Chapter 5 Person Centered Theory

PERSON CENTERED
THERAPY

Note taken from Key Reference Text :
Theory & Practice of Counseling &
Psychotherapy, Gerald Corey 9th Ed.
Note taking by ONG SING YEE (KB, PA)

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

• Key Concepts
• The Therapeutic Process
• Application:Therapeutic
Techniques and Procedures

SEMINAR OBJECTIVE – KEY CONCEPTS

• VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
✓Understand and able to apply the key concepts on:
❖3 growth promoting climate
❖Actualizing tendency

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
• Client’s ability to move forward in a constructive manner if conditions fostering growth are present.
• One is able to get to the core of an individual, one finds a trustworthy, positive center.
• People are trustworthy, resourceful, capable of self understanding and self direction, able to make

constructive changes and able to live effective and productive lives.
• To experience and communicate their realness, support, caring and nonjudgmental understanding,

significant changes in the client the most likely to occur.
• A growth promoting climate.
• Capable of becoming
- Congruence ( genuineness, realness
- Unconditional positive regard (acceptance and caring)
- Accurate empathic understanding (an ability to deeply grasp the subjective world of another person).
• Actualizing tendency, a directional process of striving toward realization, fulfillment, autonomy and self

determination.
• The therapist places the primary responsibility on the client.
• Client’s capacity for awareness and self directed change in attitudes and behavior.
• On how clients act in their world with others.
• A discovery oriented approach in which clients are the experts on their own inner experience.

SEMINAR OBJECTIVE – THE THERAPEUTIC
PROCESS

• THERAPEUTIC GOALS
• THERAPIST’S FUNCTION AND ROLE
• CLIENT’S EXPERIENCE IN THERAPY
• RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THERAPIST AND CLIENT
✓ Understand and able to apply the key concepts on:
❖3 therapeutic goals
❖4 conditions of people who becoming increasingly actualized
❖5 therapist’s function and role
❖Ideal self concept
❖6 conditions cited in Cain 2002a
❖3 core conditions of therapeutic relationship (congruence,

unconditional positive regard and acceptance, accurate empathic
understanding)

THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Therapeutic Goals
• The client achieving a greater degree of independence and integration.
• Its focus is on the person
• The goal is to assist clients in their growth process, better cope with problems as they

identify them.
• Provide a conducive climate to help the individual strive toward self actualization.
• People who are becoming increasingly actualized as having
- An openness to experience.
- A trust in themselves
- An internal source of evaluation
- A willingness to continue growing.
• Encouraging these characteristics is the basic goal of this therapy
• The therapist does not choose specific goals for the client.
• Therapists are in agreement on the matter of not setting goals for what clients need to

change, yet they differ on the matter of how to best help clients achieve their own goals
and to find their own answers.

THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Therapist’s Function and Role
• Therapists use themselves as an instrument of change.
• They do not get lost in a professional role.
• The therapist’s attitude and belief in the inner resources of the client that creates

the therapeutic climate for growth.
• Therapist’s function is to be present and accessible to clients ant o focus on their

immediate experience.
• The therapist must be willing to be real in the relationship with clients.
• By being congruent, accepting and empathic, the therapist is a catalyst for change

THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Client’s Expectation in Therapy
• Therapeutic change depends on clients’ perceptions both of their own experience

in therapy and of the counselor’s basic attitudes.
• Clients come to the counselor in a state incongruence.
• Self concept – ideal self concept
• One reason clients seek therapy is a feeling of basic helplessness, powerlessness and

an inability to make decisions or effectively direct their own lives.
• As counseling progresses, clients are able to explore a wider range of beliefs and

feelings.
• Clients who heal themselves, who create their own self growth, and who are active

self healers.
• Provides a supportive structure relationship.

THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Relationship between Therapist and Client
• 2 persons are in psychological contact
• Incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious
• The second person, whom we term the therapist is congruent (real

or genuine) in the relationship.
• The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the

client.
• The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client’s

internal frame of reference and endeavors to communicate this
experience to the client.
• The communication to the client of the therapist’s empathic
understanding and unconditional regard is to a minimal degree
achieved.

THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Relationship between Therapist and Client
Therapeutic conditions
• Equality
• As they experience the realness of the therapist.
• Way of being and as a shared journey in which therapist and client

reveal their humanness and participate in a growth experience.
• The quality, depth and continuity of therapists’ own experiencing

becomes the very cornerstone of the competence they bring to their
professional activity.
• They are broadening their own life experiences and are willing to do
what it takes to deepen their self knowledge.

THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Relationship between Therapist and Client
Congruence or Genuineness
• Genuine, integrated and authentic during the therapy hour.
• They are without false front, their inner experience and

outer expression of that experience match and they can
openly express feelings, thoughts, reactions, and attitudes
that are present in the relationship with the client.
• Careful reflection and considered judgment on the
therapist’s part.
• Being congruent including anger, frustration, liking, concern
and annoyance.

THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Relationship between Therapist and Client
Unconditional Positive Regard and Acceptance
• Deep and genuine caring for the client.
• Unconditional positive regard = empathic identification
• Non possessive and is not contaminated by evaluation or judgment of the

client’s feelings, thoughts, and behavior as good or bad.
• They value and warmly accept clients.
• Through their behavior expressing that clients are free to have feelings and

experiences.
• Acceptance is the recognition of clients’ rights to have their own beliefs and

feelings, it is not the approval of all behavior.
• The greater the degree of caring, prizing, accepting, and valuing of the client

in a non possessive way, the greater the chance that therapy will be
successful.

THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Relationship between Therapist and Client
Accurate Empathic Understanding
• Empathy is a deep and subjective understanding of the client with the client.
• It is not sympathy, or feeling sorry for a client.
• Helps clients
- Pay attention to and value their experiencing
- Process their experience both cognitively and bodily
- View prior experiences in new ways,
• Increase their confidence in making choices and in pursuing a course of action.
• 3 ways of a sense of knowing
- Subjective empathy enables practitioners to experience what it is like to be the client
- Interpersonal empathy pertains to understanding a client’s internal frame of reference and

conveying a sense of the private meanings to the person
- Objective empathy relies on knowledge sources outside of a client’s frame of reference.

SEMINAR OBJECTIVE – APPLICATION :
THERAPEUTIC TECHNIQUES AND
PROCEDURES

• EARLY EMPHASIS ON REFLECTION OF FEELINGS
• EVOLUTION OF PERSON CENTERED METHODS
• THE ROLE OF ASSESSMENT
✓Understand and able to apply the key concepts on:
❖4 person centered methods

APPLIC ATION : THERAPEUTIC
TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES

Early Emphasis on Reflection of Feelings

APPLIC ATION : THERAPEUTIC
TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES

Evolution of Person Centered Methods
• The therapist’s ability to establish a strong connection with clients.
• No techniques
• Therapist’s presence, being completely attentive to and immersed in

the client as well as in the client’s expressed concerns.
• Qualities and skills such as listening, accepting, respecting,

understanding and responding must be honest expressions by the
therapist.
• Immediacy, or addressing what is going on between the client and
therapist, is highly valued in this approach.

APPLIC ATION : THERAPEUTIC
TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES

The Role of Assessment
• Best source of knowledge about the client is

the individual client.

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