Person Center Therapy

Carl Rogers




“I speak as a person, from a context of personal learnings.”

Rogers had a desire to help people grow.


His personality theory can be seen as a way to outline personal growth toward becoming more fully functioning


He was determined to improve relationships between people—all people.

• From birth, we experience reality in terms of internal and external experiences; therefore, experience is our reality
• Most experiences—are in our awareness

Some experiences are ignored


Some experiences are blocked (subceived)









nWe are born with the ability to symbolize experiences in our awareness

This is experience that has been denied conscious representation.

This is when you experience something, yet feel uneasy and initially, you do not know why.

We need to grow.


We need to heal when injured.


We need to develop our full potential.


We are forward moving


CONSTRUCTIVE


Realistic


We are trustworthy

However, we can become alienated from the self-actualizing tendency.


However, the only way to destroy the self actualizing tendency is to destroy the person.





nThe actualizing tendency interacts with perception (remember, from before) to gain the Organismic Valuing Process—important later in healthy functioning.


nThis is where the organism perceives something, and then organizes it in terms of how well it actualizes the organism.


nAn object either fulfills a need, is unrelated to a need, or thwarts the fulfillment of a need.

Internalized Locus of Evaluation

Based on OWN EXPERIENCES

Children, as they grow, look for pleasantness and unpleasantness

• Differentiation is made –hey, I like this! Or hey, I do not like th
• If parents interfere with the process of differentiation, children can have a difficult time in developing organismic sensing—in other words, they do not trust their own experiences.
• Child being forced to eat when not hungry; or asking for some food when hungry, and parents saying you’re not, you just ate…

Perceptions of positive regard received from others have a direct impact on own self-regard

If you feel valued by important people, then they develop self regard

Children also feel valued when they can help others

Experience of satisfaction from being there for other people

If you do not listen to your own values and beliefs, but listen to others, operate out of conditions of worth and will feel anxious

• If children are in conflict with others and do not feel valued, they do not develop a sense of self-worth or self-regard
• Individuals experience conditions of worth.
• Evaluate own experience based on the values of others
• Limits development
• To gain positive conditional regard, discount own beliefs
• These are psychological representations of “what I must experience to be worthwhile.” These conditions ultimately form the Ideal Self that is inevitably different.

May feel lost and alienated from self

May create rigid ideas and perceptions that are defenses against rejection

Need to always please others

Values of one group are incongruent with self values

nLOVE!----------à


n


nPositive Regard from Others


nRespect


n


n


n


nWARMTH---------à

Judgment


Agree to dissatisfying experience


Deny satisfying experience


So, conditions of worth are based on being accepted if you….(insert something that you do not want to do, but do it anyway)

development of maladaptive behavior arises out of an incongruity between the self and the organism’s experience

• Sometimes behavior will occur as a result of the organismic valuing process (Good
• Sometimes behavior will occur as a result of conditions of worth (not so good)

The greater the incongruence between an individual’s experience and self-concept, the more disorganized behavior will be.

ORGANISMIC VALUING PROCESS

OVP—helping us be all that we can be

Positive, huh?

The closer the ideal, real and perceived selves are overlapping, then:

Congruent! Adaptive!

do not relate.

When the person alters the self-concept to bring it in close alignment with the real self, a state of incongruence is created—

Rogers believed that there must be unconditional positive regard from some others so that a person’s self-regard can be increased.

Rogers emphasized congruence, the process of the therapist listening to and accurately experiencing and being aware of the communication of another person.

• S/he becomes fully functioning—allowing themselves to feel and be aware and accept all of their experiences—and to define the experience through their own phenomenological view of the world!
• There is an inner freedom to make decisions

Responsibility for their own lives

They become aware of social responsibilities

They communicate empathetically—understanding the needs of others.

Psychological contact

• Incongruence
• Congruence and genuineness

Unconditional Positive Regard

Empathy

Perception of empathy and acceptance

• EXPERIENCE
• Experience responsibility

Experience the therapist

Experience the exploration------------à

Experience the self

Experience the change!

It is the client who knows what hurts, what direction to go, what problems are crucial, what experiences are deeply buried.”

Good! As long as the six necessary and sufficient conditions are met.

The more they share their fears, anxiety and shame in the presence of another who is genuinely caring for them, the more fully will they experience life.

Therapist does not meet core conditions

Therapist is not accurate in reflections

Client is unable to handle overwhelming feelings

• Meet unconditional Positive Regard
• Congruent/Genuine
• Empathy!
• Listen
• Listen
• Listen
• Listen
• Listen
• Listen
• Be yourself, accept yourself, permit self to understand another
• open
• Accept other person
• more open less likely to rush in and fix
• turst own experience
• evaluations not a guide
• Eperience Authority
• Most personal most general
• Life is flowing changing nothing is fixed

Goals come from client, not therapist

Understanding the self

To be the self that one truly is

Counselor develops a therapeutic atmosphere that promotes the goals

Positive

Respectful

Caring

Kind

Gentle

Listener, no suggestions

“It (psychotherapy) is about the uniqueness of the relationship each therapist forms with each client, and equally about the common elements which we discover in all these relationships.”

Reflection of Content

Reflection of Feeling

Reflection of Meaning

Reflection of Discrepancy

LISTENING!