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Carl Rogers Theory of Therapeutic Change: Humanistic Psychotherapy and the Client/Person-Centered Approach Essentials and distinctions Abstract Carl R. Rogers, an American psychologist, is globally famous for originating and developing the now prevailing humanistic trend in psychotherapy, being a pioneer in research and having influenced all fields related to psychology. Rogers person-centred approach to therapeutic change outlines the main theoretical cornerstones of the person-centred approach and then, applying these, portrays why change occurs as a result of a person-centred therapeutic encounter. Rogers explores the counselling interrelation as an environment in which clients can open themselves up to experiences they have previously found arduous to acknowledge and to move forward. Imprescriptibly to the person-centred approach is Carl Rogers radical view that change should be seen as a continuous process rather than an alteration from one constant condition to another. In Rogers view psychological health is best achieved by the person who is able to stay in a state of continual change.
The heart of Rogers theory is that the human experience is unique to each individual and, if given appropriate conditions for self-exploration and inquiry, people will discard false selves and move toward psychological health. Rogers attached more importance to the therapists attitudes than to their technical training or skills. He described the treatment process itself as the clients reciprocation of the therapists attitudes. He used the word client instead of patient to indicate that the treatment is neither manipulative nor medically prescriptive. Accurate and sensitive understanding of the clients experiences and feelings is most essential, therapist is unconditional positive regard and genuineness should be the main qualities of the therapist according to Rogers. In this sense it is an experiential and phenomenological approach.
Carl Rogers Theory of Therapeutic Change Starting in the middle of the 20 th century Carl Rogers re-comprehended psychotherapy and changed its conception by de emphasizing therapeutic technique in favour of the interpersonal interaction he saw as critical for therapeutic change. This accent on interpersonal process is maybe the most significant aspect of the humanistic school of psychotherapy, primary differentiating it from the other prominent psychotherapeutic schools. Though modern forms of humanistic psychotherapy vary in approach, all they focus attention on the therapeutic interrelation, involving empathy, authenticity, and the recognition of a subjective, individually constructed reality; the critical role of emotional experience; individual responsibility; and freedom of choice. The humanistic approach favours the skills involved in processing ones emotions over the achievement of intellectual understanding.
From its inception, a primary goal of humanistic psychotherapy has been research-based validation of its hypotheses about the nature of constructive change within a therapeutic interrelation. Humanistic psychotherapies share the fundamental premise that an optimal therapeutic interrelation encourages maximal development of potential of an individual. Main principles include non-judgemental approbation of the others personal experience as a predecessor to rapport and therapeutic change. The patient, not the therapist, determines the therapy flow and is the control site. These core features of Carl Rogers client-centred psychotherapy stressed the person over the set of problems and feelings expressed here and now and opposed to reflections.
Rogers research of audio transcriptions of therapy sessions proves that he initiated contemporary research in psychotherapy. This very research led to the hypotheses and theoretical formulations that consolidated and extended the framework of the humanistic approach, which is continuously tested, developed and possibly revised in the light of experience and research, like in works of Barrett-Lennard (1998) and Cain and Seeman (2002). Psychotherapy is considered to be a special form of personality development 1 and interpersonal relationship 2. Thus the principles of the approach can be adapted for other forms of relationship and fields of life. Theory of therapeutic change focuses more on the process of the development of a so called healthy person its principles do not arise from a theory of disease. These basic principles apply to all persons independently of categories like neurotics, psychotics, border liners or normals.
In the place of a conventional theory of diseases Rogers offered a theory of the suffering person based on human potential, person centred therapy. McMillan says that by the mid- 1950 s, authenticity and empathic understanding had become the cornerstones of humanistic psychotherapy. 3 Mid- 1960 s are famous for the progress of methods to feature the thoughts and feelings that underlie the patients self-concept so as to facilitate constructive change. However, some therapists suppose that humanistic psychotherapeutic approaches are less restrained by the residua or echoes of drive theory and consequently provide the therapist more liberty to investigate the emotional status in psychotherapy with no fear of "contaminating the transference. " 3 The true interrelation between client and therapist becomes the main point of therapy as opposed to the transferential interrelation. Carl Rogers, being professor at Ohio State University, considered a lecture entitled Newer concepts in psychotherapy delivered at the University of Minnesota in 1940. It is the birthday of the person-centred approach to psychotherapy. With his theory Rogers created a distinct contrast to traditional psychiatry, psychoanalysis and behaviour therapy (and nowadays the conception also contrasts with a-personal, one-sided systemic orientations).
Rogers approach was designated as non-directive in order to stress the self-directive motion of the client instead of being a guide or interpreter of the therapist attitudes. Rogers declined the traditional medical model for psychotherapy which was no longer a treatment but was to realise its subject-to-subject quality. In this stage of conception development prevalent was a technical understanding to guarantee an anxiety free climate and to encourage the verbalization of clients emotions and experiencing. The main aim for the therapist was to be an alter ego for the client.
It was then when audio recordings (later on followed by video recordings) started to promote systematic empirical research and training in psychotherapy. Psychotherapy was carried out of the shadow and lost its inconceivable reputation. One of Rogers main benefits for psychotherapy chiefly was to initiate profound scientific research. To make an emphasis on the fact that psychotherapy should be focused on the inner world of patients experience and to refute a misunderstanding of non-directive as non-direct or mirroring only Rogers later gave a new name to his approach as client-centred. At that time he put the emphasis on the therapists attitudes towards the client. In 1957 he published his famous article The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change, which incited the largest number of empirical research carried out in psychotherapy up to now.
Within this very period Rogers main interest concentrated on the process of therapy and the encouraging of the clients self-investigation. Two profound and deep experiences resulted in further developments within the approach: A long-dated research project with schizophrenic patients in Wisconsin and the complicity in the encounter group movement with normals constrained the therapists and group facilitators to intensively engage themselves in the interrelations as persons. This provoked a dialogic al understanding of psychotherapy. Rogers came to comprehend therapy as a collision interrelation, a mutual interrelation person to person. Working together with Martin Buber and Seen Kierkegaard he further developed an image of the human being deeply rooted in encounter philosophy and existentialism. 4 In that way the term person-centred was introduced which also appeared to be pertinent for the approach applications in fields such as education, training, social and pastoral work, partnership, family life, large groups, intercultural communication and politics.
Psychological problems arise when personal power is reduced, or when disagreements between a perceived Ideal Self and a Real Self lead to psychological distress. The Ideal Self is a self-concept of an individual that may or may not coincide with the reality. If ones Ideal Self and Real Self are in alignment, psychological congruence is present. If the Ideal Self is out of alignment with the Real Self, incongruence occurs and is usually depicted through psychological distress. Tension state known as anxiety appears if the individual feels such incongruence in himself. Such anxiety is often seen in therapy as the individual approaches awareness of some element of his experience which is in sharp contradiction to his self-concept.
In the most situations the client knows himself where the problem lies, what directions to go, what options are crucial, what problems have been deeply buried. That is why the conception implies that a therapist would better rely on the client for the direction of movement in the process, which means to be with the client in an authentic, acknowledging and empathic way, as stated in works of Schmid (2001 a; b; c; 2002 a) and Bozarth (1999). Inalienable to the person-centred approach is Carl Rogers radical opinion that change should be seen as a developing process, not a recast from one immutable state to another. As Carl Rogers believed, psychological health is best reached by the person who can continually change.
Such a human-being is ready to all experiences and so is able to assimilate and adapt to new conditions. This self-directed growth process was connected by Rogers with the idea of an organic actual ising tendency 4, thinking that jointly with a formative tendency 4 there is a basic and inalienable characteristic of humans, given the proper conditions, to be constructive, co-operative, affable, liable beings. If this peculiarity can be bred through a relationship such as in psychotherapy, it would lead toward healing for involved persons. Here are the conditions necessary for therapeutic change and which are sufficient for this endeavour, as described by Carl Rogers: Psychological contact between two persons, client and therapist, needed; The first person, the client, in the interrelation is in a state of incongruence, vulnerability and anxiety; The second person, the therapist, is congruent and integrated in the interrelation; The second person (therapist) experiences absolute positive regard for the client; The therapist experiences an emotional comprehension of the clients inner world and attempts to communicate this very experience to the client; The communication to the client of the therapists emotional comprehension and absolute positive regard is at least minimally achieved. Besides, these conditions symbolize not techniques or methods but mainly a way of being with the client by the person of the therapist. Through this therapeutic interrelation, Rogers posited that the client becomes more integrated and effective.
He changes the perception of his self, becomes more realistic, more like the person he desires to be, he is more self-confident and self-directing. Moreover Rogers developed four criteria through which one could discern when one Becomes a Person: 1. Openness to Experience: his own and that around him, the opposite of defensiveness. This openness includes the ability to see mainly the truths variation and not monolithic patterns that may be reasons for discordance and incongruence in the past. 2. Trust in Ones Organism: This trust leads to greater self-acceptance and reliance on ones inner wisdom. 3. An Internal Locus of Evaluation: Authority lies within the self rather than in society or another human-being.
The core question moves from trying to live up or please others. 4. Willingness to be a Process: Thus, It is necessary for the client to realize that therapy does not end in the result of an immutable state in which problems are solved. Rather, it is the empowering of the person-as-a-process to be able to handle situations as they arise in each present moment and remain congruent and true to ones self. Carl Rogers was very perspicuous to stress, that relationship techniques and methods are less critical to successful psychotherapy than the attitudes and qualities developed by and held by a therapist.
The indispensable role of the therapist in client-centred therapy is connected to the quality of the psychotherapeutic interrelation. Person-centred psychotherapy is a way of interrelating with persons, one to one or in groups, which encourages personality growth and extension through personal encounter. It means that everyone has the ability and striving to utilize his or her resources in a constructive way. Living privately and in relationship in a satisfying way is reached through increasing self-understanding and less defensive openness and straightforwardness to the continuous experiencing process. This tendency to actuality ones own possibilities is stimulated and supported by person-to-person interaction. This encounter of another person is a form of interrelation characterised by the fundamental and definite respect of the therapist.
The therapists quality of presence in this encounter is authentic, congruous, unreservedly acknowledging the individual difference of the client, deeply empathic and non-judgemental. Both therapist and patient develop together in this interaction, whether practised with groups or as one-to-one therapy. By its nature a socio-psychological theory of therapeutic change and person-centred therapy often take place in groups because of its understanding of the group as the principal locus of life and living together. While the living together is the place where problems originate the group is regarded as a primary source for dealing with problems, this way we can experiment with new ways of understanding oneself and other persons and new methods of behaving in relationships. The practical consequences of the clear exposition of fundamental therapeutic principles in the form of therapeutic conditions include the fact that they can be considered reference points to guarantee that all aspects of practice (even including such concrete aspects as the arrangement of the setting of therapy) are tuned to the needs and possibilities of both the client and the therapist.
Another inference is that the therapeutic interrelation is allowed to express itself in multiple ways, bodily, verbally, with the help of creative, expressive, or artistic means if the client wants or does not negate. Carl R. Rogers, the creator of client-centred therapy, did not plan to found a school of psychotherapy with a set practice. Instead, he worked with his clients, pondered on the therapy process and advanced a set of hypotheses about the causes of constructive personality change.
He presented the theory so it could be tested in practice by others and so it could be a foundation for further research and practical usage in psychotherapy, as Kirschenbaum notices. 10 A whole string of developments of the approach took place in its history, among which clinical and process-orientated, constructivist ic (e. g. Fehringer, 2002), hermeneutic, spiritual (e. g. Thorne, 1998) and personal-dialogic al (Pfeiffer, 1995), behavioristic and cognitive-psychological orientations (Martin 1972; Tausch and Tausch 1960), empirical-descriptive and developmental-psychological (Biermann-Rate, Eckert and Schwarz, 1995).
A separate modality was developed by Eugene Gendlin Rogers student, colleague and successor with his Experiential or Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. Here the therapist focuses on the experiencing process of the client and intentionally induces its deepening. 11 In spite of the preponderance of psychotherapy research indicating that the quality of the therapeutic interrelation is the sturdiest predictor of a successful result, there is in psychology and psychiatry a growing bias toward "empirically supported treatments" which depend on the medical model. Unfavourably for the patients, who are not clients in this case and who are exposed to such attitudes, the consequent attention to symptoms remediation and patients return to the "pre morbid condition" encourages the therapist to become a technician and to ignore any chance to induce the patients moving toward new growth. However, humanistic psychology has a long heritage emphasis on a phenomenological approach, which represents a distinct advantage for the development of the therapists empathic adroitness.
The deliberate effort to recognize and suspend preconceptions, theoretical postulates, judgements, and anticipations allows for a greater appreciation of the others personal experience. However, an approach that promotes the optimization of empathic connection also runs directly opposed to theory-based, reductionist ic scientific epistemology. Philosophical considerations arising from therapeutic practice are an essential part of the progress of psychotherapy both at the level of the individual practitioner and case, and in terms of psychotherapy as a whole. M. Hendricks insists that further developing research, including empirical studies and replicated studies, are necessary in order to improve the quality of the work and practice of psychotherapy. 12 Client-centred psychotherapy has a research innovation tradition and is uninterruptedly tested, developed and possibly revised in the light of experience and research. Reference: 1.
Barrett-Lennard, G. T. Carl Rogers helping system: Journey and substance. London: Sage, 1998. 2. Cain, D. J. / Seeman, J.
Humanistic psychotherapies: Handbook of research and practice. Washington, D. C. : APA, 2002. 3. Michael, McMillan. The Person-Centred Approach to Therapeutic Change. Staffordshire University, Therapeutic Change Series, 2004 4.
Rogers, C. R. and Buber, M. The Martin Buber - Carl Rogers Dialogue: A new transcript with commentary (ed. by Anderson, R. and Cessna, K.
N. ). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997. 5. Schmid, P. F. (2001 a) Authenticity: the person as his or her own author: Dialogic al and ethical perspectives on therapy as an encounter relationship. And beyond. In Wyatt, G. (Ed. ) Rogers Therapeutic Conditions Evolution, Theory and Practice.
Volume 1: Congruence. Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books, pp. 217 - 232. 6. Schmid, P. F. (2001 b) Comprehension: the art of not-knowing.
Dialogic al and ethical perspectives on empathy as dialogue in personal and person-centred relationships. In Haugh, S. and Merry, T. (Eds. ) Rogers Therapeutic Conditions Evolution, theory and practice. Volume 2: Empathy. Ross-on-Wye: PCCS, pp. 53 - 71. 7. Schmid, P.
F. (2001 c) Acknowledgement: the art of responding. Dialogic al and ethical perspectives on the challenge of unconditional personal relationships in therapy and beyond. In Bozarth, J. and Wilkins, P. (Eds. ) Rogers Therapeutic Conditions Evolution, Theory and Practice. Volume 3: Unconditional Positive Regard.
Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books, pp. 155 - 171. 8. Schmid, P. F. (2002 a) Presence: Im-media-te co-experiencing and co-responding Phenomenological, dialogic al and ethical perspectives on contact and perception in person-centred therapy and beyond. In Wyatt, G.
and Sanders, P. (Eds. ) Rogers Therapeutic Conditions Evolution, Theory and Practice. Volume 4: Contact and Perception. Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books, in press. 9. Bozarth, J. Person-centered therapy: A revolutionary paradigm. Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books, 1998. 10.
Kirschenbaum, H. (2004). Carl Rogers life and work: An assessment on the 100 th anniversary of his birth. Journal of Counseling and Development: 82 (1), 116 - 124. 11. Gendlin, E. T. Focusing-oriented psychotherapy.
A manual of the experiential method. New York: Guilford, 1996. 12. Hendricks, M. "Focusing-Oriented/Experiential Psychotherapy. " In D. Cain and J.
Seeman, eds. , Handbook of Research and Practice in Humanistic Psychotherapies. (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2001).
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Research essay sample on Carl Theory Of Therapeutic Change
