Person Centered Therapy

BY: T. Franklin Murphy | July 15, 2021 (modified December 24, 2022)

A woman therapist reaching over and touching the shoulder of a male client experiencing emotional arousal. A Flourishing Life Society article on person centered therapy

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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.

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

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.
Client Incongruence. There must be incongruence between the client's experience and awareness.
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.
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).
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.
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.

T. Franklin Murphy

Wellness. Writer. Researcher.
T. Franklin Murphy has a degree in psychology. He tirelessly researches scientific findings that contribute to wellness. In 2010, he began publishing his findings.