Person – centred approach

history, main-concepts, techniques

applicable to children: enhancing
problem communication, developing
the self-concept
CARL ROGERS
(1902 - 1987)
Biographical Information:


Carl grew up on a farm in Illinois

His parents were conservative, very religious and
distant from socializing with others

They tried to keep their children away from
„temptations” of urban life (e.g. watching movies,
dancing, drinking)

Carl started college in the field of agriculture

In his junior year he was chosen to to China for six
months for a conference organised by World
Student Christian Federation

This experience produced the following changes in
Carl:

a) he rejected his parents' conservative religious
ideology

b) his decided to marry his chilldhood friend

Studies in Teacher's College on Columbia University

Internship at the Institute for Child Guidance

Job in the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children

The Clinical Treatment of The Problem Child (1939)

Professorship at Ohio State University

Counselling and Psychotherapy (1942)

- pioneered the use of audiotape recordings of
sessions

- proposed his distinctive viewpoint of
psychotherapy

Organizer of a counselling center at the University
of Chicago

Client-Centered Therapy (1951)

Work at the University of Wisconsin

Founder of the Center for Studies of the Person in
La Jolla
Historical context


The domain of American academic psychology was
behaviorism

While academic psychologists were devoted to
behaviorism, clinicians were trained in either
psychoanalytic or neo-analytic theory

As a young American living in the 1930s, Rogers
was influenced by the person of President Franklin
D. Roosevelt and the philosophy of John Dewey

Relationship with his wife also had a powerful affect
on him
Struggles with Psychiatry and Psychology


During the 1930s and 1940s , psychiatry was firmly
opposed to letting non physicians practice
psychiatry or giving them leadership roles in mental
heath agencies ----> Rogers had to battled with
them to maintain some of his positions, also he was
accused of practicing medicine without a licence

Battles with mainstream academic psychology (B.F.
Skinner)

He fraternized with social workers, counselors and
teachers
The Evolution of Person-Centered Therapy


Nondirective counselling. This period began in the
1940s with Roger's growing aversion to traditional,
directive therapy methods.


Client-centered therapy. During this period Rogers
published „Client – Centered Therapy” and change
his focus to an honoring of the client's ability to lead
the therapy process

Becoming a person. During the 1960s Rogers
focused on self-development. He published few
books reflecting his aplication of person-centered
principles to many new situations, including
encounter groups and the teacher-student
relationship.


Worldwide issues. In the 1970s and 1980s, Rogers
became more concerned about the worldwide
issues and he began dedicating much of his work to
improving interracial relations. He met with Irish
Catholics and Protestants, visited South Africa and
Soviet Union.
His most important followers


Eugene Gendlin (developed an experiential therapy
called focusing)

Leslie Greenberg (developer of process-experiential
theory)

Virginia Axline (her idea was a nondirective play
therapy)

Bernard and Louise Guerney (Relationship Enhance
Therapy)

William Miller, Stephen Rollnick (motivational
interviewing strategies for people with addiction
problems)
 Main concepts:
 people
 personality
 psychopathology
 psychotherapy & theory of counseling
 People

= rational, socialized, forward-moving and realistic beeings, which

are capable of regulating and controlling their behavior and:

 have worth and dignity in their right and deserve respect

 can choose and select their own values
 can learn to make constructive use of responsibility
 are capable of dealing with their own feelings, thoughts & behavior
 have the actualizing (formative) tendency
 have the self-actualizing (self-directing) tendency
 Theory of Personality
 organism – locus of all psychological experience; entire realm
of person’s experience;
„ There is one central source of energy in human organism. This source is
[…] a tendency toward fulfillment, toward actualization, involving not only the
maintenance but also the enhancement of the organism.” (Rogers, 1980 in: Sommers-
Flannagan, 2004)

Actualizing (formative) tendency:

• is inherent in humans, who are capable of experiencing their own
maladjustment to life, but also of moving toward a more adjusted state of
mind;
• their negative, antisocial emotions, which can obstacle this last process, are
consequence of frustrated basic impulses, which result in some defensive
behavior;
• once freed from their defensive behavior, their reactions become positive
and progressive, leading to constructive change, psychological adjustment
and personal development toward a full and satisfying life
• they can learn on a moment-to-moment basis and move toward greater
order, complexity nad interrelatedness (LEARNING & GROWTH
POTENTIAL)
 Theory of Personality

 Self – the „me” portion of organism; has both conscious &

unconscious components; is capable of both stability &
change; is a structure in process (not fixed – every person
exists in an ever-changing world in which he/she is the
center and learns through direct personal experiences); is
capable of self-actualization:
• actualization of the portion of experience symbolized in the self (Pervin,
John, 2001)
• true learning achieved through lived experience is what lets the self
judge whether a particular action or feeling is self-enhancing or not
• related to the conditions of worth and learned needs:
 the need for positive regard

 the need for self-regard

 Conditions of worth & learned needs – developmental perspective

 in their development, children experience even greater

consciuosness of self and even grater need for positive
regard or approval – they need to be prized and loved and
accepted by the significant others and caretakers BUT this
need is not always satisfied
 on the basis of their every day experiences they learn to
dostinguish between approved/disapproved feelings &
actions = they develop the unerstanding of conditions of
worth and begin to internalize their caretakers appraisals
even though such appraisals can be inconsistent with their
own organismic values, but they want to avoid pain and
negative regard
 people develop conscious, introjected values and
unconscious, genuine values (possible confilct ->
psychopathology)
 Theory of Psychopathology

 „theory of discrepancy” – psychopathology can be seen as a

result of conflict/discrepancy between:
 conditions of worth & caretakers values AND organismic values
 self AND organism – incongruence – individual’s slef; self’s experiences
and perceptions are inconsistent with its overall psychological experience;
with the organism’s total experience
 … and as a failure to learn from experience:
• when we don’t learn from feedback we remain stuck in our misperceptions
or inadequate behaviors
• our rigidity impairs learning and makes changes impossible
• therefore: we might hang on to some introjected conditions of worth that
are incongruent with our organismic experience and any modification to
our self-concept based on every-day feedback becomes impossible
• dysfunctionality = failure to learn & change
• every object or situation which will represent an inner conflict between real
and introjected desires will be seen as a potential threat – subception –
unconscious perception of a threatening object or situation
Rogers (1958) – proposition of a scale for the objective assessment of process or
movement in psychotherapy
process stage:

Walker, A., Rablen, R., Rogers, C. (1960). DEVELOPMENT OF A SCALE TO MEASURE

PROCESS CHANGES IN PSYCHOTHERAPY. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 16, 1, 79-85.
 Theory of Psychotherapy & Counseling

 person-centered counseling – deals primarly with the

organization and functioning of self and depends on two
fundamental factors:
• trust
• certain type of relationship
 builds on the counselor’s respect, warmth, concreteness and
genuiness to facilitate change in persons behavior and assist
them in becoming more autonomus, spontaneus, confident
and responsible for their own growth
 leads to constructive personality change if the therapist, in a
nonjudgmental atmosphere, communicates to the client:
• congruence
• unconditional positive regard
• empathic understanding
 Congruence (genuiness)
 authenticity; transparency; being real, open and honest; providing a sort of grounding
or reality so that clients’ real selves have sth to interact with
 acknowledgement & expression of both positive and negative feelings within the
context of the therapy relationship
 when the counselor or therapist provides the genuine reality that is in him, the other
person (client) can succesfully seek the reality in him

Unconditional positive regard

 acceptance; respect; prizing the client as a person of unconditional self-worth no
matter what his condition, behavior or feelings
 valuing & accepting the client as a separate person so that he can explore who he
really is and accept himself
 by listening and reflecting back feelings expressed by the client, the therapist makes
it possible for him to accept/modify what the client has expressed

Empathic understanding
 most directly linked to Rogers and person-centered approach
 used in conjunction with two previous conditions/attitudes – only by understanding
the client’s feeling and thoughts; only by seing them as he sees them and accepting
them and the client, he will feel truly free to explore the deepths of his experience
How to achieve this in practice?
Wickman, S., Campbell, C. (2003). An analysis of how Carl Rogers enacted client-centered conversation
with Gloria. Journal of Counseling & Development, 81, 178-184

 analysis of Roger’s session with Gloria (client) in the training film „Three
Approaches to Psychotherapy”
 how Roger’s conversational style functioned to enact his core conditions
of congruence (genuiness), unconditional positive regard & empathy
 30-minute conversation with Gloria – 30-year-old recently divorced
woman, who presented an initial problem about „having men to the
house”, wondering „how it affects the children” and specifically wanted to
know if she should be truthful with her daughter about having sex since
the divorce or if such honesty would cause her daughter some emotional
harm
 Analysis of 7 aspects of conversation (conversational devices), interpreted
& discussed as applicable to Roger’s theoretical framework for client-
centered counseling and as comunicating:

 congruence (genuiness)
 unconditional positive regard
 empathy
 Congruence (Genuiness)

1) nonexpert language – „not-knowing” position; inability of being an expert on

another person + respecting his/her right to be an expert on themselves
2) meta-statements – comments about the conversation as it occurs

3) invitations for repair – „correction” of prior turn/statement made by R. to

clarify & refine his understanding of Gloria’s situation; interest &
investment in the relation (making sure if the message recieved is
consistent with message sent); promote transparency of the therapist
(counselor) & his not being expert on the other person
 Unconditional positive regard

4) withholding direct responces to requests for advice – respecting the

clients ability to come to his/her own decisions; honoring his/her own
expertise in arriving at a meaningful outcome – result: client revisits the
topic at a more complex level

5) problem reformulation – responding in a way that captures the essence of

what the client says, while converting the description into a better-defined
and more workable problem -> giving the power of change & ownership
of control for problem resolution back to the client (NOT reinterpreting!)

+ nonexpert language
 Empathy

6) first-person quotes externalizing (Gloria’s) client’s internal dialogue –

speaking from the „I” perspective about client’s unspoken thoughts

7) affiliative negative assessment of the difficulty of the process – statements

regarding the difficulty of the process that the client is going through;
demonstrating the ability to comprehend the client’s struggle or predicament

+ invitations for repair; problem reformulation

To summarise: What was Rogers doing conversationally when he was
being „rogerian” ? 
Counseling method

 Counselor as a person is very importnat

a. Openness

b. Empathic understanding

c. Independence

d. Spontaneity

e. Acceptance

f. Mutual respect

g. Intimacy
The strongest techniques = attitudes towards
people

 Congruence

You work with a very atractive client and you have

sexual thoughts about him? What now?

 Unconditional positive regard

What if the client tells you that he uses drugs?

Methods that steam from attitudes:

 Active and passive listening

 Reflection of thoughts and feelings
 Clarification
 Summarization
 Confrontation of contradictions
 General leads that help client self exploration
Active listening:

 Concept was systematised by Carkhuff (1973,1981) in

his model
 He distinguished three phases of counselling:

a. Thoughts and feelings about where you are now

b. Thoughts and feelings about where you would like to be

c. Plans for getting from where you are to where you would
like to be

Thompson & Rudolph (1992)

Counsellor’s responds

 Level 1 (harmful, do not help with any of the three

counselling phases)

„If you think you have a problem, listen to this”

„Don’t worry about that. Things will work out”

Ordering, threatening, moralizing, advising, judging,

counterarguments, prising, name-calling,
psychoanalizing, consoling, probing:
”who,what,where…”, distracting, withdrawing
Gordon (1974)
 Level 2 (harmful, giving advice and solutions, relevant in
phase III but clients cannot work out their own solutions)

„You need to study harder.”

„Why don’t you make more friends?”

„You should eat better.”

Thompson & Rudolph (1992)

 Level 3 (neither harmful nor helpful, bridges to further
conversation – useful in phase I)
• Reflect what client is thinking and feeling about the problem:

„You are feeling discouraged because you haven’t been able to

make good grades in math”

 Level 4 (useful in phase I and II)

• Summarisation of clients thoughts and feelings

„You are feeling discouraged because you haven’t been able

to make good grades in math, and you want to find a way to do
better”
 Level 5 (useful in all phases)
• Client agrees that the counsellor understands the problem
• Person-centred counseling is helpful in relating the concern to
the counselor
• For developing a plan of action the best is Reality therapy:

„You are feeling discouraged because you haven’t been able to

make good grades in math, and you want to find a way to do
better. Let’s look at what you have been trying to do to make
good grades in math.”

Thompson & Rudolph (1992)

Problematic areas in person-centred counseling
children
 Difficulties with establishing true empathy especially with young children

 Real feelings and attitudes of the counselor are important because children
intuitively trust and open up to those who like and understand them

 The counselor must provide warm, caring environment in which children

can explore their emotions

 If the child isn’t mature enough the counselor should help him to evaluate
the alternative solutions

 The counselor should listen and observe carefully body language to

understand what the child is trying to communicate

 Bibliocounseling, storytelling and play therapy may be used as aids during

evaluating the problem

Thompson & Rudolph (1992)

Integrating self-concept development into life skills

 Teaching children about self-concept

 Applying those information to daily living
 The process of relating self-concept activities to a child’s life
is the self-concept series weave
 This process is implemented regardless of counseling
approach or setting
 A series of activities (each consists of 3 steps)

Thompson & Rudolph (1992)

• First step: unconditional valuing of people simply
because they are people

„All people are special and valuable because they are

unique”

• Activity to implement – example:

Ask children: What makes you special? Until they

respond: Because no one else in the world is like me
• Second step:

„When people help others, they are helping themselves.

People hurt themselves when they hurt other people by
forgetting that all people are special and unique.”

• Activity to implement – example:

Group discussion about treating unique and valuable

things. Distinction between things and people.
• Third step:

„People are responsible for watching their actions to

determine if they are remembering the truth that they are
special.”

• Activity to implement – example:

Group discussion about bahaviours as consequences of

our choices and feelings as consequences of our
behaviours. Discussion about ways of appying generated
ideas to life.
 Additional Person-Centered Therapy
Approaches and Techniques

 Motivational Interviewing
 developed by William R. Miller (work with problem drinkers)
 structured behavioral treatment vs empathy
 Reflective listening and empathy were crucial in producing
positive treatment effects with problem drinkers
 Person-centered constructs as foundation
 More focused therapeutic targets and more specific client
goals
 MI is a „directive, client-centered counseling style for
eliciting behavior change by helping clients to explore
and resolve ambivalence” (Rollnick, Miller, 1955)
Four central principals of MI
 Therapist’s job is to:
 Use reflective listening skills to express empathy for
the client’s message and genuine caring for the client
 Notice and develop the theme of discrepancy
between the client’s deep values and current
behavior
 Meet client resistance with reflection rather than
confrontation
 Enhance client self-efficiacy by focusing on optimism,
confidence that change is possible and small
interventions that are likely to be seccuessful
 The motivation for change is not something
the interviewer imposes on clients BUT it
must be elicited, gently and with careful
timing.
 The ambivalence experienced and
expressed by clients belong to them
 Councelor’s job is to reflect the ambivalence
and join with client as they explore and
resolve it.
 Motivational interviewers do not use direct
persuasion, instead they come alongside.
 Nondirective (Person-Centered) Play
Therapy
 Designed to facilitate client trust in himself
through the core relationship condictions
of congruence, unconditional positive
regard, and empathic understanding.
 A treatment approach witout interpretation,
without behavior modification, without
structure or direction from the therapist.
 Play whatever comes to mind
 Guideline for play therapy
 The therapist:
 Developes a warm and friendly relationship with the child
 Accepts the child as she or he is, without judgement
 Establishes a feeling of permission in the relationship so that the
child is free to express feelings
 Recognizes the feelings the child is expressing and reflects these
feelings back in such a manner that the child gains insight into his or
her behavior
 Maintaince a deep respect for the childs ability to solve problems and
gives the child opportunity to do so; the resposibility to make choices
and to institute change is the child’s
 Does not direct the child’s actions or conversations in any manner;
the child leads the way, the therapist follows
 Does not hurry the theraphy; it is a gradual process and must be
recognized as such by the therapist
 Only establishes limitations necessary to anchor the therapy to the
world of reality and to make the child aware of his or her resposibility
in the relationship
 Counseling Outcomes Research
 Roger’s studies comparing psychotics
(schizophrenics), neurotics and normals:
 Empathic understanding by counselors and the extent to which they
were perceived as genuine by schizophrenics were associated with
involvement and constructive personality changes in clients.
 Both psychotics and normals had more realistic perceptions of the
therapeutic relationship than the counselor did (!)
 The same qualities in the counseling relationship were facilitative for the
schizophrenic as for the neurotic.
 It was possible to identify the qualities of client in-therapy behavior that
indicated change was in progress.
 The process of change involved a chain of events. The quality of the
therapeutic relationship facilitated improved inner integration in the
client, which in turn facilitated a reduction in pathological behavior,
which facilitated an improvement in social adjustment.
 Early assessment of the relationship qualities provided a good indicator
of whether or not constructive change would result.
 Rogers’s three conditions: counselor genuineness,
unconditional acceptance and caring and deep empathic
understanding
 Williams and Liar (1991) – help build self acceptance in
disabled children
 Foreman (1988) – work with parents of handicapped
children – parents should be viewed in light of their
potential for growth
 Lindt (1988) – holding as one way to communicate
Rogers’s three conditions, a method to restore contact
between parent and child
 Provides safety and abreaction
 Helps break down imbalance in the division of power between parent and
child
 More Research

About Relationship:
 Brown (1954) – the outcome of counseling was highly
correlated with abilities of the client and the counselor to
perceive their relationship in similar terms
 Rogers (1957) – special relationship between therapist and
client is all that is necessary and sufficient for positive
behavior change to occur
BUT
 Most reaserchers have disproven thath statement, for
example Parloff, Waskow and Wolfe (1978):
„ (…) more complex association exists between outcome and
therapist skills than originally hypothesized.”
 Levant (1983) – a literature review on types of person-
centered skills training programmes for the family and on
their effectivenes
 Three divisions of programmes:
1) Training for treating another family member
2) Training as treatment
3) Training for problem prevention or personal enhancement
 Coclusions:
 Effective person-centered communication skills can be taught in a relatively short
time
 Play-therapy skills produce positive results when applied by a parent to a disturbed
child
 Person-centered communication skills can be used effectively to treat dysfunctional
parent/child and marital relationships
 These gains hold up over short- and long-term follow-up periods
 Person-centered approaches hold their own with behavioral methods and are found
to be more effective than Gestalt and discussion-group approaches
 Kazdin, Bass, Siegel and Thomas (1989)
– comparison of cognitive-behavior
therapy with relationship therapy –
treatment of children reffered for
antisocial behavior:
 Children receiving person-centered relationship
therapy remained at pretreatment levels of functioning
 The cognitive-behavioral problem-solving skills group
reduced antisocial behavior and increased prosocial
behavior
 Bergman (1951) – structuring and interpretation by the
counselor were significantly followed by an abandonment of
self-exploration by the client, and reflection by the counselor
was significantly followed by continued client self-exploration
 Baehr (1954) – veterans – individual therapy, group therapy or
both: individual and group therapy
 all groups showed improvement but the combined one showed the
most change
 Gallagher (1953) – 42 clients – anxiety decreased significantly
 Aaronson (1953) – the counselors’ understanding of
themselves and the client is the key to person-centered
counseling
 Multicultural perspectives
 Person-centered therapy remain popular in
Japan, South Africa, Aouth America, in
number of European countries and UK but
it’s on the decline in the USA
 Waxer (1989) compared Cantonexe and
Canadian college students’ reactions to Rogers
and Ellis on the film
 Asian preference for counselors who are more
autocratic, paternalistic and directive
 North Americans view counseling as an open,
exploratory and democratic process
 Atkinson, Maruyama, Matsui (1978) – Asian
American students rated active and directive
counselors as more credible and more
approachable than nondirective counselors
 Atkinson, Lowe (1955) – African Americans,
American Indians, Asian Americans and
Hispanic Americans tend to prefer active,
directive and advice-oriented counselors
over passive, nondirective and feeling-
oriented counselors
 Advantages and disadvantages across
cultures (Usher, 1989)
 Less risk of being judged by the dominant culture’s definition
of normality because the client defines the goals and
evaluates the process
 Circularity for thinking, which allows culturaly different clients
to express feelings and thoughts within an open,
nonjudgemental setting
BUT
 Emphasis on individualism that fails to accommodate the
healthy dependencies on family members fostered in other
cultures
 Individuals from collectivist cultures might feel very
uncomfortable with a strong emphasis on the individual and
individual needs or feelings – for many nonwestern cultures
paying to much attention to the self is considered
inappropriate or even offensive
Applying Person-Centered Counseling to
Sexual Minority Adolescents

 The main characteristics of person-

centered counseling – congruence,
unconditional positive regard and empathy
– seem to form conceptual and practical
use for helping LGBT clients
(Lemoire, Chen,
2005)
Six identifiable strengths of person-centered
counseling relevant to this helping context. The
counselor:

1) Shows unconditional positive regard,

congruence, and empathy to the LGBT client
2) Adopts the client’s perspective
3) Emphasizes the clients notion of self-concept
4) Encourages the client’s locus of evaluation
5) Believes in the client’s potential for self-
growth
6) Ensures that the growth process is client
directed
(Lemoire,
Chen, 2005)
1) The counselor shows unconditional positive
regard, congruence, and empathy to the LGBT
client

 The relationship between client and

counselor offers the support that an
LGBT adolescent needs when disclosing
her or his sexual orientation
 Counselor becomes a supportive adult
role model
(Lemoire,
Chen, 2005)
2) The counselor adopts the client’s
perspective

 It’s essential that counselors working with

sexual minority adolescents adopt the
perspective of the client – the counselor
can understand better feelings of the client
and how this particular context is affecting
client’s relationships

(Lemoire, Chen, 2005)

3) Emphasizing the notion of self-concept

 The counseling process highlights and

strengthens a positive sense of self by
allowing the client the firsthand experience
of self-exploration and self-understanding

(Lemoire, Chen, 2005)

4) The counselor encourages the client’s
locus of evaluation

 The client should be aware of the fact that

the causes of many internal distress
feelings and thinking are actually influenced
or generated by external values and beliefs.
 The client should shift from external to
internal locus of evaluation

(Lemoire, Chen, 2005)

5) Client’s potential for self-growth

 The counselor functions as the constructive

facilitator who accompanies the client in
initiating more self awareness, self-
confidence and self-pride
 This conditions will reinforce her or his
effort for personal growth

(Lemoire, Chen, 2005)

6) Growth process is client-directed

 The counselor shouldn’t decide which will

be the most important issues to discussed
 The counselor should create the safe,
supportive environment that will facilitate
client’s capacity to experience and probe
her of his feelings and potential growth

(Lemoire, Chen, 2005)

 Lemoire, J.S., Chen, C.P. (2005) Applying
Person-Centered Counseling to Sexual
Minority Adolescents. Journal of
Counseling & Development, 85, 146-154.