Carl Rogers' Person-Centered Therapy Concepts Explained
1. Carl Rogers
Concepts
Compare/Contrast
Applications
Fallacies
2. 1902 – 1987
Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by the American
Psychological Association in 1956.
Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Psychology by the
APA in 1972
Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with national intergroup
conflict in South Africa and Northern Ireland
Decent family history, although rather religiously strict.
Introverted person/Highly imaginative
Deep openness to Change
Faith in people affected his development of his theories
Felt assessments at the onset of counseling would cause the client to
assume that the therapist would “fix” their problems.
3. Counseling and Psychotherapy – 1942
Proposed – Nondirective counseling
Key Concepts:
Humanism
The person should be viewed holistically
Each person has it within themselves to fix
themselves.
Free-will
Personal Responsibility
4. Rogers Freud
Empathy Therapist knows
Unconditional Best
Positive Regard Client’s knowledge
Client Knows best is insignificant
Reflective listening Advice, Persuasion,
Teaching
No-Diagnosis
Unconscious drive
Congruent whole
personality Personality divided
Focus on the Focus on the
person not the problem, not the
problem person
Persons needed
direct help in order
to solve their
problems
Social Work Podcast #8, 2/12/07
5. 1. A relationship exists
2. Client is a state of incongruence
3. Therapist is Congruent
4. Therapist experiences unconditional
positive regard for the client
5. Therapist experiences and attempts to
express an empathic understanding of
the client’s internal frame of reference
6. Therapist’s unconditional positive
regard, empathic understanding, and
congruence must be perceived by the
client
Seligman, Pg. 150
7. The ability for the therapist to be genuine
No façade
Requires self-awareness
Deliberate self-disclosure
Therapists need to be aware that a client’s
subjective interpretation could lead to
misinterpretation
9. Prizing
Caring for and respecting the client
Does NOT require that the therapist accept
and approve of all the client’s actions
Therapist needs to be consistent of their
acceptance and regard of the person
11. Grasping the subjective words of the client
Reflection of feeling
NOT Sympathy
12. Can I be real? – Real, Congruence,
Transparency
Prizing/Caring for this person – “if I dislike
this person I find it important that express it”
Empathy – Can I see things through “her”
eyes?
http://youtu.be/HarEcd4bt-s
18. 1. Identify and describe a situation where you
felt that someone wronged you and how
that made you feel.
2. Is this situation repeated in other aspects in
your life?
3. What other emotions do you feel about
this. Does this situation trigger other
memories or emotions?
4. How can you turn this around and see this
from a different perspective? What are the
truths about this situation?
19.
20. Assumption of “Sufficient for Change” has
not been proven by research.
Being Genuine – Beginning clinicians get
stuck “faking” it.
21. What Person-Centered Therapy means to the world of Psychology
Carl Rogers coined a philosophy that is in
predominant use today.
This therapeutic approach encourages the client to
find their own solutions by allowing them the ability
to see themselves, through therapist acceptance of
them and reflective listening.
The assumption of “innate good” is still in debate
as the “nature verses nurture” aspects of
personality are still in dispute.