Carl Rogers' Person-Centered Therapy Overview

Client-centered therapy

Focuses on individual's subjective experience and perceptions.

Humanism

Emphasizes potential for self-fulfillment in individuals.

Humanistic therapies

Prioritize present feelings over past experiences.

Self-actualizing tendency

Drive towards fulfilling personal potentials actively.

Organismic valuing process

Using actualization tendency to judge experience worth.

Fully functioning person

Maximally utilizes potentials and engages in self-realization.

Characteristics of fully functioning person

Open to experience, trusts organism, lives richly.

Emerging persons

Characterized by honesty, cooperation, and growth orientation.

Social self

Self-concept formed through interactions with others.

True self

Self-concept based on actual feelings and experiences.

Need for positive regard

Tendency to seek approval from others.

Conditions of worth

Acceptance based on meeting others' approval.

Unconditional positive regard

Total acceptance without conditions or reservations.

Incongruence

Mismatch between self-image and ideal self.

Congruence

Alignment between self-image and actual self.

Q-sort

Measures discrepancies between actual and ideal selves.

Therapeutic relationship

Requires therapist's genuineness, empathy, and regard.

Active listening

Engagement through paraphrasing, clarifying, and reflecting.

Influence on psychology

Rogers is a key figure in 20th-century psychology.