Chapter 6: Carl Rogers: Person-Centered Theory & Therapy Flashcards
Actualizing/Formative Tendency
The capacity for persons, when unfettered by social and familial obstacles, to develop into positive, creative, flexible, and altruistic beings
Carl Rogers’ Birthplace
Illinois
Rogers’ Family Constellation
Fourth of Six children
Rogers’ Parents
Rigid Fundamentalist Christians; described as absolute masters of repressive control;
Rogers’ Peking Trip
Changed Rogers in Different Ways:
Rejected his parents’ conservative religious ideology
Decided to marry his childhood sweetheart
Decided to pursue graduate studies at the liberal Union Thological Seminary in new York City
Rogers’ Academic Attainment
Graduated with a Clinical Psychology degree from Columbia University Teachers College
Rogers’ First Clinical Position
At Rochester Child Guidance Center (Adlerian); Trained in diagnostic-prescriptive-analytic approach;
Elements of Otto Rank’s Practice incorporated into Roger’s Approach
Clients have creative powes.
Therapy should help clients accept their personal uniqueness and self-reliance
Client is the central figure in the therapy process; therapist only helps clients access their powers of self-creation.
Therapists shouldn’t seek to educate clients.
Therapist shouldn’t foster dependency with clients by becoming love objects.
Therapy works when clients are able to experience the present within the therapy setting.
John Dewey’s Philosophy
Not perfection as a final goal but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining is the aim in living.
Developmental Periods of Roger’s practice of Person-Centered Theory and Principles
Nondirective Counseling - began in the 1940’s, characterized by his growing aversion to directive, traditional therapy methods
Client-Centered Therapy - 1950’s when Rogers changed the name; changed focus to an honoring the client’s ability to lead the therapy process
Becoming a Person - 1960’s Rogers began to focus on self-development; his work was strongly assoicated with the human potential movement; Person-centered principles were applied to many new situations, including encounter groups and the teacher-student relationship
Worldwide Issues - 1970’s and 1980’s Rogers was more concerned with worldwide issues; began dedicating much of his work to improving interracial relations and bringing about world peace.
Core features of Rogers’ theoretical propositions
Self-Theory
Phenomenology and the Valuing of Experience
Learning and Growth Potential
Conditions of Worth
Self-Theory
Every person exists within an ever-changing world in which he or she is the center; self as a structure in process, capable of both stability and change;
Organism
Locus of all psychological experience; entire realm of an individual’s experience; self is the me portion of the organism
Incongruence
The distinction between organism and self leaves open the possibility that an individual’s self can be inconsistent with its overall psychological experience; potential discrepancy
Congruence
When the self’s experiences and perceptions are consistent with the organism’s total experience; leads to adjustment, maturity, and a fully functioning individual
Phenomenology and the Valuing of Experience
Premium is placed on direct personal experience; Emotions are valued and crucial informational sources, experiencing is considered a more direct way of accurately knowing oneself and the world.
Learning and Growth Potential
Rogers believed in the inherent actualizing or formative tendency in humans; Capacity to learn on a moment-to-moment basis and have a formative tendency to move toward greater order, complexty and interrelatedness
Conditions of Worth
Learned Needs: Need for Positive Regard
The Need for Self-Regard
Need for Positive Regard
To be prized and loved
Conditions of Worth
Approved and disapproved feelings and actions;
Subception
Perception without awareness
Rogers’ Personality Theory
It is a theory of self, of experience, of striving for maintenance and enhancement of the self, and of learned needs for positive regard. It is also a theory of discrepancy, because it is the discrepancy between self and organismic experience, between what the caretakers value and what the organism values, that creates psychopathology
Rogers’ Psychopathology
Psychological problems are neither faulty beliefs or perceptions nor inadequate or inappropriate behavior per se. As humans confront challenges in life, they will periodically misperceive, operate on mistaken beliefs, and behave inadequately. Dysfunctionality occurs if we fail to learn from feedback and therefore remain stuck in our misperceptions or inadequate behavior. Dysfunctionality is really a failure to learn and change
Failure to Learn From Experience
Best characterizes person-centered psychopathology;
Rigidity
Considered the antithesis of learning; Impairs learning
When Psychopathology Occurs According to Rogers
When clients hang on to introjected parental conditions of worth instead of modifying their self-concept based on moment-by-moment, day-by-day personal experience;
Focus of Rogerian Psychotherapy
The importance of openness to emotional processing in normal human functionling in their process-experiential psychotherapy approach; when clients are unaware of or unable to access important emotional information, dysfunctional behavior or interpersonal interactions result
Fundamental Factors that determine the success of Person-Centered Therapy
The therapist must trust the client
The Therapist must establish a certain type of relationship with the client
Essentials of Effective Psychotherapy of Rogers
Two persons are in psychological contact
The first, whom we shall term the client, is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable and anxious
The second person, who we shall term the therapist, is congruent or integrated in the relationship
The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client
The therapist experiences an emphatic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference and endeavors to communicate this experience to the client
The commnication to the client of the therapist’s emphatic understanding and unconditional positive reard is to a minimal degree achieved
Essence of Roger’s Belief
Person-centered therapy requires that the therapist communicate congruence, unconditional positive regard, and emphatic understanding to the client
Congruence
Defined as authenticity and is sometimes referred to as transparency as well; it is only by providing the genuine reality, which is in me, that the other person can successfully seek…the reality in him; provides grounding or reality so that the clients’ real selves have something to interact with; implies that therapists should acknowledge and express both positive and negative feelings within the context of the therapy relationship;
Unconditional Positive Regard
Referred to as acceptace, respect, or prizing; involves an emphasis on valuing the client as a separate person or organism whose thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and entire being are openly accepted, without any conditions; if the therapist can accept clients completely, the clients can begin exploring who they really are and what they really want
Accurate Empathy/Emphatic Understanding
Noticing and reflecting his clients’ feelings; slipping completely into the client’s world, seeing and experiencing exactly what the client sees and experiences;
Walking Within
Pronoun shift designed for the purpose of greater connection and identification with clients
Components of Empathy
Intellectual Empathy
Emotional Empathy
Imaginative Empathy
Intellectual Empathy
Involves seeing the world from the client’s perspective in a distant or intellectual way
Emotional Empathy
Occurs when you naturally or spontaneously begin feeling an emotion in response to the client’s words or emotional state
Imaginative Empathy
Involves asking yourself an empathy question: How would I feel if I were in my client’s situation?
Types of Person-Centered Therapists
Pure or Traditional Person-Centered Therapist
Contemporary Person-Centered Therapist
Pure/Traditional Person-Centered Therapist
Highly nondirective, does not use assessment procedures, and does not establish any specific goals for clients
Contemporary Person-Centered Therapist
More active and directive therapist but still adheres to an underlying person-centered philosophy
Optimal Person-Centered Therapy
Exploration of increasingly strange and unknown and dangerous feelings in himself, the exploration proving possible only because he is gradually realizing that he is accepted unconditionally;
Questions for those who want to Engage in Person-Centered Therapy
Can I be in some way which will be perceived by the other person as trustworthy, as dependable or consistent in some deep sense?
Can I be expressive enough as a person that what I am will be communicated unambiguously?
Can I let myself experience positive attitudes towards this other person-attitudes of warmth, caring, liking, interest, respect?
Can I be strong enough as a person to be separate from the other?
Am I secure enough within myself to permit him his separateness?
Can I let myself enter fully into the world of his feelings and personal meanings and see these as he does?
Can I be acceptant of each facet of this other person which he presents to me? Can I receive him as he is?
Can I act with sufficient sensitivity in the relationship that my behavior will not be perceived as a threat?
Can I free him (the client) from the threat of external evaluation?
Can I meet this other individual as a person who is in the process of becoming or whill I be bound by his past or my past?
Person-Centered Therapist’s Opening Statements
Anything you’d like to tell me about yourself that will help me know you better, I’d be very glad to hear.
Psychological Diagnosis According to Rogers
Understood unnecessarily for psychotherapy and may be actually detrimental to the therapeutic process
Specific Person-Centered Therapy Techniques
Experiencing and Expressing Congruence
Experiencing and Expressing Unconditional Positive Regard
Experiencing and Expressing Emphatic Understanding
Experiencing and Expressing Congruence
Main Aim of Openness is to communicate potentially helpful information to clients
Problem with Expressing Unconditional Positive Regard
Expressing too much positive regard can be overwhelming to clients;
Saying I care about you or I won’t judge you can be viewed as phony and unrealistic, especially if the therapist hasn’t spent much time with the client and therefore doesn’t know him really well
Expressing Unconditional Positive Regard
By keeping appointments, by asking how your clients like to be addressed and remembering to address them that way, by listening sensitively and compassionately; By allowing clients freedom to discuss themselves in their natural manner; by demonstrating that you hear and remember specific parts of a client’s story; By responding with compassion or empathy to clients’ emotional pain and intellectual conflicts; by making an effort to accept and respect your clients
Experiencing and Expressing Emphatic Understanding
The way of being with another person which is termed emphatic means: entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming comfortable with it; involves being sensitive, moment-to-moment, to the changing felt meaning which flow in this other person, to the fear of rage, tenderness, or confusion, or whatever he/she is experiencing; temporarily living his/her life, moving about in it delicately without making judgments, sensing meanings of which he/she is scarcely aware, but not trying to uncover feelings of which the person is totally unaware, since this would be too threatening
Elements of Expressing Emphatic Understanding
Entering and Becoming at Home in the Client’s Private Perceptual World
Being Sensitive from Moment to Moment with the Client’s Changing Meanings and Emotions
Temporarily Living, and Moving About Delicately, in the Client’s Life
Sensing Deep Meanings, but not Uncovering Feelings That Are Too Far out of Awareness
Entering & Becoming at Home in the Client’s Private Perceptual World
Need to be open to feeling what the client feels and willing to ask the empathy question: How would I feel if I were _____ and saying these things? Includes reflection of feelings, empathic exploration, and clarification
Being Sensitive from Moment to Moment with the Client’s Changing Meanings and Emotions
Requires focused attention to your client’s constantly changing way of being; As the client offers a narrative, the therapist keeps his attention focused by continually asking internal questions such as What is the core meaning or message that she or he is communicating? What is most alive? What is being felt?
Temporarily Living, and Moving About Delicately
The goal is to have one foot inside the world of the client and one foot firmly planted in your own world, letting yourself flow into the client’s being for periods of time without losing a more objective perspective on what’s happening in the therapy session.
Sensing Deep Meanings, but not Uncovering Feelings That Are Too Far Out of Awareness
Rogers emphasizes the importance of respecting the client’s pace and comfort. As a person-centered therapist moving about gently within your client’s world, if you have an impulse, to tell a client about something completely outside of his or her awareness, it’s probably best to hold your tongue. Follow the client’s lead.
Invitations for Repair
Gives clients an opportunity to correct Rogers, in case his perceptions of the client’s inner experience was inaccurate
Person-Centered Therapy Approaches and Techniques
Motivational Interviewing
Non-directive (Person-Centered) Play Therapy
Motivational Interviewing
Developed by William R. Miller; uses person-centered therapy constructs as its foundation; A directive, client-centered counseling style for eliciting behavior change by helping clients to explore and resolve ambivalence
Central Principles of Motivational Interviewing
Use reflective listening skills to express empathy for the client’s message and genuine caring for the client
Notice and develop the theme of discrepancy etween the client’s deep values and current behavior
Meet client resistance with reflection rather than by confrontation (Rolling with Resistance)
Enhance client self-efficacy by focusing on optimism, confidence that change is possible, and small interventions that are likely to be successful
Nondirective (Person-Centered) Play Therapy
Designed to facilitate client trust in himself through the core relationship conditions of congruence, unconditional positive regard, and emphatic understanding;
Axline’s Guidelines for Play Therapy
Develop a warm and friendly relationship with the child
Accept the child as she or he is, without judgment
Establish a feeling of permission in the relationship so that the child is free to express his feelings completely
Recognizes the feelings the child is expressing and reflects these feelings back in such a manner that the child gains insight into his behavior
Maintains a deep respect for the child’s ability to solve problems and gives the child the opportunity to do so; the responsibility to make choices and to institute change is the child’s
Does not direct the child’s actions or conversations in any manner; the child leads the way, the therapist follows
Does not hurry the therapy; it is a gradual process and must be recognized as such by the therapist
Only establishes limitations necessary to anchor the therapy to the world of reality and to make the child aware of his or her responsibility in the relationship