Person-centered therapy

Last updated

Person-centered therapy
MeSH D009629

Person-centered therapy (PCT), also known as person-centered psychotherapy, person-centered counseling, client-centered therapy and Rogerian psychotherapy, is a form of psychotherapy developed by psychologist Carl Rogers and colleagues beginning in the 1940s [1] and extending into the 1980s. [2] Person-centered therapy seeks to facilitate a client's actualizing tendency, "an inbuilt proclivity toward growth and fulfillment", [3] via acceptance ( unconditional positive regard ), therapist congruence (genuineness), and empathic understanding. [4] [5]

Contents

History and influences

Person-centered therapy was developed by Carl Rogers in the 1940s and 1950s, [6] : 138  and was brought to public awareness largely through his book Client-centered Therapy, published in 1951. [7] It has been recognized as one of the major types of psychotherapy (theoretical orientations), along with psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, classical Adlerian psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy, existential therapy, and others. [6] : 3  Its underlying theory arose from the results of empirical research; it was the first theory of therapy to be driven by empirical research, [8] with Rogers at pains to reassure other theorists that "the facts are always friendly". [9] Originally called non-directive therapy, it "offered a viable, coherent alternative to Freudian psychotherapy. ... [Rogers] redefined the therapeutic relationship to be different from the Freudian authoritarian pairing." [10]

Person-centered therapy is often described as a humanistic therapy, but its main principles appear to have been established before those of humanistic psychology. [11] Some have argued that "it does not in fact have much in common with the other established humanistic therapies" [12] but, by the mid-1960s, Rogers accepted being categorized with other humanistic (or phenomenological-existential) psychologists in contrast to behavioral and psychoanalytic psychologists. [13] Despite the importance of the self to person-centered theory, the theory is fundamentally organismic and holistic in nature, [14] [15] with the individual's unique self-concept at the center of the unique "sum total of the biochemical, physiological, perceptual, cognitive, emotional and interpersonal behavioural subsystems constituting the person". [16]

Rogers coined the term counselling in the 1940s because, at that time, psychologists were not legally permitted to provide psychotherapy in the US. Only medical practitioners were allowed to use the term psychotherapy to describe their work. [17]

Rogers affirmed individual personal experience as the basis and standard for living and therapeutic effect. [6] : 142–143  This emphasis contrasts with the dispassionate position which may be intended in other therapies, particularly the behavioral therapies. Hallmarks of Rogers's person-centered therapy include: living in the present rather than the past or future; organismic trust; naturalistic faith in one's own thoughts and the accuracy in one's feelings; a responsible acknowledgment of one's freedom; and a view toward participating fully in our world and contributing to other peoples' lives.[ citation needed ] Rogers also claimed that the therapeutic process is, in essence, composed of the accomplishments made by the client. The client, having already progressed further along in their growth and maturation development, only progresses further with the aid of a psychologically favored environment. [18]

Although client-centered therapy has been criticized by behaviorists for lacking structure and by psychoanalysts for actually providing a conditional relationship, [6] it has been shown to be an effective[ clarification needed ] treatment. [19] [20] [21] [22]

The necessary and sufficient conditions

Rogers (1957; 1959) stated that there are six necessary and sufficient conditions required for therapeutic change: [6] : 142–143 

  1. Therapist–client psychological contact: A relationship between client and therapist must exist, and it must be a relationship in which each person's perception of the other is important.
  2. Client incongruence: Incongruence (as defined by Carl Rogers; "a lack of alignment between the real self and the ideal self") exists between the client's experience and awareness.
  3. Therapist congruence, or genuineness: The therapist is congruent within the therapeutic relationship; the therapist is deeply involved—they are not "acting"—and they can draw on their own experiences (self-disclosure) to facilitate the relationship.
  4. Therapist unconditional positive regard: The therapist accepts the client unconditionally, without judgment, disapproval, or approval. This facilitates increased self-regard in the client, as they can begin to become aware of experiences in which their view of self-worth was distorted or denied.
  5. Therapist empathic understanding: The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client's internal frame of reference. Accurate empathy on the part of the therapist helps the client believe the therapist's unconditional regard for them.
  6. Client perception: The client perceives, to at least a minimal degree, the therapist's unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding.

The three conditions specific to the therapist/counselor came to be called the core conditions of PCT: therapist congruence, unconditional positive regard or acceptance, and accurate empathic understanding. [5] [23] [24] There is a large body of publications of empirical research on these conditions. [23]

Processes

Rogers believed that a therapist who embodies the three critical and reflexive attitudes (the three core conditions) will help liberate their client to more confidently express their true feelings without fear of judgement. To achieve this, the client-centered therapist carefully avoids directly challenging their client's way of communicating themselves in the session in order to enable a deeper exploration of the issues most intimate to them and free from external referencing. [25] Rogers was not prescriptive in telling his clients what to do, but believed that the answers to the clients' questions were within the client and not the therapist. Accordingly, the therapist's role was to create a facilitative, empathic environment wherein the client could discover the answers for themselves. [26]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Rogers</span> American psychologist (1902–1987)

Carl Ransom Rogers was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of humanistic psychology and was known especially for his person-centered psychotherapy. Rogers is widely considered one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research and was honored for his pioneering research with the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1956.

Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome problems. Psychotherapy aims to improve an individual's well-being and mental health, to resolve or mitigate troublesome behaviors, beliefs, compulsions, thoughts, or emotions, and to improve relationships and social skills. Numerous types of psychotherapy have been designed either for individual adults, families, or children and adolescents. Certain types of psychotherapy are considered evidence-based for treating some diagnosed mental disorders; other types have been criticized as pseudoscience.

Humanistic psychology is a psychological perspective that arose in the mid-20th century in answer to two theories: Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory and B. F. Skinner's behaviorism. Thus, Abraham Maslow established the need for a "third force" in psychology. The school of thought of humanistic psychology gained traction due to Maslow in the 1950s.

Clinical psychology is an integration of human science, behavioral science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development. Central to its practice are psychological assessment, clinical formulation, and psychotherapy, although clinical psychologists also engage in research, teaching, consultation, forensic testimony, and program development and administration. In many countries, clinical psychology is a regulated mental health profession.

Counseling psychology is a psychological specialty that began with a focus on vocational counseling, but later moved its emphasis to adjustment counseling, and then expanded to cover all normal psychology and psychotherapy. There are many subcategories for counseling psychology, such as marriage and family counseling, rehabilitation counseling, clinical mental health counseling, educational counseling, etc. In each setting, they are all required to follow the same guidelines.

Integrative psychotherapy is the integration of elements from different schools of psychotherapy in the treatment of a client. Integrative psychotherapy may also refer to the psychotherapeutic process of integrating the personality: uniting the "affective, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological systems within a person".

Unconditional positive regard, a concept initially developed by Stanley Standal in 1954, later expanded and popularized by the humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers in 1956, is the basic acceptance and support of a person regardless of what the person says or does, especially in the context of client-centred therapy. Rogers wrote:

For me it expresses the primary theme of my whole professional life, as that theme has been clarified through experience, interaction with others, and research. This theme has been utilized and found effective in many different areas until the broad label 'a person-centred approach' seems the most descriptive. The central hypothesis of this approach can be briefly stated. It is that the individual has within him or her self vast resources for self-understanding, for altering her or his self-concept, attitudes, and self-directed behaviour—and that these resources can be tapped if only a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided.

Existential therapy is a form of psychotherapy based on the model of human nature and experience developed by the existential tradition of European philosophy. It focuses on the psychological experience revolving around universal human truths of existence such as death, freedom, isolation and the search for the meaning of life. Existential therapists largely reject the medical model of mental illness that views mental health symptoms as the result of biological causes. Rather, symptoms such as anxiety, alienation and depression arise because of attempts to deny or avoid the givens of existence, often resulting in an existential crisis. For example, existential therapists highlight the fact that since we have the freedom to choose, there will always be uncertainty - and therefore, there will always be a level of existential anxiety present in our lives.

The therapeutic relationship refers to the relationship between a healthcare professional and a client or patient. It is the means by which a therapist and a client hope to engage with each other and effect beneficial change in the client.

Leslie Samuel Greenberg is a Canadian psychologist born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is one of the originators and primary developers of Emotion-Focused Therapy for individuals and couples. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at York University in Toronto, and also director of the Emotion-Focused Therapy Clinic in Toronto. His research has addressed questions regarding empathy, psychotherapy process, the therapeutic alliance, and emotion in human functioning.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of psychotherapy</span>

Although modern, scientific psychology is often dated from the 1879 opening of the first psychological clinic by Wilhelm Wundt, attempts to create methods for assessing and treating mental distress existed long before. The earliest recorded approaches were a combination of religious, magical and/or medical perspectives. Early examples of such psychological thinkers included Patañjali, Padmasambhava, Rhazes, Avicenna and Rumi.

Emotionally focused therapy and emotion-focused therapy (EFT) are related humanistic approaches to psychotherapy that aim to resolve emotional and relationship issues with individuals, couples, and families. These therapies combine experiential therapy techniques, including person-centered and Gestalt therapies, with systemic therapy and attachment theory. The central premise is that emotions influence cognition, motivate behavior, and are strongly linked to needs. The goals of treatment include transforming maladaptive behaviors, such as emotional avoidance, and developing awareness, acceptance, expression, and regulation of emotion and understanding of relationships. EFT is usually a short-term treatment.

Elias Hull Porter was an American psychologist. While at the University of Chicago Porter was a peer of other notable American psychologists, including Carl Rogers, Thomas Gordon, Abraham Maslow and Will Schutz. His work at Ohio State University and later at the University of Chicago contributed to Rogers’ development of client-centered therapy. Porter's primary contributions to the field of psychology were in the areas of non-directive approaches, relationship awareness theory and psychometric tests. His career included military, government, business and clinical settings.

Status Dynamic Psychotherapy (SDT) is an approach to psychotherapy that focuses on changing a client's "statuses", whether they be career related, personal or social in nature. SDT is characterized by its lack of focus on factors traditionally targeted by psychotherapy such as the client's behaviors and cognitions, and how unconscious factors come into play. SDT was created by Peter G. Ossorio at the University of Colorado in the late 1960s as part of a larger system known as "descriptive psychology".

Reflective listening is a communication strategy used to better understand a speaker's idea by offering your understanding of their idea back to the speaker in order to confirm that the idea has been understood correctly. It is a more specific strategy than general methods of active listening.

Common factors theory, a theory guiding some research in clinical psychology and counseling psychology, proposes that different approaches and evidence-based practices in psychotherapy and counseling share common factors that account for much of the effectiveness of a psychological treatment. This is in contrast to the view that the effectiveness of psychotherapy and counseling is best explained by specific or unique factors that are suited to treatment of particular problems.

Paradox psychology is a counter-intuitive approach that is primarily geared toward addressing treatment resistance. The method of paradoxical interventions (pdxi) is more focused, rapid, and effective than Motivational Interviewing. In addressing resistance, the method seeks to influence the clients' underlying attitude and perception by providing laser beam attention on strengthening the attachment-alliance. This is counter-intuitive to traditional methods since change is usually directed toward various aspects of behavior, emotions, and thinking. As it turns out, the better therapy is able to strengthen the alliance, the more these aspects of behavior will change.

Everett Leo Shostrom was an American psychotherapist. His approach to psychotherapy was eclectic, integrating a wide range of theory, practice, and research. He was perhaps most well known for his film Three Approaches to Psychotherapy and his famous book Man, the Manipulator. He also produced well known tests and inventories including the Personal Orientation Inventory, Personal Orientation Dimensions, the Pair Attraction Inventory, and the Caring Relationship Inventory.

The actualizing tendency is a fundamental element of Carl Rogers' theory of person-centered therapy (PCT). Rogers' theory is predicated on an individual's innate capacity to decide his/her own best directions in life, provided his/her circumstances are conducive to this, based on the organism's "universal need to drive or self-maintain, flourish, self-enhance and self-protect". Counsellors Keith Tudor and Mike Worrall proposed that analogues of the actualizing tendency can be found in texts by various writers from antiquity onward, such as Aristotle, Lucretius, Spinoza, Sándor Ferenczi, Jessie Taft, and Eric Berne.

Natalie Rogers (1928–2015) was an early contributor to the field of humanistic psychology, person centered psychology, expressive arts therapy, and the founder of Person-Centered Expressive Arts. This combination of the arts with psychotherapy is sometimes referred to by Rogers as The Creative Connection. The daughter of Carl Rogers, one of the founders of humanistic psychology, she established her own center, the Person-Centered Expressive Therapy Institute. Her writings, teachings, and practice introduced many to the power of creative arts for healing both within and outside the therapeutic setting.

References

  1. ↑ Rogers, Carl R. (1942). Counseling and psychotherapy: newer concepts in practice . Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN   978-1406760873. OCLC   165705.
  2. ↑ Rogers, Carl R.; Sanford, R. C. (1985). "Client-centered psychotherapy" . Comprehensive textbook of psychiatry. By I., Kaplan, Harold; J., Sadock, Benjamin. Vol. 2. Williams & Wilkins. pp.  1374–1388. ISBN   9780683045116. OCLC   491903721.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ↑ Yalom, Irvin D. (1995). Introduction. A way of being. By Rogers, Carl R. Houghton Mifflin Co. p. xi. ISBN   9780395755303. OCLC   464424214.
  4. ↑ Rogers 1957.
  5. 1 2 Rogers, Carl R. (1966). "Client-centered therapy" . In Arieti, S. (ed.). American handbook of psychiatry. Vol. 3. New York City: Basic Books. pp. 183–200. OCLC   2565173.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Prochaska, James O.; Norcross, John C. (2007). Systems of Psychotherapy: A Transtheoretical Analysis (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson/Brooks/Cole. ISBN   978-0495007777. OCLC   71366401.
  7. ↑ Rogers 1951.
  8. ↑ Wilkins, P. (2016). Person-centred therapy: 100 key points and techniques. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. p. 27.
  9. ↑ Rogers 1961, p. 25.
  10. ↑ Woolfolk, R. L. (2015) The value of psychotherapy: the talking cure in an age of clinical science. London: Guilford. p. 28.
  11. ↑ Merry, T. (1998). "Client-centred therapy: origins and influences". Person-Centred Practice 6(2), pp. 96–103.
  12. ↑ Mearns, D. and Thorne, B. (2000). Person-centred therapy today: new frontiers in theory and practice. London: Sage. p. 27.
  13. ↑ Rogers, Carl R. (April 1963). "Toward a science of the person". Journal of Humanistic Psychology . 3 (2): 72–92. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.994.8868 . doi:10.1177/002216786300300208. S2CID   143631103. I share with Maslow and others the view that there are three broad emphases in American psychology. These resemble three ocean currents flowing side-by-side, mingling, with no clear line of demarcation, yet definitely different none the less. ... And though I consider myself a part of this third trend, I am not attempting to speak for it. It is too diversified, its boundaries too vague, for me to endeavor to be a spokesman. Rather, as a member of this group, I shall be concerned with the meaning that this current has in modern psychological life as I perceive it.
  14. ↑ Wilkins, P. (ed.) (2016). Person-centred and experiential therapies: contemporary approaches and issues in practice. London: Sage. p. 34.
  15. ↑ Tudor, K. and Worrall, M. (2006). Person-centred therapy: a clinical philosophy. London: Routledge. pp. 45–84.
  16. ↑ Wilkins, P. (2016). Person-centred therapy: 100 key points and techniques. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. p. 12.
  17. ↑ Joseph, S. (2010). Theories of counselling and psychotherapy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 8.
  18. ↑ Rogers, Carl (1951). Client-Centered Therapy. Cambridge Massachusetts: The Riverside Press.
  19. ↑ Cooper, M., Watson, J. C., & Hoeldampf, D. (2010). Person-centered and experiential therapies work: A review of the research on counseling, psychotherapy and related practices. Ross-on-Wye, UK: PCCS Books.
  20. ↑ Ward, E.; King, M.; Lloyd, M.; Bower, P.; Sibbald, B.; Farrelly, S.; Gabbay, M.; Tarrier, N.; Addington-Hall, J. (2000). "Randomised controlled trial of non-directive counselling, cognitive-behaviour therapy, and usual general practitioner care for patients with depression. I: Clinical effectiveness". BMJ. 321 (7273): 1383–8. doi:10.1136/bmj.321.7273.1383. PMC   27542 . PMID   11099284.
  21. ↑ Bower, P.; Byford, S.; Sibbald, B.; Ward, E.; King, M.; Lloyd, M.; Gabbay, M. (2000). "Randomised controlled trial of non-directive counselling, cognitive-behaviour therapy, and usual general practitioner care for patients with depression. II: Cost effectiveness". BMJ. 321 (7273): 1389–92. doi:10.1136/bmj.321.7273.1389. PMC   27543 . PMID   11099285.
  22. ↑ Shechtman, Zipora; Pastor, Ronit (2005). "Cognitive-Behavioral and Humanistic Group Treatment for Children with Learning Disabilities: A Comparison of Outcomes and Process". Journal of Counseling Psychology. 52 (3): 322–336. doi:10.1037/0022-0167.52.3.322.
  23. 1 2 Kirschenbaum, Howard; Jourdan, April (2005). "The current status of Carl Rogers and the person-centered approach". Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training . 42 (1): 37–51. doi:10.1037/0033-3204.42.1.37.
  24. ↑ Yao, Lucy; Kabir, Rian (February 9, 2023). "Person-Centered Therapy (Rogerian Therapy)". U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information Bookshelf. PMID   36944012 . Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  25. ↑ "Person-centered therapy" on the Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders website
  26. ↑ Rogers, Carl Ransom; Lyon, Harold C.; Tausch, Reinhard (2013). On Becoming an Effective Teacher: Person-centred Teaching, Psychology, Philosophy, and Dialogues with Carl R. Rogers. Routledge. p. 23. ISBN   978-0-415-81698-4.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.