PPT # 6 Person-Centered Therapy Flashcards
Who is the most cited/revered American Psychologist?
Carl Rogers (1902 - 1987)
Carl Rogers was the first to use ________ ________ as a guide to model development
Process Research
What did Roger’s ideas challenge?
- The assumption that “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
List what Roger’s approach emphasizes.
- Therapy as a journey shared by two fallible people
- The person’s innate striving for self-actualization
- The personal characteristics of the therapist and the quality of the therapeutic relationship
- The counselor’s creation of a “growth-promoting” climate
- People are capable of self-directed growth if involved in a therapeutic relationship
What is the main principle of Roger’s assumptions?
respect for clients’ autonomy and the subjective sense of a right to self-determination
What does Roger’s assumptions highlight?
- The Actualizing Tendency
- Trustworthiness
- Self-Concept and Conditional Regard
- Process of Change
T/F: Roger’s feels as though people are not born “Tabula Rosa”.
True
What’s Roger’s view on actualizing tendency?
- Basic biological principle
- Organic systems tend to move toward complex organization
Who does Roger’s feel should be trusted to steer therapy in the direction it needs to go?
Client
T/F: Roger’s believes the client’s subjective reality is the pertinent reality
True
Who said, “…unless I need to demonstrate my own cleverness and learning I would do better to rely upon the client for the direction of movement in the process.”
Carl Roger’s
How is Rogers’ self-concept different from Freuds?
Frued = “psyche”
Roger’s = “Lifestyle”
Define Self-concept
the organized, consistent set of perceptions and beliefs about oneself
List the several elements of Self-concept.
- Self worth– what we think about ourselves.
- Conditions of worth – or rules about one’s value
- Self-image – How we see ourselves at this point in time. Influenced by our conditional worth
- Ideal self– Who we want to be/become. Dynamic
What leads to positive regard?
Self-concept
Describe Unconditional positive regard.
- When other people love, accept, and value us without condition.
- Positive regard is not withdrawn if the person does something wrong or makes a mistake.
- The consequences of unconditional positive regard are that the person feels free to try things out
Describe Conditional positive regard
- When positive regard depends upon the behavior of the individual.
- The person is not loved for the person he or she is, but on condition that he or she behaves only in ways approved by other.
- At the extreme, a person who constantly seeks approval from other people is likely only to have experienced conditional positive regard as a child.
Define Congruence
A state in which our ideal-self and life experience coexist
What two things must match to result in congruence?
Ideal-self needs to mat self-image
What is incongruence?
a discrepancy between the actual experience of the organism and the self-picture of the individual insofar as it represents that experience
Roger’ (1961) described fully functioning people as having what?
- A growing openness to experience – which includes negative feelings
- An increasingly existential lifestyle - in touch with different experiences as they occur in life, avoiding prejudging and preconceptions.
- Increasing organismic trust – feelings and instincts are valued and trusted, little second guessing
- Creativity – a person can “think outside the box” and take risks, not just do things to please others.
- A rich full life – a general satisfaction that one is living mostly up to potential
What are the 6 conditions that are necessary in the process of therapy?
- Two persons are in psychological contact.
- The first, termed the client, is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious.
- The second person, termed the therapist, is congruent or integrated in the relationship.
- The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client.
- The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference and endeavors to communicate this experience to the client.
- The communication to the client of the therapist’s empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard is, to a minimal degree, achieved.
What is the foundation of the therapists role?
Radical empathy!!
What is the overall goal for the person-centered therapist?
- to create a therapeutic climate in which the client can grow.
- The therapist strives to be genuine, integrated, and authentic, without a false front
As a therapist, what are three main “techniques” used?
- Congruence
- Unconditional positive regard
- Accurate empathic understanding
What is the 1st stage of change?
A person’s personality seems fixed, personal problems are not acknowledged
What is the 2nd stage of change?
He or she begins to loosen up and is more open to seeing problems
Third stage
What is the 3rd stage of change?
Express past feelings and personal meanings
What is the 4th stage of change?
Become more open to reconsidering their constructs about self and others; increasingly able to verbalize deep emotions
What is the 5th stage of change?
They are increasingly able to verbalize in-the-moment emotions and experiences
What is the 6th stage of change?
Is now able to experience difficult emotions as they arise with acceptance
What is the 7th stage of change?
This stage generally occurs outside the counseling relationship.
List the evidence that encourages person-centered therapy.
- Hard to deny as almost every contemporary therapy contains Rogerian elements.
- Thousands of research studies have focused on either the process or the outcome of person-centered psychotherapy.
- Meta-analysis – Person-Centered as effective as CBT for many issues (Elliot et al., 2012)
- Process Research – not just “does it work” but “how/why”
- Person-Centered elements as “Common Factors” in therapy
- Emphasis on the Therapuetic Alliance as mechanism of change
List the limitations of person-centered therapy
- No specific techniques or manuals
- difficult to standardize
- Criticism that it is a good start, but “not enough” - Challenging to provide both support and challenges to clients
- Limits of the therapist as a person may interfere with developing a genuine therapeutic relationship
- Over-emphasis on the “self” – Western ideal, doesn’t leave room for the “communal”.
