Carl Rogers Therapy 5.1.12

Carl Rogers’s Therapy
Person-centred therapy was founded by Carl Rogers in the 1940s. Rogers trained to be a clinical
psychologist and from 1928-40 he worked as a director of child study department of the Rochester
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. It was through this work that his client centred
therapy emerged. Rogers did not use the term ’patient’ because of its medical connotations and the
perception of an unequal relationship. He preferred the term ‘client, he wanted the relationship
between client and therapist to be equal and trusting.
Rogers believed that humans are complex and unique and that individuals know themselves better
than anyone else. He did not think it was possible for a therapist to fully understand or enter the
perceptual world of a client which is dominated by the client’s life experiences.
Rogers’s humanistic outlook believed for the most part that humans are good natured and are
constantly striving towards reaching their full potential. The psychologically healthy individual has a
positive outlook on life, continues to grow and develop as a person, is not afraid to make decisions
and accepts the consequences of same. He also acknowledged that there are psychologically
maladjusted individuals whose self-concept and conditions of worth are blocking their ability to
reach their full potential and self-actualise. Rogers believed that the self-concept was the basis for
imbalance in people’s lives and the purpose of his therapy was the reintegration of the self-concept.
He believed that people could bring balance back into their lives and solve their own problems. In
psychotherapy, the attitude of the therapist towards the client was all important. Rogers outlined
six core conditions of counselling necessary for therapeutic personality changes as follows.
a) The client and the therapist must be in psychological contact. It is about discussing inner feeling
focused on the self.
b) The client is in a state of incongruence. The client is emotionally upset. Brings the client back
for more counseling. If all is going well there would be no need to come.
c) The counselor is congruent in the relationship. Counselors must be genuine – must be aware of
their own feelings.
d) The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client – therapist must not judge
the client – value them. They have worth simply because they exist.
e) The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference.
This condition is about accepting that there is no exte3rnal reality but that we all have a
subjective view of the world.
f) The client perceives the counselor unconditional positive regard for them and the counselor
empathic understanding of their difficulties (Rogers 1961).
Person-centred therapy is built on trust. The client must feel that he can trust the therapist and the
therapist must have trust in themselves. The therapist needs to create a suitable environment
where the person-centred therapy can be successful. Rogers believed that counseling needed to
move away from the system of the ‘expert’ telling the client what was wrong with them and more
towards the following:-
a) The therapist should be a very good listener

b) The therapist unreservedly accepts the client as they are at the moment in time
c) The therapist places no label or name on the client’s condition
d) The therapist does not rely on any of the personality theories
e) The therapist listens, does not ask questions, does not interpret what is being said, does
not offer advice.
The person-centred therapy is a non-directive treatment. The client makes a journey through their
problems and the therapist keeps them company. Research has shown that clients can experience
changes when engaged in person-centred therapy, however, to date there has been no evidence
that any client has achieved Rogers’s theoretical ‘Fully Functioning’ person. Client changes noticed
by therapist are as follows:-
a) Away from facades and the constant preoccupation with keeping up appearances
b) Away from ‘ought’s’ and an internalized sense of duty springing from externally imposed
obligations
c) Away from living up to the expectations of others.
d) Towards valuing honesty and ‘realness’ in one’s self and others.
e) Toward valuing the capacity to direct one’s own life
f) Rewards accepting and valuing one’s feelings whether they are positive or negative
g) Rewards valuing the experience of the moment and the process of growth rather than
continually striving for objectives
h) Towards a greater respect for and understanding of others
i) Towards a cherishing of close relationships and a longing for more intimacy
j) Towards a valuing of all forms of experience and willingness to risk being open to all inner
and outer experiences, however, uncongenial or unexpected. (Frick 1971).
Rogers believed that for person centred therapy to be successful the therapists must create an
environment where the client feels unconditional positive regard, genuineness and empathy only
when the client experiences this can there be any commencement of therapeutic change. In a fully
supportive environment the client can begin to understand their problem and work towards
resolving it and changing the direction of their lives.
It has been argued that person-centred therapy can take its toll on the therapist. The therapist has
to have self-acceptance, self-trust and comfortable with their own feelings. They must work at
continuing to grow as a person and be prepared to broaden their own life experiences. The
therapist must feel secure within themselves and capable of supporting the client. The therapist
must suppress their own prejudiced and values in person-centred therapy
http://her.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/2/206.long q sort measurement
mms://64.41.121.56/saybrook.edu/RogersTherapist.wmv video
mms://64.41.121.56/saybrook.edu/TheClientDV.wmv
evidencebasedpracticenetwork.net/rodgers.aspx
http://homepages.rpi.edu/~verwyc/ROGERSOH.html q sort study
http://sites.google.com/site/ibpsychology/jonathan'shumanisticperspectivepage
Methods
The Q-sort, developed by W. Stephenson (1953) and widely used by Carl Rogers, measures
congruence between the ideal and true self. The Q-sort combats critics who note the humanistic
approach's "un-scientific" qualities as a subject measure of an individual instead of an object measure
of the whole.
http://www.ryerson.ca/~glassman/Qsort.html example of q sort test
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/intropsych/pdf/chapter14.pdf
This was done using a Q-sort technique

(devised by Stephenson, 1953), whereby the client is given a
range of cards on which there is a descriptive statement, such as:
‘I don’t trust my own emotions’ and ‘I have a warm emotional
relationship with others.’
The client is asked to sort these cards in order, from ‘most like
me’ to ‘least like me’ under the headings ‘Self’ and ‘Ideal’. From
this, Rogers and Dymond produced a numerical discrepancy
between real and ideal self. By administering the Q-sort at different
times during therapy, the effectiveness of the therapy sessions
can be assessed.
Evidence based therapy
Carl Rogers was aware that the ctitics viewed the humanist’s outlook as not scientifically based.
Rogers tried to evaluate his theory and he was the first to use audiotape sessions and anlaysie
the contents. He used the Q-sort technique measurement as devised by William Stephen (1953)
as the dependent variable measuring whether the client’s consider themselves or others
consider they had changed since starting therapy.
This is a self-reporting technique where the client fills in a questionnaire before therapy in order
to find the client’s view of their Real Self and their Ideal Self. This exercise is repeated at
different times during therapy and if the therapy is effective there will be greater discrepancy
between the first questionnaire and the last questionnaire. All of this relies on the client being
truthful and able to describe their Real Self and their Ideal Self.

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Carl Rogers’s Therapy

a) The therapist should be a very good listener

c) Away from living up to the expectations of others.

d) Towards valuing honesty and ‘realness’ in one’s self and others.

e) Toward valuing the capacity to direct one’s own life

h) Towards a greater respect for and understanding of others

i) Towards a cherishing of close relationships and a longing for more intimacy

http://her.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/2/206.long q sort measurement

http://homepages.rpi.edu/~verwyc/ROGERSOH.html q sort study

http://www.ryerson.ca/~glassman/Qsort.html example of q sort test

This was done using a Q-sort technique

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