Carl Rogers' Person Centered Therapy

Client centered therapy: starts and ends with the subjective experience (conscious self perceptions) of the individual, where their subjective reality serves as the basis for all the individual's judgments and behavior

• The therapist's interpretation is insignificant

Part of Humanism: emphasizes people's potential for self fulfillment

Humanistic therapies:

• Focus on the present and future, not the past

• Focus on feelings as they occur rather than childhood origins

• Focus on the conscious rather than the unconscious

• Focus on taking immediate responsibility for one's feelings or actions rather than uncovering hidden issues

• Focus on promoting growth instead of curing illness

• Changed the term from "patients" to "clients"

Self actualizing tendency: an active, controlling drive toward fulfillment of our potentials that enables us to maintain and enhance ourselves

Believed this tendency is both biological and psychological

Personality Development:

• Believes self actualization begins in infancy

Organismic valuing process: According to Rogers, when individuals utilize their actualization tendency as a criterion in making judgements about the worth of a given experience

The Fully functioning person: individuals who are utilizing their potentials to the maximum degree, are engaged in self realization of self actualization

According to Rogers, the fully functioning person has the following characteristics:

1. They are open to experience

2. They are characterized by existential living

3. They trust their organisms

4. They are creative

5. They live richer lives than do other people

Emerging person: people whose interpersonal relationships are characterized by honesty, cooperation, and concern for others, avoid facades and hypocrisy, welcome change, and opt for growth even when difficult

According to Rogers, the emerging person has the following characteristics:

1. They are honest and open

2. They are indifferent to material comforts and rewards

3. They are caring persons

4. They have a deep distrust of cognitively based science and technology that uses science to exploit and harm nature and people

5. They have a trust in their own experience and profound distrust of all external authority

The social self and the true self:

Social self: an organized set of characteristics that the individual perceives as being unique to themselves and is primarily acquired through contact with others

True self: is one's self-concept based on our actual feelings about our experiences

*Rogers believed that the formation of a healthy self-concept was an ongoing process shaped by a person's life experiences

• People with a stable sense of self tend to have greater confidence and cope more effectively with life's challenges

One's self-concept can be affected by the:

• Need for positive regard: learned or innate tendency to see and need approval from others

• As a result, we live our life based on: Conditions of worth: experiences and behaviors are acceptable only if they meet with approval from others

*Rogers believed the ultimate goal of his person (client)-centered approach was to change the person's self-concept

• According to Rogers, the ideal condition for development of a healthy self concept is unconditional positive regard: a total caring or prizing of the person for what and who one is, without any reservations or conditions of worth

*Rogers suggested that self concept begins to develop during childhood and is heavily influenced by parenting

• Parents who offer their children unconditional love and regard are more likely to foster a healthy self-concept

• Children who feel that they have to "earn" their parents' love may end up with low self-esteem and feelings of unworthiness

*The problem is that our image of who we think we should be does not always match up with our perceptions of who we actually are

• When our self-image does not line up with our ideal self, we are in a state of incongruence

• Rogers believed that by receiving unconditional positive regard and pursuing self-actualization, however, people can come close to reaching a state of congruence

  • A fully functioning person like many other aspects of his theory, unconditional positive regard plays a critical role in the development of full functioning

    • Those who receive nonjudgemental support and love can develop the self-esteem and confidence to be the best person they can be and live up to their full potential

Assessment:

Q-sort: measures the discrepancies between the actual and ideal selves

Rogers believed there are 3 essential ingredients provided by the therapist in order to facilitate the therapeutic relationship:

1. Therapist must be genuine

2. Therapist must be empathetic

3. Therapist must feel unconditional positive regard for the client

Rogers believed the therapist must be engaged in active listening

1. Paraphrase

2. Invite clarification

3. Reflect feelings

*With his emphasis on human potential, Carl Rogers had an enormous influence on both psychology and education

• Beyond that, he is considered by many to be one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century

• More therapists cite Rogers as their primary influence than any other psychologist