Week 4 - Person-Centered Therapy

Question 1

True or False: Carl Rogers avoided using the word “technique” when describing his approach, arguing that the most important therapeutic attributes were the ability of counselors to show acceptance and understanding toward their clients.

Answer 1

True

Many people also adopted his use of the word client instead of patient

Question 2

True or False: a major theme of person-centered therapy is the clients’ ability to direct their own counseling sessions.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

Rogers had a BLANK perspective on the individual, which means he believed that reality is a function of that person’s consciousness or understanding of the world.

Answer 3

Phenomenological

Question 4

Rogers suggested that the infant and growing child has what is called a BLANK, which lends directionality to lives as individuals seek to reach their unique and full potential.

Answer 4

Actualizing tendency; if unimpeded this force leads to constructive growth and healthy relationships

Question 5

As the child grows and interacts with others, Rogers stated that they engage in what is called a BLANK, wherein individuals move toward those experiences or interactions that are positive to the actualizing process and away from those that are negative.

Answer 5

Organismic valuing process

Question 6

True or False: Rogers believed that as a self emerges, an individual develops a need for positive regard.

Answer 6

True; he believed that if a significant other gives the individual the message that they would only be loved if certain qualities are shown, and if these qualities are antithetical to the actualizing process, the individual will forego the actualizing process and act in accordance with the wishes of the significant other.

Question 7

What are conditions of worth?

Answer 7

Rogers believed that if a significant other gives the individual the message that they would only be loved if certain qualities are shown, and if these qualities are antithetical to the actualizing process, the individual will forego the actualizing process and act in accordance with the wishes of the significant other.

Question 8

What is the process of defense?

Answer 8

Rogers believed that individuals sometimes do not perceive conditions of worth being placed on them or the resulting incongruence, and he posited that they develop a process of defense in which they selectively perceive situations, distort situations, or deny threats to self to protect themselves from a state of anxiety that is a result of this incongruence.

Question 9

What are the key concepts of person-centered therapy?

Answer 9

-Actualizing tendency
-Need for positive regard
-Conditions of worth
-Non-genuineness and incongruence
-Organismic valuing process
-Choice and free will
-Self-determination
-Non-directive counseling
-The necessary and sufficient conditions

Question 10

Rogers believed than when a person is with a second person who demonstrates BLANK, empathy and unconditional positive regard, the first person will feel safe enough to experience themself with all the incongruities that may have been developed as a function of conditions of worth that had been placed on that person.

Answer 10

Genuineness or congruence

Question 11

What did Rogers call the core conditions?

Answer 11

Genuineness, empathy, and unconditional positive regard

He believed that these attributes, alone, are enough to facilitate change and that any individual, not just counselors can embody these characteristics to help induce change.

Question 12

Is the person-centered approach anti-deterministic?

Answer 12

Yes, highlighted by its idea that people can understand their defensiveness, make changes in their lives, and move forward as they actualize their full potential.

Question 13

What is anti-deterministic?

Answer 13

The belief that people have the ability to control their own destinies, or that events are not caused deterministically.

Question 14

Does person-centered therapy believe in choice and free will?

Answer 14

Yes, which lends an existential flavor to this approach and stands in contrast to the psychoanalytic approach which believes we are victims of our drives

Question 15

What is an actualizing tendency?

Answer 15

This motivates the person to reach their full potential if the individual is placed in an environment that supports this inherent process.

Question 16

What is the need for positive regard?

Answer 16

To feel loved, supported, and appreciated by those close to them.

Children will manifest behaviors they believe those close to them would want them to exhibit in hopes that they will be positively regarded by them, even if those behaviors are antithetical to the individual’s natural way of being. In this way there is a conflict between the individual’s actualizing tendency and their need to be positively regarded and loved.

Question 17

What are conditions of worth?

Answer 17

Occur when significant others, who have the power to withhold their love, place expectations on a person’s way of responding.

Question 18

What is nongenuineness?

Answer 18

Sometimes called incongruence, is a product of conditions of worth being placed on the individual, as the individual acts in ways that do not match their natural state of being.

Question 19

What is the organismic valuing process?

Answer 19

The process of drifting toward individuals who positively value one’s natural tendencies or ways of being, or drifting away form those who negatively value them.

Question 20

True or false: Rogers believed that people have free will and make choices based on their subjective view of reality. He also acknowledged that individuals are victims of their past, esp. when they are living lives based on a false, incongruent sense of self.

Answer 20

True

Question 21

What is self-determination?

Answer 21

The process of looking within to make choices about oneself, as opposed to allowing others to direct one’s life.

Question 22

Which clients are said to have an external locus of control?

Answer 22

Those who are out of touch with who they are and make poor choices for themselves or look for answers outside of themselves.

Question 23

True or False: clients move from dependency to autonomy as they gain a greater internal locus of control, or a sense that their destiny is in their own hands.

Answer 23

True

Question 24

True or False: PCT uses a directive counseling stance?

Answer 24

False, it’s nondirective so that they can discover their inner world, become in touch with their true selves and make self-initiated positive and growth-producing choices.

Question 25

Rogers believed that personality change would occur if the therapeutic framework included which six necessary and sufficient conditions?

Answer 25

-Two persons are in psychological contact
-The first (the client), is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious
-The second person (the therapist) is congruent or integrated in the relationship
-The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client
-The therapist experiences are empathic understanding of the client’s internal frame of self-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

Question 26

If the 6 conditions were met, Rogers suggested the following changes would occur?

Answer 26

-Increased openness to experience
-Greater ability to be more objective and to have more realistic perceptions
-Improved psychological adjustment
-More congruence, increased self-regard, and movement from an external to an internal locus of control
-More acceptance of others
-Having better problem-solving skills
-Having a more accurate perception of others

Question 27

What is congruence?

Answer 27

Being genuine in the therapeutic relationship, this was the most important of the qualities as the relationship has no meaning if the counselor hides behind a mask

Question 28

Did Rogers warn against using excessive self-disclosure?

Answer 28

Yes

Question 29

How does one show empathy?

Answer 29

-accurately reflecting the meaning and affect (feelings) of what the client expressed
-using a metaphor, analogy, image, or self-disclosure to show the client that they were accurately heard
-Simply nodding one’s head or gently touching the client during the client’s deepest moments of pain
-acknowledgement of the client’s predicament communicates to the client that the therapist has experienced in their inner world

Question 30

What is reflection of feelings?

Answer 30

Parroting back what the client said but he didn’t mean it this way, he wanted to show the client that the counselor understood their way of making meaning out of the world.

Question 31

What is subceiving feelings?

Answer 31

The therapist is sensing deep feelings from the client, feelings of which the client may not be aware.

Question 32

What is a formula response?

Answer 32

Generally starts with reflection of feeling followed by the paraphrasing of content

Question 33

What is a natural response?

Answer 33

Embodies of the components in the formula response (reflection of feelings and content), but does so in a manner that is natural to them.

Question 34

When counselors become more adept at making natural responses, they may begin to use what are called BLANK, BLANK, AND BLANK?

Answer 34

Advanced, creative, and novel approaches to empathic responding

Question 35

What is involved in advanced, creative, and novel approaches to empathic responding?

Answer 35

-Reflecting nonverbal behaviors
-Reflecting deeper feelings
-Pointing out conflictual feelings and thoughts
-Using visual imagery
-using analogies
-Using metaphors
-Using targeted self-disclosure
-Reflecting media
-using tactile responses
-Discursive empathy

Question 36

What is discursive empathy?

Answer 36

To the client who seems to feel like the world is out to get them, a counselor might say “as a black person you’ve experienced oppression you whole life and I can see that it really has impacted how you feel in general.”

Question 37

What is making a tactile approach?

Answer 37

“You know, as I was talking, I feel like my stomach is twisting and turning; I wonder if you might be feeling similarly.”

Question 38

How long does person-centered therapy usually last?

Answer 38

A few sessions to a year a more.

Question 39

What is the most important quality for positive therapeutic outcomes?

Answer 39

The therapeutic alliance or the ability of the counselor to connect with the client

Question 40

What is the Carkuff scale?

Answer 40

A scale of empathy with 5 levels, 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest

Question 41

What is the Q-sort technique?

Answer 41

Researchers used this technique to examine a wide-range of outcomes. They found that client-centered counseling had success at reducing the gap between how clients saw themselves and how they wanted to be. Research was groundbreaking at the time, first to use client self-report as wellas client tapes and transcripts of sessions.

Question 42

What is level 5 of the Carkhuff scale?

Answer 42

Accurately express feelings below what the person themself was able to express or in the event of ongoing, deep self-exploration on the second person’s part, to be fully with him in their deepest moments.