Intervention Strategies that Focusing on Self-Concept & Incongruence
Rogers' theory emphatically emphasizes the therapist's attitudes and feelings, not techniques, in the therapy relationship (Brodley, 1998). Person-centered therapy stresses the importance of building a therapeutic relationship that the client feels comfortable to express himself/herself, to trust the therapy, to grow and make therapeutic changes. In person-centered counseling, the relationship that the therapist provides for the client is not an intellectual one. The therapist cannot help the client by the professional knowledge or theories. Explaining the client’s personality and behavior to the client and prescribing actions that the client should take, are of little last value. Instead, person-centered therapist should establish a relationship that is helpful to enable the client to discover within himself/herself the capacity.
Although there are no specific intervention strategies in person-centered therapy, Carl Rogers hypothesized that client’s capacity to grow and self-actualize will be most facilitated and released when the therapist can create a psychological climate characterized by
(a) congruence; (b) unconditional positive regards; and (c) empathic understanding. These not only serve as hypotheses, but also desirable goals as well as counseling manners in person-centered therapy.
(a) Congruence
The very first thing the person-centered therapist has to do is to build a nonthreatening psychological atmosphere conducive to client’s growth and therapeutic change- the therapist is characterized by congruence in the therapeutic relationship. Congruence here means the degree to which the therapist is “being self” in therapy. The therapist is unified, integ...
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... therapy through explicit empathic responses, in order to check my inner understandings (Temaner, 1982; Rogers, 1986). In the process of empathic understanding response interactions the therapist is highly attuned and responsive to the client's feelings. In other words, person-centered empathic understanding refer to the client's entire internal frame of reference which includes perceptions, ideas, meanings and the emotional-affective components connected (Brodley, 1996).
Empathic Understanding is something more than just “active listening” or “making reflection”(Gordon, 1970). These techniques might be helpful to clients and may promote a therapeutic change process, but they are not appreciative of Rogers’ conception of therapeutic understanding. Rogers’ theory identified two major aspects of empathic understanding: immediacy and communication (Hamilton, 2003).
While CBT has many advantages, it alone does not encompass all of the concepts I believe are necessary to tackle a client’s needs. Therefore, I draw upon concepts from various theories to assist clients in achieving their goals. Pulling from Reality therapy, a key concept I utilize is focusing on what the client is doing and how to get them to evaluate whether they’re present actions are working for them. CBT does use some form of this in the sense that one must examine and establish their cognitive misconceptions; however, I prefer to extract this concept from Reality therapy because CBT tends to do so by focusing on the past. I am a firm believer that while the past can shape who you are, it does little good to remain focused on it. Focusing on overt behavior, precision in specifying the goals of treatment, development of specific treatment plans, and objective evaluation of therapy outcomes all come from Behavior therapy (Corey, 2013, p. 474). Behavior therapy is highly structured much like that of CBT. By utilizing this aspect of Behavior therapy, I am better able to closely observe where a client is currently and where they are headed. Lastly, I pull from Person-Centered therapy as the final key concept of my counseling approach. PCT focuses on the fact that client’s have the potential to become aware of their problems and resolve them (Corey, 2013). This Person-Centered therapy concept has overlap with CBT as
As this book points out, and what I found interesting, the therapeutic relationship between therapist and client, can be even more important than how the therapy sessions are conducted. A therapists needs to be congruent. This is important because a client needs a sense of stability. To know what is expected from him or her while being in this transitional period of change. In some cases this congruency may be the only stability in his life, and without it, there is no way of him trusting in his t...
Next, I am going to discuss the person-centred interventions I exercised through the therapeutic process with my client in session four. Within this I am going to explore how these interventions impacted my client’s responses and how I could improve my skills in future sessions.
According to Shebib (2016) the therapeutic or helping relationship, the role of the counsellor and client has a significant impact on the desired outcome for the client. However, in relation to the two theoretical models of counselling under discussion, the therapeutic relationships differ among the client and therapist roles (Corey 2009). In Person-Centred Therapy, the relationship between client and counsellor is viewed as being the person in the environment and the client is the expert of into their environment. There is a repetition of equality amongst the client-counsellor relationship (Corey, 2009). This notion that focus to placed onto the client and not the problem ( Shebeb, 2017). The counsellor’s attitude has a significant role
This approach emphasizes the importance of the potential of humans and sought to make up for the missing component of conscious in the psychodynamic approach. The humanistic approach oriented psychologist has the belief that human behavior is guided by intent and the individual’s set of values (Association, 2014). Those who subscribe to this orientation believe there are both an unconscious and a conscious element to determining behavior. The unconscious element is considered to be the individual’s application of learned norms and experience, while the conscious element is applied by making deliberate choices and decisions. A humanistic oriented practitioner will use differing types of therapy such as client-centered therapy, Gestalt therapy, or existential therapy (American Psychological, 2015). Client-centered therapy or person-centered therapy was developed by Carl Rogers and places the client as the leader of the therapy. This approach allows for the growth and better understanding of self within the individual, as they solve their own problems, while the therapist is there to provide empathetic support (Australian, 2010). Gestalt therapy focuses on the responsibility of the individual for their current situation and considers relationships, environment, and social experiences occurring, and influencing behavior (Polster & Polster, 2010). This process consists of the practitioner acting as a guide and offer advise in helping the client to deal with their current issue. Existential therapy consists of allowing an individual the ability to live with their issues within their own existence (Price, 2011). This means a therapist uses this type of therapy to assist clients with understanding what the present problem is and learning to deal with the consequences of that issue in their every day life. With
As the field of counseling continues to progress numerous theoretical orientations have been developed. One theoretical approach to counseling has been coined as person centered counseling or client centered therapy. This type of approach is commonly referred to as Rogerian psychotherapy. Rogerian therapy focuses on the empowerment of individuals with the inner self. These constructs are vital to ensuring and promoting a transparent and honest atmosphere which subsequently results in effective counseling. The behaviors that are found in client centered counseling are valuable as they motivate the client to explore their "hidden feelings" and become aware of where their feelings derive from. Being afforded the rare opportunity to see Rogers
In the second part of the book Rogers speaks of his ideas of his theory of the person-centered approach to therapy. This is the part of the book that I felt really spoke to me. Person-centered theory is a lot of what I would like to do. I enjoy the ideas and concepts that Rogers presents in his theory. I think that it is extremely important to be able to take into consideration not only the diagnosis of the patient/client with whom you are working, but that it is more important to be able to take the time to sit back and to listen to them. I have realized in the year that I have been working in the psychiatric hospital how important it is for the patient/client to just sit back and listen to what it is they're saying to you. This however does not mean I am only hearing their words, but that I am listening at a much deeper level and actually he...
To explain, the client should not be inferior to the counselor; the environment should be two people discussing an issue and ways to make a difference. A therapist should occasionally share similar experiences; therefore, sessions should make clients feel comfortable. To add, the client should feel safe due to the positive atmosphere the therapist brings to the session. The goal is to finally give the client a chance to be heard, regularly people are muted and feel like they are insignificant to society. Similarly, to Person-centered therapy where communication with the client is unconditionally positive. The therapist needs to genuinely care about the client needs for them to fully express themselves successfully. Furthermore, clients should be encouraging to make their own choices which model how to identify and use power responsibly. Hence, this will help the client feel more confident in everyday life when making a meaningful
The assumption is however, that the client was never able to have their feelings heard by the people surrounding them. Person Centered Therapy would allow the client to then be able to express their feelings openly. According to Strupp (1971), “psychotherapeutic relationship is in principle indistinguishable from any good human relationship in which a person feels fully accepted, respected, and prized” (p. 39). Thus, there must be a therapeutic alliance between therapist and client. This therapeutic alliance should creative an environment for the client in which the client feels the therapist is judgment-free.
(2017). Person Centred Therapy - Core Conditions | Simply Psychology. [online] Available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/client-centred-therapy.html [Accessed 8 Jun. 2017].
...entation, or several, in which they choose to practice in their professional career. Psychoanalysis and Person-Centered Therapy are just two, out of over four hundred types, of counseling approaches in use today. The constructs and theories are extremely different, however, neither can be considered right nor wrong. They are simply based on different beliefs, assumptions and viewpoints of human development and their behavior. Although, however different and unique, there are still similarities between the two types of therapy approaches. Through case examples, such as the case of D and the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder, the techniques and outcomes of different treatment approaches can be see in real life examples. Past research and writing support brings about contradictions, criticism and treatment outcomes to the theories and those who developed them.
For example, some clients are accustomed to indirect communication and they would not be comfortable with a therapist showing direct expressions towards them. A third reason that this type of therapy might be a limitation is some culture groups go by collectivism instead of focusing on being an individual. In these cultures, clients are influenced by social expectations and not motivated by their own expectations. This is a major limitation for person-centered therapy because they focus on self-actualization, understanding the self, and trying to improve ones self. The focus on a person individual development and personal growth may seem selfish in a culture that may
In this essay I will compare person-Centred counselling with cognitive-Behavioural counselling and their different approaches and why the counselling relationship is so important. There will be a brief outline of what Person Centred and Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy.
Another noteworthy feature of this approach is the chance to empathize. In most forms of therapy, empathy is not used: why would you want to add more conflict to an already difficult situation? Well, as counterintuitive as it may seem, it does have standing. By definition empathy is the ability to understand the feelings of another person. In this context empathy serves as an indirect way for readers to relive and recall their own experiences.
Reflecting on the Person-Centered Therapy, it is similar to the Existential Therapy because it focuses on the client/therapist relationship, where the therapist needs to be totally genuine, empathetic and non-judgmental toward their clients in order to gain the client’s trust. I like the fact that the Person-Centered Therapy views the client as their best authority on their own experience, and being fully capable of fulfilling their own potential for growth. I also like the fact that the therapist is non-directive, does not give advice and there is no specific technique involved. Person Centered Therapy can basically develop their own technique as their relationship develop with the client.