Psychology of Wellness | Psychology Definitions | Person Centered Therapy

Psychology Definitions

Person Centered Therapy

Person Centered Therapy:

Person centered therapy focuses on the person not the problem. The goal of person centered therapy is to provide an environment amical for growth. The person is then responsible for improving their life.

The client is given the independence to rationally decide for themselves what is wrong and right for their lives and how to act on those beliefs. The therapist plays a role of friend and counselor who listens and encourages.

"If I can provide a certain type of relationship, the other will discover within himself the capacity to use that relationship for growth, and change and personal development will occur.”
Carl Rogers

The Client is In Charge

​Person-centered therapy uses a non-authoritative approach, allowing clients to lead discussions so they can discover their own solutions. The therapist is a compassionate facilitator of this process, listening without judgment and acknowledging the client’s experience without directing the conversation.

History of Person Centered Therapy

Person-centered therapy originated from the work of Carl Rogers who believed that everyone’s view of his or her own world was different, and they should be trusted to manage that world. His style of therapy began to take root in the 1940's and 50's. 

Many of todays therapy styles evolved from Carl Roger's person-centered therapy.

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Three Necessary Conditions

The success of person-centered therapy relies on three conditions:

• Unconditional Positive Regard. Therapists must be empathetic and non-judgmental, establishing trust to help the client feel secure enough to make their own decisions and choices.
• Empathetic Understanding. Therapists must understand and accept their clients’ thoughts and feelings.
• Congruence. Therapists must present an accessible self that clients can see is honest and transparent. Not a powerful authoritarian that must be appeased.

Person Centered Therapy and Self Actualization

Person-centered therapy seeks to facilitate a client's natural tendency to self-actualize. Rogers believed that people have a natural proclivity toward growth and fulfillment. The three conditions of acceptance (unconditional positive regard), therapist congruence (genuineness), and empathic understanding creates the environment necessary to open a path to self actualization.

Rogers expressed that this self actualization is the essence of the client becoming a person. He describes this state of being as, "thus to an increasing degree he becomes himself—not a façade of conformity to others, not a cynical denial of all feeling, nor a front of intellectual rationality, but a living, breathing, feeling, fluctuating process—in short, he becomes a person" (1995, location 1922). cy to self-actualize. Rogers believed that people have a natural proclivity toward growth and fulfillment. The three conditions of acceptance (unconditional positive regard), therapist congruence (genuineness), and empathic understanding creates the environment necessary to open a path to self actualization.

Rogers expressed that this self actualization is the essence of the client becoming a person. He describes this state of being as, "thus to an increasing degree he becomes himself—not a façade of conformity to others, not a cynical denial of all feeling, nor a front of intellectual rationality, but a living, breathing, feeling, fluctuating process—in short, he becomes a person" (1995, location 1922).

Six Conditions for Therapeutic Change

1. ​Therapist–Client Psychological Contact. The relationship between client and therapist must be a relationship in which each person's perception of the other is important.
2. Client Incongruence. There must be incongruence between the client's experience and awareness.
3. Therapist Congruence or Genuineness. the therapist must be congruent within the therapeutic relationship, deeply involved with their genuine self, capable of drawing on their own experiences to facilitate the relationship.
4. Therapist Unconditional Positive Regard. The therapist accepts the client unconditionally, without judgment, disapproval or approval. This attitude facilitates increased self-regard by the client, as they can begin to become aware of experiences in which their view of self-worth was distorted or denied (moving towards congruence).
5. Therapist Empathic Understanding. The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client's subjective frame of reference. Accurate empathy expressed by the therapist builds trust in the client that the therapist genuinely possesses unconditional positive regard for them.
6. Client Perception. The client recognizes that the therapist has unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding.

Seven Stages of Transformation

Rogers explained the clients transform on a "significant continuum is from fixity to changingness, from rigid structure to flow, from stasis to process" (location 2182). He breaks down this process into seven stages.

Stage I

• Lack of internal communication
• Thoughts, feelings, and narratives conflict
• Focused on external triggers, not internal feelings of experience
• Feelings and personal meanings are not recognized or owned
• Personal constructs are rigid
• Close relationships are threatening
• Personal problems not recognized
• No desire to change
• No recognition of the ebb and flow of feelings
• Experience interpreted rigidly through the past
  • Reacting to experience by associating it to the past, and then reacting with emotions tied to the past

Stage II

• A slight loosening and flowing of symbolic expression occurs, which tends to be characterized by the following:
  • Expression begins to flow in regard to non-self topics
  • Problems are perceived as external to self
• No sense of personal responsibility for problems
• Feelings are described as unowned, or sometimes as past objects
• Experiencing is viewed through the structure of the past
• Personal constructs are rigid, and treated as facts
• Differentiation of personal meanings and feelings is very limited and global
• Contradictions may be expressed, but with little recognition of the contradictions

Stage III

• A freer flow of expression about the self as an object
• Expression about self-related experiences as objects
• Expression about the self as a reflected object, existing primarily in others
• Expression about or description of feelings and personal meanings from the past
• Still little acceptance of feelings. Exhibiting feelings thoughts as shameful or unacceptable
• Feelings are exhibited, and occasionally recognized
• Experiencing is described as somewhat remote from the self 
• Personal constructs are rigid, but may be recognized as constructs
• Differentiation of feelings and meanings begins to appear
• Recognition of contradictions in experience
• Personal choices are recognized and often seen as ineffective

Stage IV

• Ability to describes more intense feelings of the “not-now-present” variety
• Feelings are described as objects in the present
• Occasionally present feelings are uncomfortably expressed
• Movement towards experiencing feelings in the immediate present, still experiencing fear
• Limited open acceptance of feelings
• Experiencing is less bound by past structures
• A loosening of the way experience is construed.
• Some discoveries of personal constructs; there is definite recognition of these constructs; and a beginning of questioning their validity
• An increased differentiation of feelings, constructs, personal meanings
• A concern about contradictions and incongruences between experience and self
• A vacillating feeling of self responsibility in problems
• Close relationships still feel dangerous, the client now takes small risks

Stage V

• ​Feelings are expressed freely as they exist in the present
• Feelings are very close to being fully experienced. 
• Surprise and fright when feelings are felt
• An increasing ownership of feelings
• Experiencing is loosened, no longer remote, and occurs frequently
• Experience is construed with more freedom.
• Fresh discoveries of personal constructs as constructs, and a critical examination of their validity and effectiveness
• Strong movement towards exactness in differentiation of feelings and meanings. 
• Increasing willingness to face contradictions and incongruences in experience
• Increasing quality of acceptance of self-responsibility for problems, and a concern about personal contributions.
• Increasingly freer dialogues within the self

Stage VI

• ​A feelings previously “stuck” are experienced with immediacy now.
• A feeling flows to its full result.
• A present feeling is directly experienced with immediacy and richness.
• Living subjectively in the experience, not feeling about it
• Self as an object disappears
• Experiencing has a real process quality
• Internal communication is free and relatively unblocked
• Incongruence between experience and awareness is vividly acknowledged and fades into congruence. 
• Relevant personal construct dissolves in the experiencing moment
• The moment of full experiencing becomes a clear and definite referent
• Differentiation of experiencing is sharp and basic 

Stage VII

• ​New feelings are experienced with immediacy and richness 
• Consciously endeavors in order to clearly understand the self, personal wants, weaknesses and attitudes.
• Growing and continuing sense of acceptance and ownership of changing feelings
• Experiencing has almost completely lost its structure-bound aspects and becomes process experiencing
• The self becomes increasingly the subjective and reflexive awareness of experiencing
• Personal constructs are tentatively reformulated, to be validated against further experience, but after updating are held loosely
• Internal communication is clear, with feelings and symbols well matched, and fresh terms for new feelings
• There is the experiencing of effective choice of new ways of being

(Rogers, 1995)

Person Centered Therapy's Influence 

As I went through Roger's stages of change, I recognized the profound influence his work has on present positive psychology treatments. His work laid groundwork for mindfulness, acceptance, and growth mindsets. Carl Rogers and the humanism movement was revolutionary.

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References:

Rogers, C. (1995). On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy. Mariner Books; 2nd ed. edition

​Other Flourishing Life Society articles of interest on this topic: