs of personcentered therapy
5.5 Describe how person-centered therapy views human
development and how it defines “health” and “dysfunction”
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Learning Objectives (2 of 2)
5.6 Describe the nature of person-centered therapy to
include: assessment, overview of the therapeutic
atmosphere, roles of client and counselor, and goals
5.7 Identify and describe critical events, processes, or
stages associated with person-centered therapy
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Case Study
• “Richard”
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Highlights of Carol Roger’s (1902-1987)
Background (1 of 2)
• Nondirective – client-centered – person-centered therapy
• Raised in strict and religious environment
• Theological training at Union Theological Seminary
• Staff psychologist in Child Study Department
– Troubled boy and his mother
– Client knows the problem and has the solution
• Cornelius-White and Cornelius-White (2005)
• “Necessary and Sufficient Conditions”… (Box 5.1)
• Encounter groups
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Highlights of Carol Roger’s (1902-1987)
Background (2 of 2)
• “Client”: someone seeking psychotherapy
• Significant contribution: willingness to submit the
counseling process to the rigors of research
• Rogers lived his theory
• www.adpca.org and www.nrogers.com
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Basic Philosophy
• Human beings, given a supportive environment, have a
tendency to be good
• Human behavior reflects innate need to grow and
develop
• Destructive or anti-social is a product of experience in the
environment
• Self-directing and accept full responsibility
• Humanistic and phenomenological
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Human Motivation
• Only motivation is the tendency to grow to full potential in
constructive, positive ways
– Humans strive to maximize the organism
• Humans do Not have inherent aggressive or destructive
tendencies
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Central Constructs (1 of 3)
• Experience
– Noun = refers to everything that is going on in the
individual at a given moment
– Verb = the process of the person receiving what is
going on around and within him/her
• Actualizing tendency – most basic human process “to
develop all its capacities…”
• Organismic valuing process – evaluating experiences
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Central Constructs (2 of 3)
• Self
– Positive self-concept: perceived recognition of “me”
and the attached values
– Negative self-concept: inconsistent self-concept
– Ideal self: would like to be
• Self-actualizing tendency: propensity of the self to grow
and maximize
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Central Constructs (3 of 3)
• Need for positive regard and self-regard
– Learned through experiencing
• Conditions of worth
– To seek love from important others
– Initially externalized, then internalized
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Theory of Person and Development of the
Individual
• Life is an active process
– Humans are always striving to grow in positive
directions
• Infant motivated by actualizing tendency
– Organismic valuing process is used to evaluate
experience
• Differentiation of self
– Conditions of worth are established
• Perfect world = atmosphere of unconditional positive
regard for all
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Health and Dysfunction
• “Good life” is a process not a destination
– Congruent person → perception of self is consistent
with what he experiences
– Creative and take risks in life
• Dysfunction
– Incongruence (the roots) → inconsistent between self
and experience
▪ “subceived” – dimly perceived
▪ Neurotic: Defensive and rigid
▪ Disorganized: self-structure is damaged
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Nature of Therapy
• Assessment: do Not use any form
• Overview of the Therapeutic Atmosphere
– Encounter between client and counselor
– Counselor is non-expert and client is in the “driver’s seat”
• Roles of Client and Counselor
– Client and counselor are equals
– Counselor provides a climate for self-actualizing
– Client is to be genuine
• Goals: facilitate the client’s journey toward full potential –
congruence
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Process of Therapy (1 of 3)
• http://www.carlrogers.info/video.html
• Three historical stages
1. Nondirective interaction
2. Attitude of therapist
3. Congruence or genuineness of the therapist
• Core conditions
– Congruence (genuineness, transparence, or
realness) – counselor’s freely flowing awareness of
her/his experience
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Process of Therapy (2 of 3)
• Unconditional positive regard – counselor approaches
client with complete acceptance and caring
• Empathetic understanding – process of “temporarily living
in the other’s life”
• 4th condition?
– transcendental state – leads to impulsive behaviors
that fit with the client’s experience
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Process of Therapy (3 of 3)
• Stages of Therapy
– Stage 1: resistant to therapy
– Stage 2: problems are external
– Stage 3: cautious approach to self experiences and
feelings
– Stage 4: express intense past experiences
– Stage 5: free expression of own feelings
– Stage 6: awareness and insight to incongruence
(irreversible)
– Stage 7: generalization to living
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Therapeutic Techniques
• No techniques
• Variants of person-centered theory
– “experientialists” – focusing approach and emotion-focused
therapy
– “non-directive client-centered group” – emphasizes need to give
client control over therapy direction
– relational view – contemporary strand that emphasizes joint
construction of therapy
– pre-therapy (Prouty, 1998) – focus on establishing contact
– Motivational Interviewing (MI; Miller, 1983) – Socratic
questioning
– child-centered play therapy (Axline, 1947) – posits that children
express themselves through play
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Evaluation of the Theory (1 of 2)
• One of the most influential theories in the counseling
profession
• Rogers has been criticized for wearing “rose-colored
glasses”
• Qualities of the theory
– Disagreement exists over how to measure constructs
– Provides clear and simple predictions
– Research has supported the effectiveness of personcentered therapy
▪ Rogers’s core conditions are considered
necessary but Not sufficient
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Evaluation of the Theory (2 of 2)
• Research Support
– Outcome research
▪ Bozarth et al. (2001), Elliott et al. (2013), and Elliott
(2013b) – studies support positive outcomes
▪ Stiles et al. (2008) – no difference in effectiveness
of person-centered therapy, psychodynamic, or
cognitive behavioral therapy
▪ Others have supported but also mixed results
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Issues of Individual and Cultural
Diversity (1 of 2)
• Too much individualism, emotional expression,
nondirective, and self-disclosure
• Among the strengths of the approach: client determines
the goals of counseling
• Egalitarian relationship aligns with the feminist approach
to counseling, however, ignores cultural context
• Gillion (2008) argued person-centered therapy emphasis
on vulnerability, experiencing and relationship may create
difficulty for full engagement in therapy for men strongly
socialized into traditional masculine roles.
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Issues of Individual and Cultural
Diversity (2 of 2)
• Gillion (2008)
– Educating male clients at the beginning of therapy
– Using language that is characteristic of masculine
tendencies (e.g., distancing or objectifying) in
pinpointing clients’ meanings
– Empathasizing with any difficulties in expressing and
experiencing
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Conclusion
• To accept freedom of being
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Copyright
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