Person-centered therapy uses several interventions to facilitate client change beyond its foundational interventions of unconditional positive regard, reflective listening skills, and a focus on empathy. The role of a person-centered therapist is one of a “partner” or “equal” who sets the conditions whereby clients can reach within themselves and change their lives, bringing their “real” and “ideal” selves closer together. However, beyond setting these conditions, there are interventions that person-centered psychologists use to facilitate client change. In this Discussion, you research and evaluate these interventions with respect to their effectiveness at facilitating positive client change.

 

To prepare for this Discussion:

• Review the journal article, “The Phoenix of Empirically Supported Therapy Relationships: The Overlooked Person-Centered Basis.” Focus on Rogers’ “necessary and sufficient” therapeutic conditions.

• Review the journal article, “Showing Clients the Doors: Active Problem-Solving in Person-Centered Psychotherapy.” Pay particular attention to applying a problem-solving approach within a person-centered framework.

• Review the basic tenets of person-centered therapy.

• Conduct a brief (2–3 articles) literature search for person-centered psychotherapy interventions that facilitate positive client change.

• Select one intervention and evaluate its empirical support. Think about how person-centered theory draws from or contributes to evidence-based practice.

Assignment: Person-Centered Therapy

With these thoughts in mind:

write a description of one intervention specific to person-centered theory. Include an analysis of the intervention’s empirical support. Is the intervention tailored toward specific populations or problems?

no more than 400 words

apa format

references

Person Centered Therapy

Client-centered therapy operates according to three basic principles that reflect the attitude of the
therapist to the client:
1. The therapist is congruent with the client.
2. The therapist provides the client with unconditional positive regard.
3. The therapist shows empathetic understanding to the client.
Congruence in Counseling
Congruence is also called genuineness. Congruence is the most important attribute in counseling,
according to Rogers. This means that, unlike the psychodynamic therapist who generally
maintains a ‘blank screen’ and reveals little of their own personality in therapy, the Rogerian is
keen to allow the client to experience them as they really are. The therapist does not have a façade
(like psychoanalysis), that is, the therapist’s internal and external experiences are one in the same.
In short, the therapist is authentic.
Unconditional Positive Regard
The next Rogerian core condition is unconditional positive regard. Rogers believed that for
people to grow and fulfill their potential it is important that they are valued as themselves. This
refers to the therapist’s deep and genuine caring for the client. The therapist may not approve of
some of the client’s actions but the therapist does approve of the client. In short, the therapist needs
an attitude of “I’ll accept you as you are.” The person-centered counselor is thus careful to always
maintain a positive attitude to the client, even when disgusted by the client’s actions.
Empathy is the ability to understand what the client is feeling. This refers to the therapist’s ability
to understand sensitively and accurately [but not sympathetically] the client’s experience and
feelings in the here-and-now. An important part of the task of the person-centered counselor is to
follow precisely what the client is feeling and to communicate to them that the therapist
understands what they are feeling.
In the words of Rogers (1975), accurate empathic understanding is as follows:
“If I am truly open to the way life is experienced by another person…if I can take his or her world
into mine, then I risk seeing life in his or her way…and of being changed myself, and we all resist
change. Since we all resist change, we tend to view the other person’s world only in our terms, not
in his or hers. Then we analyze and evaluate it. We do not understand their world. But, when the
therapist does understand how it truly feels to be in another person’s world, without wanting or
trying to analyze or judge it, then the therapist and the client can truly blossom and grow in that
climate.”
Conclusion
Because the person-centered counselor places so much emphasis on genuineness and on being
led by the client, they do not place the same emphasis on boundaries of time and technique as
would a psychodynamic therapist. If they judged it appropriate, a person-centered counselor might
diverge considerably from orthodox counseling techniques.
Person Centred Therapy –

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