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Person-centered Therapy

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Questions?• Some key concepts of person-centered therapy?• How do you thrive to overcome your problem?

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Person-Centered Therapy

1980s-1990s Person-centered approach

broadening application of the approach

Late 1950s-1970s Conditions of therapy/ On Becoming a Person

how people best progress in psychotherapy, studied the qualities of client–therapist relationship as a catalyst

1950s Client-Centered Therapy Focus on the phenomenological world of the client

on actualizing tendency as the motivational force that leads to client change

1940s Non directive counselling

Create permissive and non-directive climate

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Person-Centered Therapy• A reaction against the directive and

psychoanalytic approaches• Challenges:

• Assumption “the counselor knows best”• The validity of advice, suggestion, persuasion,

teaching, diagnosis, and interpretation• The belief that clients cannot understand and

resolve their own problems without direct help• The focus on problems over persons

• Help client gain insight through reflecting and clarifying the clients’ verbal and nonverbal communications

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In the nutshell…Bozarth and colleagues (2002) concluded the following:

• In the earliest years, the client was in charge. Nondirective therapy was associated with increased understanding, greater self-exploration, and improved self-concepts.

• Later, shift from clarification of feelings to focus on the client’s frame of reference. Strong evidence for the value of the therapeutic relationship and the client’s resources as the crux of successful therapy.

• Research centered on the core conditions assumed to be both necessary and sufficientfor successful therapy. Attitude of the therapist— empathic understanding of the client’s world and the ability to communicate a nonjudgmental stance—was found to be basic to a successful therapy outcome

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View of Human Nature

• People are trustworthy, resourceful, capable of self-understanding and self-direction, able to make constructive changes, and able to live effective and productive lives • Actualizing tendency: a directional process striving toward

realization, fulfillment, autonomy, self-determination & perfection à Client as agent of change

• Focus on constructive side, on strengths and what clients bringing to the therapy

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Therapeutic Goals• Client achieving greater degree of independence and

integrationà not focus on the presenting problem

• Help client become a fully functioning personà get “behind the mask”

• The person behind the mask: (1) an openness to experience, (2) a trust in themselves, (3) an internal source of evaluation, (4) a willingness to continue growing.

• Clients have capacities to define and clarify their own goals

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Therapist’s function and Role

• Attitude rather than knowledge, theories, or techniques • An instrument of change, role is to be without role• Function: present and accessible to clients, focus on immediate

experience, be real in the relationship with clientsà caution about retreating into a stance of pseudo-professionalism

• Through the therapist’s attitude of genuine caring, respect, acceptance, and understanding, clients become less defensive and more open to their experience and facilitate the personal growth

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Client’s Experience in Therapy

• Incongruence:

self-perception > < experience in reality

self-concept > < ideal self-concept

à helplessness, powerlessness, inability

• As clients feel understood and accepted, their defensiveness is less

necessary and they become more open to their experiences

• Therapeutic relationship activate clients’ self-healing capacities

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Six Conditions(necessary and sufficient for personality changes to occur)

1. Two persons are in psychological contact2. The first, the client, is experiencing incongruency

3. The second person, the therapist, is congruent or integrated in the relationship

4. The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard or real caring for the client

5. The therapist experiences empathy for the client’s internal frame of reference and endeavors to communicate this to the client

6. The communication to the client is, to a minimal degree, achieved

Relationship Between Therapist and Client

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• Client–therapist relationship is characterized by equality

• As clients experience the therapist listening in an accepting way to

them, they gradually learn how to listen acceptingly to themselves.

• Therapy as a journey shared by two people

• “Therapists cannot confidently invite their clients to travel further than

they have journeyed themselves” (Thorne, 2002)

Relationship Between Therapist and Client

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• Congruence - genuineness or realness

• Unconditional positive regard- acceptance and caring, but not approval of all behavior

• Accurate empathic understanding – an ability to deeply grasp the client’s subjective world- Sense clients’ feelings as if they were his or her own without becoming lost in those feelings.- Helper attitudes are more important than knowledge

Relationship Between Therapist and Client

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Therapeutic techniques and procedures

• It is not technique-oriented

• Not just simply to restate what the client just said or the technique of reflection of feelings

• Therapeutic relationship is primary agent of growth in the client

• Therapist’s presence: completely engaged in the relationship with clients.

• Immediacy: addressing what is going on between the client and therapist, is highly valued à approach becomes more more flexible and eclectic

• The assessment problem: The best source of knowledge about the client is the individual client

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• The person-centered counselor uses the methods:(1) active and passive listening, (2) reflection of thoughts and feelings, (3) clarification, (4) summarization, (5) confrontation of contradictions, (6) general or open leads that help client self-exploration.

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Summary and Evaluation

• Contributions• Active role of responsibility of client• Inner and subjective experience• Relationship-centered• Focus on therapist’s attitudes• Focus on empathy, being present, and respecting the clients’ values• Value multicultural context

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Summary and Evaluation

• Limitations• Discount the significance of the past•Misunderstanding the basic concept: e.g., reflection

feelings.

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