Person-Centred Therapy:
A reaction against the directive and psychanalytic approaches
Introduction
- Person-centred approach shares many concepts/values with the existential
perspective
- Roger’s basic assumptions: people are essentially trustworthy, they have a vast
potential for understanding themselves and resolving their own problems without
direct intervention on the therapist’s part, and they’re capable of self-directed growth
- Attitudes and personal characteristics of therapist and quality of client-therapist
relationship as the main determinants of the outcome of the therapeutic process
Historical context and development
- Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
- Client-centred therapy
- Puts client at centre of work
- Thus, different to medical, analytic and behavioural approaches of time
- Rogers understood these approaches as viewing person as set of
symptoms/behaviours to be treated/solved
- Not theory-centred, symptom-centred, treatment-centred or problem-centred
- Holistic and humanistic
- A reaction against the directive and psychoanalytic approaches, PCT challenges:
(BEHAVIOURISM AND PSYCHOANALYTIC HAVE NEGATIVE VIEW OF HUMAN
NATURE)
▪ The assumption that “the therapist knows best”
▪ The validity of advice, suggestion, persuasion, teaching, diagnosis, and
interpretation
▪ The belief that clients cannot understand and resolve their own problems
without direct help
▪ The focus on problems over persons
- Positive Psychology is the remnant of PCT- ‘what goes right with human beings?’
Basic Philosophies
- At their core, humans are trustworthy and positive
- Humans are capable of making changes and living productive, effective lives
- Humans innately gravitate toward self-actualization
- Given the right growth-fostering conditions, individuals strive to move forward
and fulfil their creative nature.
Emotion-Focused Therapy:
- Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) emerged as a person-centred approach informed by
understanding the role of emotion in human functioning and psychotherapeutic
change
, - EFT designed to help clients increase their awareness of their emotions and make
productive use of them
- Therapists uses a range of experiential techniques to strengthen the self, regulate
affect and create new meaning
- New narratives can be created that disrupt past emotional schemes
- EFT strategies focus on 2 major tasks:
▪ 1. Help clients with too little emotion access their emotions
▪ 2. Help clients who experience too much emotion contain their emotions
- Main goal of EFT: help individuals’ access and process emotions to construct new
ways of being
- The act of experiencing feelings and replacing old feelings with new positive feelings
offers a corrective emotional experience
Existentialism and Humanism:
- Similarities between Existentialism and Humanism:
▪ Share a respect for client’s subjective experience
▪ The uniqueness and individuality for each client
▪ Trust in the capacity of the client to make positive and constructive conscious
choices
▪ Both emphasise concepts: freedom, choice, values, personal responsibility,
autonomy, purpose and meaning
▪ Place little value on the role of techniques in the therapeutic process and
emphasise the importance of a genuine encounter
▪ Client-therapist relationship being at the core of therapy
▪ Focus on client’s perceptions and call for the therapist to be fully present with
the client so that it’s possible to understand the client’s subjective world
▪ Emphasise client’s capacity for self-awareness and self-healing
- The differences between Existentialism and Humanism:
▪ Existentialists: take the position that we’re faced with anxiety of choosing to
create an identity in a world that doesn’t have intrinsic meaning.
▪ Existentialists: acknowledge the harsh realities of human experience and their
writings often focus on death, anxiety, meaninglessness and isolation
▪ Humanists: less anxiety-evoking and more optimist view that each of us has a
natural potential that we can actualise and through which we can find
meaning
- Existential-humanistic practitioners: they’re based in existential philosophy, but
they’ve incorporated many aspects of humanistic psychotherapies
Abraham Maslow’s Contributions to Humanistic Psychology:
- Central theme: self-actualisation
- Core characteristics of self-actualising people are self-awareness, basic honesty and
caring and trust and autonomy
- Compatible with the person-centred philosophy
- Hierarchy of needs as a source of motivation
A reaction against the directive and psychanalytic approaches
Introduction
- Person-centred approach shares many concepts/values with the existential
perspective
- Roger’s basic assumptions: people are essentially trustworthy, they have a vast
potential for understanding themselves and resolving their own problems without
direct intervention on the therapist’s part, and they’re capable of self-directed growth
- Attitudes and personal characteristics of therapist and quality of client-therapist
relationship as the main determinants of the outcome of the therapeutic process
Historical context and development
- Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
- Client-centred therapy
- Puts client at centre of work
- Thus, different to medical, analytic and behavioural approaches of time
- Rogers understood these approaches as viewing person as set of
symptoms/behaviours to be treated/solved
- Not theory-centred, symptom-centred, treatment-centred or problem-centred
- Holistic and humanistic
- A reaction against the directive and psychoanalytic approaches, PCT challenges:
(BEHAVIOURISM AND PSYCHOANALYTIC HAVE NEGATIVE VIEW OF HUMAN
NATURE)
▪ The assumption that “the therapist knows best”
▪ The validity of advice, suggestion, persuasion, teaching, diagnosis, and
interpretation
▪ The belief that clients cannot understand and resolve their own problems
without direct help
▪ The focus on problems over persons
- Positive Psychology is the remnant of PCT- ‘what goes right with human beings?’
Basic Philosophies
- At their core, humans are trustworthy and positive
- Humans are capable of making changes and living productive, effective lives
- Humans innately gravitate toward self-actualization
- Given the right growth-fostering conditions, individuals strive to move forward
and fulfil their creative nature.
Emotion-Focused Therapy:
- Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) emerged as a person-centred approach informed by
understanding the role of emotion in human functioning and psychotherapeutic
change
, - EFT designed to help clients increase their awareness of their emotions and make
productive use of them
- Therapists uses a range of experiential techniques to strengthen the self, regulate
affect and create new meaning
- New narratives can be created that disrupt past emotional schemes
- EFT strategies focus on 2 major tasks:
▪ 1. Help clients with too little emotion access their emotions
▪ 2. Help clients who experience too much emotion contain their emotions
- Main goal of EFT: help individuals’ access and process emotions to construct new
ways of being
- The act of experiencing feelings and replacing old feelings with new positive feelings
offers a corrective emotional experience
Existentialism and Humanism:
- Similarities between Existentialism and Humanism:
▪ Share a respect for client’s subjective experience
▪ The uniqueness and individuality for each client
▪ Trust in the capacity of the client to make positive and constructive conscious
choices
▪ Both emphasise concepts: freedom, choice, values, personal responsibility,
autonomy, purpose and meaning
▪ Place little value on the role of techniques in the therapeutic process and
emphasise the importance of a genuine encounter
▪ Client-therapist relationship being at the core of therapy
▪ Focus on client’s perceptions and call for the therapist to be fully present with
the client so that it’s possible to understand the client’s subjective world
▪ Emphasise client’s capacity for self-awareness and self-healing
- The differences between Existentialism and Humanism:
▪ Existentialists: take the position that we’re faced with anxiety of choosing to
create an identity in a world that doesn’t have intrinsic meaning.
▪ Existentialists: acknowledge the harsh realities of human experience and their
writings often focus on death, anxiety, meaninglessness and isolation
▪ Humanists: less anxiety-evoking and more optimist view that each of us has a
natural potential that we can actualise and through which we can find
meaning
- Existential-humanistic practitioners: they’re based in existential philosophy, but
they’ve incorporated many aspects of humanistic psychotherapies
Abraham Maslow’s Contributions to Humanistic Psychology:
- Central theme: self-actualisation
- Core characteristics of self-actualising people are self-awareness, basic honesty and
caring and trust and autonomy
- Compatible with the person-centred philosophy
- Hierarchy of needs as a source of motivation
