Person-Centered Therapy (Carl Rogers) Flashcards

A counseling approach that emphasizes the therapeutic relationship. Developed by Carl Rogers.

To help people be more fully themselves.

• Counselor congruence and genuineness
• Accurate emphatic understanding of the client
• Unconditional positive regard

• Focus on helping clients to experience their in-the-moment internal experiences
• Techniques are avoided promoting client becoming fully and accurately aware of the one’s inner world
• The relationship is the primary vehicle for change

Rogers (1961) describes this process a person typically experiences from the time of entering counseling to achieving at least to some degree self-actualization.

In this stage, a person’s personality seems fixed, personal problems are not acknowledged, there is a remoteness of experiencing, and there is little desire to change; the person is not likely to voluntarily enter counseling.

In this stage: If a person in the first stage is able to feel “received” by the counselor, he or she begins to loosen up and is more open to seeing problems, which are viewed as external to the self (“bad things happen to me”), with little sense of personal responsibility.

In this stage: If clients continue to feel accepted and understood by the counselor, they become better able to express past feelings and personal meanings.

In this stage: If clients continue to feel safe with the counselor, they begin to become more open to reconsidering their constructs about self and others and are increasingly able to verbalize deep emotions.

In this stage: As clients continue to explore themselves in the safety of the counseling relationship, they are increasingly able to verbalize in-the-moment emotions and experiences, and they have an increasing desire to be the “real me.”

In this stage: Rogers describes a distinct shift in the sixth stage, where the person is now able to experience difficult emotions as they arise in the present moment with acceptance rather than fear, denial, or struggle. Once this change happens, it tends to be irreversible, meaning that the client will continue to accept even the most difficult emotions rather than deny them.

In this stage, it is no longer necessary for the client to be received by the counselor to self-actualize, although it is still helpful because the client has learned how to sustain the process of self-actualization without outside help. This stage generally occurs outside the counseling relationship.

As people become more self-actualized, how they experience themselves changes. The sense of self evolves from a static entity to one where the self is more of a process that is constantly unfolding and changing.

Rogers theorized that the more self-actualized a person is, the better that person can identify and own emotion

In the process of self-actualization, people become better able and more comfortable with doing this.