Chapter 6: Carl Rogers: Person-Centered Theory & Therapy

Question 1

Actualizing/Formative Tendency

Answer 1

The capacity for persons, when unfettered by social and familial obstacles, to develop into positive, creative, flexible, and altruistic beings

Question 2

Carl Rogers’ Birthplace

Answer 2

Illinois

Question 3

Rogers’ Family Constellation

Answer 3

Fourth of Six children

Question 4

Rogers’ Parents

Answer 4

Rigid Fundamentalist Christians; described as absolute masters of repressive control;

Question 5

Rogers’ Peking Trip

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Rogers’ Academic Attainment

Answer 6

Graduated with a Clinical Psychology degree from Columbia University Teachers College

Question 7

Rogers’ First Clinical Position

Answer 7

At Rochester Child Guidance Center (Adlerian); Trained in diagnostic-prescriptive-analytic approach;

Question 8

Elements of Otto Rank’s Practice incorporated into Roger’s Approach

Answer 8

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.

Question 9

John Dewey’s Philosophy

Answer 9

Not perfection as a final goal but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining is the aim in living.

Question 10

Developmental Periods of Roger’s practice of Person-Centered Theory and Principles

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

Core features of Rogers’ theoretical propositions

Answer 11

Self-Theory
Phenomenology and the Valuing of Experience
Learning and Growth Potential
Conditions of Worth

Question 12

Self-Theory

Answer 12

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;

Question 13

Organism

Answer 13

Locus of all psychological experience; entire realm of an individual’s experience; self is the me portion of the organism

Question 14

Incongruence

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Congruence

Answer 15

When the self’s experiences and perceptions are consistent with the organism’s total experience; leads to adjustment, maturity, and a fully functioning individual

Question 16

Phenomenology and the Valuing of Experience

Answer 16

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.

Question 17

Learning and Growth Potential

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Conditions of Worth

Answer 18

Learned Needs: Need for Positive Regard

The Need for Self-Regard

Question 19

Need for Positive Regard

Answer 19

To be prized and loved

Question 20

Conditions of Worth

Answer 20

Approved and disapproved feelings and actions;

Question 21

Subception

Answer 21

Perception without awareness

Question 22

Rogers’ Personality Theory

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Rogers’ Psychopathology

Answer 23

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

Question 24

Failure to Learn From Experience

Answer 24

Best characterizes person-centered psychopathology;

Question 25

Rigidity

Answer 25

Considered the antithesis of learning; Impairs learning

Question 26

When Psychopathology Occurs According to Rogers

Answer 26

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;

Question 27

Focus of Rogerian Psychotherapy

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Fundamental Factors that determine the success of Person-Centered Therapy

Answer 28

The therapist must trust the client

The Therapist must establish a certain type of relationship with the client

Question 29

Essentials of Effective Psychotherapy of Rogers

Answer 29

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

Question 30

Essence of Roger’s Belief

Answer 30

Person-centered therapy requires that the therapist communicate congruence, unconditional positive regard, and emphatic understanding to the client

Question 31

Congruence

Answer 31

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;

Question 32

Unconditional Positive Regard

Answer 32

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

Question 33

Accurate Empathy/Emphatic Understanding

Answer 33

Noticing and reflecting his clients’ feelings; slipping completely into the client’s world, seeing and experiencing exactly what the client sees and experiences;

Question 34

Walking Within

Answer 34

Pronoun shift designed for the purpose of greater connection and identification with clients

Question 35

Components of Empathy

Answer 35

Intellectual Empathy
Emotional Empathy
Imaginative Empathy

Question 36

Intellectual Empathy

Answer 36

Involves seeing the world from the client’s perspective in a distant or intellectual way

Question 37

Emotional Empathy

Answer 37

Occurs when you naturally or spontaneously begin feeling an emotion in response to the client’s words or emotional state

Question 38

Imaginative Empathy

Answer 38

Involves asking yourself an empathy question: How would I feel if I were in my client’s situation?

Question 39

Types of Person-Centered Therapists

Answer 39

Pure or Traditional Person-Centered Therapist

Contemporary Person-Centered Therapist

Question 40

Pure/Traditional Person-Centered Therapist

Answer 40

Highly nondirective, does not use assessment procedures, and does not establish any specific goals for clients

Question 41

Contemporary Person-Centered Therapist

Answer 41

More active and directive therapist but still adheres to an underlying person-centered philosophy

Question 42

Optimal Person-Centered Therapy

Answer 42

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;

Question 43

Questions for those who want to Engage in Person-Centered Therapy

Answer 43

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?

Question 44

Person-Centered Therapist’s Opening Statements

Answer 44

Anything you’d like to tell me about yourself that will help me know you better, I’d be very glad to hear.

Question 45

Psychological Diagnosis According to Rogers

Answer 45

Understood unnecessarily for psychotherapy and may be actually detrimental to the therapeutic process

Question 46

Specific Person-Centered Therapy Techniques

Answer 46

Experiencing and Expressing Congruence
Experiencing and Expressing Unconditional Positive Regard
Experiencing and Expressing Emphatic Understanding

Question 47

Experiencing and Expressing Congruence

Answer 47

Main Aim of Openness is to communicate potentially helpful information to clients

Question 48

Problem with Expressing Unconditional Positive Regard

Answer 48

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

Question 49

Expressing Unconditional Positive Regard

Answer 49

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

Question 50

Experiencing and Expressing Emphatic Understanding

Answer 50

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

Question 51

Elements of Expressing Emphatic Understanding

Answer 51

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

Question 52

Entering & Becoming at Home in the Client’s Private Perceptual World

Answer 52

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

Question 53

Being Sensitive from Moment to Moment with the Client’s Changing Meanings and Emotions

Answer 53

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?

Question 54

Temporarily Living, and Moving About Delicately

Answer 54

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.

Question 55

Sensing Deep Meanings, but not Uncovering Feelings That Are Too Far Out of Awareness

Answer 55

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.

Question 56

Invitations for Repair

Answer 56

Gives clients an opportunity to correct Rogers, in case his perceptions of the client’s inner experience was inaccurate

Question 57

Person-Centered Therapy Approaches and Techniques

Answer 57

Motivational Interviewing

Non-directive (Person-Centered) Play Therapy

Question 58

Motivational Interviewing

Answer 58

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

Question 59

Central Principles of Motivational Interviewing

Answer 59

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

Question 60

Nondirective (Person-Centered) Play Therapy

Answer 60

Designed to facilitate client trust in himself through the core relationship conditions of congruence, unconditional positive regard, and emphatic understanding;

Question 61

Axline’s Guidelines for Play Therapy

Answer 61

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