L1: Client Centered Therapy

Question 1

What is Roger’s theory? 3 main points

Answer 1

1. self actualization: emphasizes self actualizing tendency in humans
2. unconditional acceptance or unconditional positive regard: person should experience this from ppl in his environment that matter to him
3. origin of personal problems is conditional regard (the stricter the conditions placed on acceptance & the more these deviate from his own tendencies, the more difficulties) -> state of incongruence cause they no longer act according to own intuition & judgment

Question 2

What is the Rogerian Hypothesis?

Answer 2

ppl can best access their own creative resources if given a relationship with genuineness, congruency, unconditional positive regard, empathy, and acceptance

Question 3

What are the 3 main internal dimensions of the client that will develop during therapy?

Answer 3

• self concept: usually lacking in positive self regard at beginning
• locus of evaluation: often shifts from being based on others’ judgments (external) to one’s own inner experiencing (internal) through therapy
• general experiencing can vary from rigidity to openness and flexibility

Question 4

How did Roger’s client centered approach see clients?

Answer 4

• as persons! personhood is central: client is expert on own life (rather the clinician) and deserve their own treatment
• as ppl w actualizing tendency
• as unique people w unique phenomenology (ideographic view)
• as ppl who strive for congruence aka psychological adjustment

Question 5

What is Roger’s Method for how to interact with clients? 3 core conditions

Answer 5

1. unconditional positive regard
2. congruence (genuineness) & openness of the clinician about anything they may be experiencing in the relationship (accept own feelings & thoughts, dont communicate all of them)
3. empathy: experiencing the client’s perspective as if it were your own (emphasis on “as if”) & expressing this to him (verablly & non verbally)
   -> all these things lead to a full entering of the clients experiental world & trusting the client to find their way, which is client centered & collaborative (non-directive attitude from clinician)

Question 6

What is the self-actualizing tendency in Roger’s theory?

Answer 6

• the fundamental motivational force driving a person to develop his potentialities, or an optimal personal ideal
• this ideal is not static, its a process of continual dev and refinement of possibilities
• course of this dev largely determined by “quality” of experiences that person has
• this quality of your experiences increases as you become better able to incorporate all types of stimuli without inhibitions or resistance
• this optimal form of experience will occur naturally, provided that circumstances are favourable

Question 7

What are some of the critiques of Roger’s theory?

Answer 7

• its too optimistic (his view that a person has a potential for self actualization that develops naturally under favourable circumstances) -> behviourists believe that self actualization doesnt happen naturally, it happens when appropriate behaviorus are reinforced by the environment. + too optimistic in how widely he think his theory applies (in reality it only applies to higher intellectual ppl since u need to find ur own plans of action etc) + too optimistic in innate goodness which leads to self actualization (what is good? etc)
• its too vague -> cognitive psych believes you need to specify how you would modify cognitive processes + what is self actualization and how does it happen?
• its too passive, according to Wexter, like you have to passively open yourself to experiencing emotions & procerssing info. but this is not really true, there are active parts to Rogers theory

Question 8

How, according to Wexler, does a person self-actualize?

Answer 8

rogers say that to self actualize, opening yourself to fully experience stimuli is enough
but wexler doesnt believe in this “passive” self actualization & experiencing
- wexler believes we are active in selecting, arraning, and bestowing meaning on our impressons. we need to be selective otherwise we’d get overwhelmed w the intake of info. our selection & interpretation of info is unique to each person, and has 3 main features: language plays big part in our processing of info, differentiation of various info based on incoming info (clarification), and lastly integration (making connections beteen different pieces of info)
-> therapist helps with these 3 processes
+ according to Rogers: being open to experiencing feelings is essential, while Wexer says that emotions arise from cognitive processes (like new info), not just from being open to them
-> wexler thinks emotions naturally arise in therapy as you talk about & process meaningful info, but they should not be delibarelty provoked

Question 9

How did Rogers see the therapeutic relationship?

Answer 9

as a vehicle, or necessary breeding ground that provides the means to change
has 3 core conditions

Question 10

The most important difference between Rogers’s model of client-centered therapy and other person-centered therapies (such as emotion focused and existential therapies) is that:

Answer 10

Client-centered therapy doesn’t formulate a-priori goals for the client while other person-centered therapies do

Question 11

What is Accurate Empathy as a psychotherapy skill?

Answer 11

• better client outcomes
• empathetic reflective & active listening is a particula way of responding that mirrors a client’s experience while avoiding “roadblocks”
• reflections are about what client said + gentle guess about what may be unsaid
• encourages client self exploration
• self exploration can be affected by intensity of offered reflections (undershooting, matching, overshooting)

Question 12

What is Acceptance as a psychotherapy skill?

Answer 12

• need to have underlying belief that human beings have inherent worth & deserve respect w/o having to earn it
• experience of being accepted as one is at present can facilitate positive change
• Beliefs regarding the essential quality of human nature in general or of a particular individual can be self-fulfilling prophecies.
• can reduce Client defensiveness or resistance
• communicated, in part, by what therapist doesnt do: disapproving, criticizing, disagreeing, labeling, warning, or
  shaming.
• may be even more impactful when working w marginalized groups and when counseling across significant sociocultural differences.

Question 13

What is Positive Regard as a psychotherapy skill?

Answer 13

• one of the 3 necessary rogers therapy conditions
• The experiential (internal) aspect of PR for therapists is an unconditional respectful and benevolent disposition toward clients, anticipating and appreciating their strengths and potential for growth.
• The external aspect of PR involves its behavioral expression in practice, communicating PR to your clients.
• Affirmation is a reliably observable practice behavior associated with lower defensiveness and better therapeutic alliance and outcomes.
• Simple affirmations comment on a particular client behavior, whereas complex affirmations focus on clients’ positive strengths and traits.

Question 14

What is the positive psychology school?

Answer 14

seligman argued against the illness focused medical model, instead focus on positive aspects (happiness, optimisim etc)
- focus on clients strength can catalyze emotional change
- overlaps w client centered approach
- so also critized for ignoring negative emotions

Question 15

What is the feminisit therapy school?

Answer 15

issues that were previoulsy undiscussed were now openly fought against (rape, domestic vio:ence etc)
-> exposed oppressive practices in diagnosis, therapy, and on the view of women as governed by biology cus often social factors werent taken into consideration and mental illness in women was blamed on a uniuely female intrapsychic source
- this approach integrates client centered approach both w social contributors to problems & w intersectionality

Question 16

What is Roger’s 19-proposition theory?

Answer 16

1. Each individual exists in a continually changing world of experience in which they are the center
2. The organism reacts to the field as it is perceived, this field is reality
3. The organism reacts as an organized whole to the field
4. The organism has one basic striving: to actualize and maintain experiencing
5. Behavior = goal-directed attempt to satisfy needs
6. Emotion usually facilitates goal-directed behavior: the type is related to the seeking / consummatory aspects of behavior, the intensity to the significance of behavior
7. The internal frame of reference of the individual serves as the best perspective to understand behavior
8. A part of the perceptual field becomes differentiated just like the self
9. The structure of self is formed through an interaction with the environment (especially evaluational interactions with others): this is an organized, fluid, consistent pattern of perceptions and characteristics
10. The values that are attached to experiences are experienced directly by the organism; these values are sometimes introjected or taken from others
11. Experiences can be:
    a) symbolized and perceived into some relationship to the self b) ignored because of a lack of a relationship c) denied symbolization or given a distorted one, as it is inconsistent with the self structure
12. Most ways of behavior are consistent with the self-concept
13. Some behavior may occur through experiences and needs that are not symbolized, and as such not owned by the individual
14. Psychological maladjustment can occur if experiences are denied awareness, these thus are not symbolized or organized into the self-structure
15. Psychological adjustment occurs if all experiences are assimilated on the symbolic level into a consistent self-concept
16. Inconsistent experiences may be perceived as threats: the more of these there are, the more rigidly the self-structure wants to maintain itself
17. Under certain conditions (i.e. complete absence of threats) inconsistent experiences can be perceived, examined, and the self-structure could be reconfigured to include these
18. If the person accepts and perceives all sensory experiences as a consistent and integrated system they will become more understanding of others by necessity
19. By accepting more experiences, the individual replaces the current value system (based on distortions / introjections) with one that is continuously valuing
    ⇒ the end-point of personality development shows congruence between the field of experience and the conceptual structure of the self: freedom from internal strain

Question 17

What was Rogers view on raising children?

Answer 17

• children sensitivities should be taken into consideration whenever interacting w them
• children automatically assign positive values to self enhancing experiences, and negative values to those that threaten the self
• once children are evaluated by others, conditions worth (ineranlized external evaluations) could be distorted to preserve a positive self concept
• overreliance on external evaluations could be avoided if parents accepts childs negative feelings

Question 18

What are the important concepts in Rogers personality theory?

Answer 18

Experience: private world of the individual
Reality: reality as perceived by any individual (for use within psychotherapy)
The organism’s actualizing tendency (is biological): organisms are dynamic processes that are innately motivated to maintain and enhance themselves → also present in the greater universe with increasing complexity, order, and interrelatedness in dynamic systems;
IN THERAPY: a functional construct helping to believe in the client’s self-righting and self-regulatory capacities
Internal frame of reference: the perceptual field of the individual, how the world appears to someone
Self, concept of self, self-structure: organized, consistent, conceptual whole of composed perceptions of the self and its relations to the self and others
Symbolization: process through which an individual becomes aware/conscious of an experience
Psychological (mal)adjustment: if there is no need for distorting experiences, one is psychologically adjusted - if there is incongruence between self-concept and behavior it should be integrated through changing the behavior or the self-concept to achieve congruence
Organismic valuing process: individuals relying on their own senses to make value judgments based on their own organismic processing of situations
Fully functioning person: people who can readily assimilate experiences and symbolize them in awareness (usually: positive self-concept, greater physiological responsiveness, efficient use of environment)

Question 19

What does self determination theory (SDT) posit?

Answer 19

that intrinsic motivation may be the purest phenomenon that reflects the positive potential of human nature, as it reflects a self-motivated tendency to seek out novelty and challenges

Question 20

What are moments of movement?

Answer 20

“molecules” of personality change occuring at different intervals in therapy
- its an experience in the moment
- experienced without barriers or holding back
- past experience has never been completely experienced
- this experience has the quality of being acceptable & capable of integration into self-concept

Question 21

What is meant with “Acquiring conditions of worth”? How can it be solved?

Answer 21

when a child’s understanding of their woth is based on certain factors, like good behaviour or moral standard (that are different from their true self) which leads to incongruence
big mechanism of psychotherapy is to voice your own prefernce/opinion to establish a personal identity

Question 22

How do client centered therapists see official diagnoses?

Answer 22

as social constructs

Question 23

What are some criticism on client centered therapy from outside humanistic therapy?

Answer 23

• its biased toward WEIRD clients
• its limited & ineffective especially in severe disorders
• doesnt provide treatments, only reflection

Question 24

What are some characteristics of how client centered therapists conduct therapy?

Answer 24

• collaboartive relationship
• therapist enters clients framework
• clients have option to choose to take meds or enrol in certain programs and to question them
• open to bringing in external important ppl to client
• word “treatment” rejected cause it medicalizes treatment
• ## play therapy used in children