Chapter 6: Person-Centered Counseling and Psychotherapy

Question 0

Person-Centered Counseling

Answer 0

Known as client-centered or Rogerian Counseling; Developed by Carl Rogers, based on assertion that three core conditions are sufficient to promote client change; focus is on emotional and relational processes that promote change rather than the use of specific techniques to achieve desired outcomes

Question 1

Humanistic and Existential Counseling Approach

Answer 1

Grounded in phenomenological philosophy which examines a person’s subjective inner reality

Question 2

Conditions for Person-Centered Counseling

Answer 2

Accurate empathy
Counselor genuineness
Unconditional Positive Regard

Question 3

Existential Counseling

Answer 3

Grounded in existential philosophy; more neutral assumptions about the human conditions in comparison to the more optimistic humanistic foundations of person-centered counseling

Question 4

Gestalt Counseling

Answer 4

A more humanistic approach that focuses on helping people to self-actualize or to become more fully themselves

Question 5

Logical Positivism

Answer 5

Focus on external, objective reality

Question 6

Phenomenology

Answer 6

Refers to the study of human consciousness: our inner lives, particularly our emotions; focuses on subjective, inner reality that cannot be easily observed and measured; counselor relies heavily on clients’ self reports as to what they are experiencing, combined with a general understanding of how emotions and cognition work; focuses on subjective, internal reality

Question 7

Humanism

Answer 7

Tend to be more optimistic; based on the premise that all people tend naturally toward positive growth

Question 8

Role of Humanistic counselor

Answer 8

Remove the blockages to this natural tendency to self-actualize rather than remediate deficiencies

Question 10

Existentialists

Answer 10

View life not as inherently positive or negtive but as inherently meaningless, or neutral until a person creates meaning

Question 11

Warmth & Empathy

Answer 11

Hallmark feature of most therapies grounded in phenomenology and humanism

Question 12

Empathy

Answer 12

Primary vehicle for therapeutic change

Question 13

Self of Counselor

Answer 13

Used to promote change; the counselor relates to the patient as a whole, real, unedited person; used to provide clients with both a role model and a genuine person with whom to have an authentic human encounter

Question 14

Maslow’s Herarchy of Needs

Answer 14

Physiological needs: breathing, food, sex, freedom from pain
Safety Needs: shelter, financial security, personal safety, health
Love and belonging: friends, family, community, social connectedness
Esteem: feeling valued by others and self
Self-actualization: realizing one’s full potential; becoming more and more who one is

Question 15

Maslow’s Self-Actualization

Answer 15

Involves humble acceptance of the positive and negative aspects of being human generally (existential realities) and of one who is individually (subjective reality) coupled with an unstoppable drive to become more fully human, more fully oneself, and more fully alive

Question 16

Rogerian Counseling

Answer 16

Based on the radical and startling proposition that the necessary and sufficient elements of therapeutic change are counselor congruence or genuineness, accurate empathetic understanding of the client, and unconditional positive regard

Question 17

Therapeutic Plan

Answer 17

Focuses on helping clients to experience their in-the-moment internal experiences to expose the facades they live behind and the socially imposed shoulds that may be organizing their lives

Question 18

Unconditional Positive Regard

Answer 18

Attitude that focuses on the client’s basic human worth at a fundamental level; recognizes that human have free will and that they make bad decisions, have irrational fears, and are capable of hurting themselves and others; involves embracing the whole person

Question 19

Validating Clients’ Feelings

Answer 19

Each person has unique experiences and emotional reactions to a situation that can be validated;

Question 20

Core Conditions

Answer 20

Two persons are in psychological contact
The first (client) is in a state of incongruence being vulnerable or anxious
The second (therapist) congruent or integrated in the relationship
Therapist experiences Unconditional Positive Regard for the client
Therapist experiences emphatetic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference and endeavors to communicate this experience to the client
Communication to the client of the therapist’s emphatic understanding and unconditional positive regard is to a minimal degree achieved

Question 21

Three Conditions that the therapist must create in the counseling relationship

Answer 21

Congruence or genuineness of the counselor
Unconditional positive regard
Accurate Empathy

Question 22

Counselor Genuineness

Answer 22

Congruence; Refers to the counselor’s outer expressions being congruent with his or her inner experience; being real; being freely and deeply one’s self while able to accurately take in what is experienced and simultaneously remaining aware of one’s internal processing of that experience

Question 23

Unconditional Positive Regard

Answer 23

Valuing the clients no matter what they say or do; warm acceptance, nonpossessive warmth, prizing, affirmation, respect, support, and caring; founded on the idea that we are all human and we all suffer and therefore have the capacity for good and evil (or destructive behavior); involves a deep sense of compassion for how hard it is to be human, and how easy it is to get off track and make hard decisions

Question 24

Accurate Empathy

Answer 24

To be able to sense the client’s anger, fear, or confusion as if it were your own, yet without your own anger, fear or confusion getting bound up in it, is the condition we are endeavoring to describe

Question 25

Measuring Empathy

Answer 25

Level 1:  No Empathy
Level 2:  Some empathy communicated
Level 3: Basic Empathy
Level 4: Deepened Empathy
Level 5: Significantly deepened empathy

Question 26

Empathy Scale Description

Answer 26

Level 1: Reflection focuses on content or intellectual part of the client message
Level 2: Some empathy expressed but some aspects of emotional experience ignored or missed
Level 3: Reflects client emotion back at the same level that client expressed it
Level 4: Reflects back client emotion at a slightly deeper level than the client expressed, providing an enhanced understanding to further the client’s exploration of internal process
Level 5: Counselor significantly expands and deepens the reflection, identifying subtle emotions that may not have been clearly expressed

Question 27

Person-Centered Counseling

Answer 27

Process-oriented approach; the counselor’s attention is on how things happen (process) rather than what happens (content), the focus is on persons (their inner processes)

Question 28

Seven Stages of the Change Process from entering counseling to self-actualization

Answer 28

First Stage: Personality seems fixed, personal problems are not acknowledged, there is a remoteness of experiencing, and there is little desire to change; not likely to voluntarily enter counseling
Second Stage: Once person feels “received” he begins to loosen up and is more open to seeing problems which are viewed as external to the self, with little sense of personal responsibility
Third Stage: If clients continue to feel accepted, and understood by the counselor, they become better able to express past feelings and personal meanings
Fourth Stage: If clients continue to feel safe with the counselor, they begin to become more open to reconsidering their constructs about self and others and are increasingly able to verbalize deep emotions.
Fifth Stage: As clients continue to explore themselves in the safety of the counseling relationship, they are increasingly
Sixth Stage: The person is not able to experience difficult emotions as they arise in the present moment with acceptance rather than fear, denial or struggle
Seventh Stage: No longer necessary for the client to be received by the counselor to self-actualize. although it is still helpful because the client has learned how to sustain the process of self-actualization without outside help; generally occurs outside of the counseling relationship

Question 29

Dimensions for the Seven Stages of Roger’s Change Process

Answer 29

Experience and communication of self
Recognition of feeling
Expression of feelings
Present moment experiencing
Personal constructs
Complexity and contradiction
Perception of problems; responsibility for situation

Question 30

Experience and Communication of Self

Answer 30

As people become more self-actualized, how they experience themselves changes, the sense of self evolves from a static entity to one where the self is more of a process that is constantly unfolding and changing; person discovers that the self is constantly in flux and unfolding

Question 31

Recognition of Feelings

Answer 31

Counselors look for whether clieents can identify a range of emotions when they discuss the concerns they bring to counseling; can they identify feelings of anger, hurt, joy, or fear? The more self-actualized a person is, the greater the range of emotion and the greater his or her ability to own that emotion as one he or she feels without shame, fear, or embarrassment

Question 32

Expression of Emotion

Answer 32

In the process of self-actualization, people become better able and more comfortable with expressing their full range of emotions;

Question 33

Present Moment Experiencing

Answer 33

Refers to the ability to mindfully experience emotions in the present moment; through the counseling process, clients become increasingly able to feel their feelings in the present moment and be aware of this experience, experiencing and witnessing their experience at the same time

Question 34

Personal constructs and Facades

Answer 34

Personal Constructs - facades we use to tell us who we are, how we should behave, and what we are worth; we need to experience ourselves more as an unfolding process than a static entity; experience ourselves as a complex being having a series of unfolding life experiences that involve a fluid and adapting sense of self

Question 35

Complexity and Contradictions

Answer 35

Ability to engage the complexities and contradiction that characterize our internal lives and life more generally; the more complex the topic, the more likely a person has contradictory thought and emotions; both loving and resenting a significant other, both liking and hating one’s career, etc.; the greater a person’s ability to accept these inherent contradictions in oneself, others, and life, the more resourcel one will be in managing life stressors

Question 36

Perception of Problems and Responsibility

Answer 36

Problems will be increasingly described with an emphasis on how one is contributing and/or perpetuating the situation; the more self-actualized a person becomes, the greater the awareness that life is a two-way street; how we interact with another contributes to how they respond to us; clients need to describe problems in terms of being agents of their own lives, taking responsibility in creating the problem situation and are quick to assume full responsibility for resolving the problem no matter their source.

Question 37

Peak Experience and Flow

Answer 37

Self-actualized self is fluid and flowing; peak experience is described as a flow state, an experience in which a person feels fully present, in sync, and immersed in a challenging activity for which one has sufficient skill
Flow Experiences - associated with activities that are associated with activities that require effort and practice; frequency and quality of flow experiences need to be evaluated in assessing the client’s level of functioning

Question 38

Self-Actualization

Answer 38

Refers to fulfilling one’s potential and living an authentic, meaningful life; humans naturally tend to provide the correct environment that fosters this growth; counselor’s primary job is to prove the correct environment that fosters this growth; highest order in his heirarchy of human needs, coming only after more basic physiological, safety, social, and self-esteem meds are being met

Question 39

Characteristics of Self-Actualization

Answer 39

Openness to present moment experiencing of emotions
Trust in self
Internal locus of evaluation and control
Living without roles, facades, shoulds, or social expectation
Being a complex, dynamic, and unfolding process (rather than a static entity)
Openness to experience
Acceptance of others

Question 40

Process Issues

Answer 40

Person’s internal processes; identify areas of growth and turn these into middle phase goals; increase living by conscious choice rather than a list of should; reduce attempts to please others in a way that are detrimental to personal needs

Question 41

Goals Related to Specific Areas of Functioning

Answer 41

Emotional Expression & Here and Now Experiencing - Increase ability to identify emotions in present moment
Victimization and experience of Problems - Increase sense of responsibility for own problems and their resolution
Agency - Increase sense of agency and proactive behavior in work life
Facades and Masks - Reduce use of facades in personal relationships to increae experience of intimacy
Peak Experience and Flow - Increase frequency of peak experience and flow in work life
Perfectionism and Unrealistic Expectations - Increase ability to set realistic expectations for self and other to increase acceptance
Trust Self - Increase ability to trust the evolving and changing nature of the self

Question 42

Interventions

Answer 42

Self of the Counselor and the Core Conditions
Focused Listening or Attending
Summarizing
Clarifying
Reflecting Feelings
Process Questions
Carkhuff's Core Conditions
Concreteness and Specificity
Self-Disclosure
Confrontation
Immediacy
Focusing

Question 43

Self of the Counselor and the Core Conditions

Answer 43

Counselor as a quality presence that helps clients to transform and become more comfortable with experiencing their authentic selves; the counselor’s way of being in the world

Question 44

Focusing Listening or Attending

Answer 44

Counselor listens for a risk and nuanced description of her internal emotional experience and selects these descriptions to comment on or ask about

Question 45

Summarizing

Answer 45

When counselors paraphrase back the essence of what a client just said, it helps clients to hear what they said in a different way; it hits home harder than when they said it themselves; need to be well-timed, about emerging insights, in the client’s language; a summarization from a counselor is helpful in crytallizing insight

Question 46

Clarifying

Answer 46

Clarifying questions involve querying clients to provide more detail or explanation about what theya re talking about; address factual issues; Questions which focus on the client’s emotional process, help client more clearly articulate and conceptualize their internal processes and are essential in promoting self-actualization

Question 47

Reflecting Feelings

Answer 47

REfers to identifying feelings that the client just described or that seem to underlie what the client just said; listen for client’s emotional experience; highlight and amplify clients’ awareness of their emotions, reactions, and feelings so that they can consciously experience them; useful in early stages of actualization;

Question 48

Process Questions

Answer 48

Refer to questions or comments that direct clients’ focus toward their inner process rather than content; used to help clients focus on the inner experience, emotions, and subjective reality

Question 49

Process Questions Examples

Answer 49

Can youd escribe what was going on inside of you when you heard the news?
When you heard the door shut, what is going on inside for you?
As you are telling me the story now, what types of feelings are coming up?
Are these the same or different from what you experienced when things were happening?

Question 50

Robert Carkhuff

Answer 50

Extended Rogers’s research by stdying observable and measurable behaviors that facilitated change in counseling

Question 51

Carkhuff’s Core Condition

Answer 51

Empaty
Authenticity and genuineness
Respect
Concreteness and specificity
Self-disclosure
Confrontation
Immediacy

Question 52

Concreteness and Specificity

Answer 52

Demonstrated with concepts and statements that help clients to clarify what is vaguely expressed; help clients increase their inner awareness by asking questions that help them to be more concrete and specific about their subjective experiences

Question 53

Self Disclosure

Answer 53

Involves sharing relevant personal experience for the sole purpose of helping the client achieve their goals

Question 54

Confrontation

Answer 54

Counselor’s effort to address discrepancies in verbalizations, perceptions, and/or body language; point out discrepancies; congruence of body language with what the client is saying

Question 55

Immediacy

Answer 55

Refers to the condition whereby counselor and client are able to discuss the client’s immediate emotional state which can be related to an outside topic, insession behavior, counselor-client relationship

Question 56

Focusing

Answer 56

Help clients more quickly access their emotions; technique involves directing clients to identify preverbalized experience which may be in the body or otherwise brought into awareness; clients are encouraged to carry it forward by bringing close attention to it, describing the experience with words, and then moving into action