The person-centered approach is based on concepts from humanistic psychology.

Rogers basic
assumptions are that people are essentially trustworthy, that they have a vast potential for understanding
themselves and resolving their own problems without direct intervention on the therapists part, and that
they are capable of self-directed growth if they are involved in a specific kind of therapeutic relationship.
Rogers emphasized the attitudes and personal characteristics of the therapist and the quality of the
client-therapist relationship as the prime determinants of the outcome of the therapeutic process. He
consistently relegated to a secondary position matters such as the therapists knowledge of theory and
techniques. This belief in the clients capacity for self-healing is in contrast with many theories that view
the therapists techniques as the most power agents that lead to change. Rogers revolutionized the field
of psychotherapy by proposing a theory that centered on the client as the agent for self-change.
Contemporary person-centered therapy is the result of an evolutionary process that continues to remain
open to change and refinement. Rogers did not present the person-centered theory as a fixed and
completed approach to therapy.
4 Periods of Development of the Approach:
(1) In the first period, during the 1940s, Rogers developed what was known as nondirective counseling
as a reaction against the directive and traditional psychoanalytic approaches to individual therapy.
Rogers theory emphasized the counselors creation of a permissive and nondirective climate. Rogers
also challenged the validity of commonly accepted therapeutic procedures such as advice, suggestion,
direction, persuasion, teaching, diagnosis, and interpretation. This was based on his conviction that
diagnostic concepts and procedures were inaccurate, prejudicial, and often misused. Nondirective
counselors avoided sharing a great deal about themselves with clients and instead focused mainly on
reflecting and clarifying the clients verbal and nonverbal communications with the aim of gaining insight
into the feelings expressed by clients.
(2) In the second period, during the 1950s, Rogers renamed his approach client-centered therapy to
reflect its emphasis on the client rather than on directive methods. This period focused on the
phenomenological world of the client. Rogers assumed that the best vantage point for understanding how
people behave was from their own internal frame of reference. He focused more explicitly on the
actualizing tendency as the basic motivational force that leads to client change.
(3) The third period, beginning in the late 1950s and extending into the 1970s, addressed the necessary
and sufficient conditions of therapy. The process of becoming ones experience is characterized by an
openness to experience, a trust in ones experience, an internal locus of evaluation, and the willingness to
be in process. He was interested in how people best progress in psychotherapy, and he studied the
qualities of the client-therapist relationship as a catalyst leading to personality change. Client-centered
philosophy was applied to education and was called student-centered teaching. It was also applied to
encounter groups, led by laypersons in the 1960s.
(4) The fourth phase, during the 1980s and 1990s, was marked by considerable expansion to education,
industry, groups, conflict resolution, and the search for world peace. The theory became known as
person-centered approach. This shift in terms reflected the broadening application of the approach.
Areas of further application include education, health care, cross-cultural and interracial activity,
international relations, politics, and the achievement of world-peace.
Existentialism and Humanism:
In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a growing interest among counselors in a third force in therapy as an
alternative to the psychoanalytic and behavioral approaches. Under this heading fall existential therapy,
the person-centered approach, and Gestalt therapy. Existentialism and humanism are alike in that they
share a respect for the clients subjective experience and a trust in the capacity of the client to make
positive and constructive conscious choices. They have in common an emphasis on concepts such as
freedom, choice, values, personal responsibility, autonomy, purpose, and meaning. They differ in that
existentialists take the position that we are faced with anxiety of choosing to create an identity in a world
that lacks intrinsic meaning. Humanists believe that each of us has a natural potential that we can
actualize and through which we can find meaning.
The underlying vision of humanistic philosophy is captured by the metaphor of how an acorn, if provided
with the appropriate conditions, will automatically grow in positive ways, pushed naturally toward its
actualizations as an oak. In contrast, for the existentialist there is nothing that we are, no internal
nature we can count on. We are faced at every moment with a choice about what to make of this
condition.

The existential and person-centered approaches have parallel concepts with regard to the client-therapist
relationship at the core of therapy. The phenomenology that is basic to the existentialist approach is also
fundamental to person-centered theory. Both approaches focus on the clients perceptions and call for
the therapist to enter the clients subjective world, and both approaches emphasize the clients capacity
for self-awareness and self-healing.
KEY CONCEPTS
View of Human Nature: A common theme originating in Rogers early writing and continuing to permeate
all of his works is a basic sense of trust in the clients ability to move forward in a constructive manner if
conditions fostering growth are present. Rogers maintains that people are trustworthy, resourceful,
capable of self-understanding and self-direction, able to make constructive changes, and able to live
effective and productive lives. When therapists are able to expeience and communicate their realness,
caring, and nonjudgmental understanding, significant changes in the client are most likely to occur.
He maintains that three therapist attributes create a growth-promoting climate in which individuals can
move
forward
and
become
what
they
are
capable
of
becoming:
1. congruence (genuineness, or realness)
2. unconditional positive regard (acceptance and caring)
3. accurate empathic understanding (an ability to deeply grasp the subject world of another person)
If therapists communicate these attitudes, those being helped will become less defensive and more open
to themselves and their world, and they will behave in prosocial and constructive ways. The basic drive to
fulfillment implies that people will move toward health if the way seems open for them to do so. The goals
of counseling are to set clients free and to create those conditions that will enable them to engage in
meaningful self-exploration.
The actualizing tendency is a directional process of striving toward realization, fulfillment, autonomy, selfdetermination and perfection. This growth force within us provides an internal source of healing, but it
does not imply a movement from relationships, interdependence, connection, or socialization. The
therapist places the primary responsibility on the client. The person-centered approach rejects the role of
the therapist as the authority who knows best and of the passive client who merely follows the dictates of
the therapist.
The person-centered therapist focuses on the constructive side of human nature, on what is right with the
person, and on the assets the individual brings to therapy. The emphasis is on how clients act in their
world with others, how they can move forward in constructive directions, and how they can successfully
encounter obstacles (both from within themselves and outside of themselves) that are blocking their
growth. Practitioners with a humanistic orientation encourage their clients to make changes that will lead
to living fully and authentically with the realization that this kind of existence demands a continuing
struggle. People never arrive at a final or a static state of being self-actualized; rather, they are
continually involved in the process of actualizing themselves.
THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS
Therapeutic Goals: The goals of person-centered therapy are different from those of traditional
approaches. The person-centered approach aims toward a greater degree of independence and
integration of the individual. Its focus is on the person, not on the persons presenting problem. Its
purpose is to assist clients in their growth process.
The underlying aim of therapy is to provide a climate conducive to helping the individual become a fully
functioning person. Before clients are able to work toward that goal, they must first get behind the masks
they wear, which they develop through the process of socialization. Clients come to recognize that they
have lost contact with themselves by using facades.
When the facades are worn away during the therapeutic process, what kind of person emerges from
behind the pretense? Rogers describes people who are becoming increasingly actualized as having (1)
an openness to experience (2) a trust in themselves (3) an internal source of evaluation, and (4) a
willingness to continue growing. Encouraging these characteristics is the basic goal of person-centered
therapy. The therapist does not choose specific goals for the client. The cornerstone of person-centered
theory is the view that clients in a relationship with a facilitating therapist have the capacity to define and
clarify their own goals.
Therapists Function and Role: The role of person-centered therapists is rooted in their ways of being and
attitudes, not in techniques designed to get the client to do something. Basically, therapists use
themselves as an instrument of change. It is the therapists attitude and belief in the inner resources of
the client that create the therapeutic climate for growth.

Person-centered therapist avoid certain functions:

They generally do not take a history,
They avoid asking leading and probing questions,
They do not make interpretations of the clients behavior,
They do not evaluate the clients ideas or plans, and,
They do not decide for the client about the frequency or length of the therapeutic venture.
The therapists function is to be present and accessible to clients and to focus on their immediate
experience. First and foremost, 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 therapist meets the
client on a moment-to-moment experiential basis and enters their world. Clients are then able to loosen
their defenses and rigid perceptions and move to a higher level of personal functioning. Clients become
less defensive and more open to possibilities within themselves and in the world.
Clients Experience in Therapy: Clients come to the counselor in a state of incongruence; that is, a
discrepancy exists between their self-perception and their experience in reality. The client must perceive
that a problem exists or that they are uncomfortable enough with their present psychological adjustment
to want to explore possibilities for change.
One reason clients seek therapy is a feeling of basic helplessness, powerlessness, and an inability to
make decisions or effectively direct their own lives. Clients can learn to be freer by using the relationship
to gain greater self-understanding.
As counseling progresses, clients are able to explore a wider range of beliefs and feelings. With therapy,
people distort less and move to a great acceptance and integration of conflicting and confusing feelings.
They increasingly discover aspects within themselves that had been kept hidden. As client feel
understood and accepted, their defensiveness is less necessary, and they become more open to their
experience. Because they are not as threatened, feel safer, and are less vulnerable, they become more
realistic, perceive others with greater accuracy, and become better able to understand and accept others.
They become less oriented to meeting others expectations, and thus they begin to behave in ways that
are truer to themselves. These individuals empower themselves to direct their own lives instead of
looking outside of themselves for answers. With increased freedom they tend to become more mature
psychologically and more actualized.
The client is the primary agent of change. The therapy relationship provides a supportive structure within
which clients self-healing capacities are activated.
Relationship Between Therapist and Client: Rogers based his hypothesis of the necessary and sufficient
conditions for therapeutic personality change on the quality of the relationship. Rogers hypothesis is as
follows:
1. Two persons are in psychological contact.
2. The first, or the client, is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious
3. The second person, or the therapist, is congruent or integrated in the relationship.
4. The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client.
5. The therapist experiences an empathic, understanding of the clients internal frame of reference
and endeavors to communicate this experience to the client.
6. The communication to the client of the therapists empathic understanding and unconditional
positive regard is to a minimal degree achieved.
Rogers hypothesized that no other conditions were necessary. If the core conditions exist over some
period of time, constructive personality change will occur. The core conditions do not vary according to
client type. Further, they are both necessary and sufficient for all approaches to therapy and apply to all
personal relationships, not just to psychotherapy.
The client-therapist relationship is characterized by equality. As clients experience the therapist listening
in an accepting way to them, they gradually learn how to listen acceptingly to themselves.
This approach is perhaps best characterized as a way of being and as a shared journey in which therapist
and client reveal their humanness and participate in a growth experience. The core conditions of
congruence, unconditional positive regard, and accurate empathic understanding are embraced by many
therapeutic schools as helpful in facilitating therapeutic change.
Congruence, or genuineness. Congruence implies that therapists are real, that is, they are genuine,
integrated, and authentic during the therapy hour. They can openly express feelings, thoughts, reactions,
and attitudes that are present in the relationship with the client.

Through authenticity the therapist serves as a model of a human being struggling toward greater
realness. Being congruent might necessitate the expression of anger, frustration, liking, attraction,
concern, boredom, annoyance, and a range of other feelings in the relationship. This does not mean that
therapists should impulsively share all their reactions, for self-disclosure must also be appropriate and
well-timed. Sharing because one thinks it will be good for the client without being genuinely moved to
express something regarded as personal, can be incongruent. Congruence exists on a continuum rather
than on an all-or-nothing basis, as is true of all three core conditions.
Unconditional positive regard and acceptance. The second attitude therapists need to communicate is
deep and genuine caring for the client as a person. The caring is unconditional; it is not contaminated by
evaluation or judgment of the clients feelings, thoughts, and behavior as good or bad. Therapists value
and warmly accept clients without placing stipulations on their acceptance. Clients are free to have
feelings and experiences without risking the loss of their therapists acceptance. Acceptance is the
recognition of clients rights to have their own beliefs and feelings; it is not the approval of all behavior. All
overt behavior need not be approved or accepted. Rogers makes it clear that it is not possible for
therapist to genuinely feel acceptance and unconditional caring at all times. However, if therapists have
little respect for their clients, or an active dislike or disgust, it is not likely that the therapeutic work will be
fruitful.
Accurate empathic understanding. One of the main tasks of the therapist is to understand clients
experience and feelings sensitively and accurately as they are revealed in the moment-to-moment
interaction during the therapy session. The therapist strives to sense clients subjective experience,
particularly in the here-and-now.
Empathic understanding implies that the therapist will sense clients feelings as if they were his or her
own without becoming lost in those feelings. Part of empathic understanding is the therapists ability to
reflect the experiencing of clients. One of the functions of therapist reflection is to encourage and enable
clients to become more reflective themselves.
Accurate empathy is the cornerstone of the person-centered approach. It is a way for therapists to hear
the meanings expressed by their clients that often lie at the edge of their awareness. Full empathy entails
understanding the meaning and feeling of a clients experiencing. Empathy is an active ingredient of
change that facilitates clients cognitive processes and emotional self-regulation. Empathy is a deep and
subjective understanding of the client with the client. Therapists must not lose their own separateness.
APPLICATION
Many followers of Rogers simply imitated his reflective style, and client-centered therapy has often been
identified primarily with the technique of reflection.
Evolution of person-centered methods. What is essential for clients progress is the therapists presence,
which refers to the therapist being completely engaged and absorbed in the relationship with the client.
The therapist is empathically interested in the client and is congruent in relation to the client. This
presence is far more powerful than any techniques a therapist might use to bring about change.
Therapist congruence is basic to establishing trust and safety with clients, and the therapy process is
likely to be adversely affected if the therapist is not fully authentic.
The role of assessment. From a person-centered perspective, what matters is the clients selfassessment. The best source of knowledge about the client is the individual client.
Rogers recommended caution in using tests or in taking a complete case history at the outset of
counseling. If a counseling relationship began with a battery of tests, he believed clients could get the
impression that the counselor would be providing the solutions to their problems. It may not be a question
of whether to incorporate assessment into therapeutic practice but of how to involve clients as fully as
possible in their assessment and treatment process.
Areas of application. Person-centered therapy has been proven effective with a wide range of client
problems including anxiety disorders, alcoholism, psychosomatic problems, agoraphobia, interpersonal
difficulties, depression, cancer, and personality disorders. It has proven to be especially applicable in
crisis intervention such as unwanted pregnancy, an illness, or the loss of a loved one. When people are
in crisis, one of the first steps is to give them an opportunity to fully express themselves. Sensitive
listening, hearing, and understanding are essential at this point. Being heard and understood helps
ground people in crises, helps to calm them in the midst of turmoil, and enables them to think more clearly
and make better decisions. Although a persons crisis is not likely to be resolved by one or two contacts

with a helper, such contacts can pave the way for being open to receiving help later. Communicating a
deep sense of understanding should always precede other more problem-solving interventions.
The person-centered approach demands a great deal of the therapist. An effective person-centered
therapist must be grounded, centered, present, focused, patient, and accepting in a way that involves
maturity. Without a person-centered attitude or way of being, mere application of skills is likely to be
hollow.
MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Contributions. Person-centered therapy has made significant contributions to the field of human relations
with diverse cultural groups. The emphasis on the core conditions makes the person-centered approach
useful in understanding diverse worldviews.
Limitations. Many clients who come to community mental health clinics or who are involved in outpatient
treatment want more structure than is provided by this approach. They expect a directive counselor and
can be put off by one who does not provide sufficient structure.
A second limitation of the person-centered approach is that it is difficult to translate the core conditions
into actual practice in certain cultures. Clients accustomed to indirect communication may not be
comfortable with direct expression of empathy or self-disclosure on the therapists part.
A third limitation is that this approach extols the value of an internal locus of evaluation. Yet some ethnic
groups value collectivism more than individualism. In these cultures, clients are likely to be highly
influenced by societal expectations and not simply motivated by their own personal preference.
Contributions of the person-centered approach: Rogers had a major impact on the field of counseling and
psychotherapy. When he introduced his revolutionary ideas in the 1940s, he provided a powerful and
radical alternative to psychoanalysis and to the directive approaches then practiced. Rogers was a
pioneer in shifting the therapeutic focus from an emphasis on technique and reliance on therapist
authority to that of relationship. One of Rogerss contributions to the field of psychotherapy was his
willingness to state his concepts as testable hypotheses and to submit them to research. He literally
opened the field to research. Person-centered therapy has demonstrated that therapist empathy plays a
vital role in facilitating constructive changes in the client:
Research consistently demonstrates that therapist empathy is the most potent predictor of client
progress in therapy.
Empathy is an essential component of successful therapy in every therapeutic modality.
Empathy is a basic component of emotional intelligence.
Client perception of therapist empathy, as opposed to that of external raters or therapists, is mot
predictive of positive client outcome.
Limitations of the person-centered approach: A potential limitation of this approach is the way that some
students in training and practitioners with a person centered orientation have a tendency to be very
supportive of clients without being challenging. A related challenge for counselors using this approach is
to truly support clients in finding their own way. Counselors sometimes experience difficulty in allowing
clients to decide their own specific goals in therapy. It is easy to give lip service to the concept of clients
finding their own way, but it takes considerable respect for clients and faith on the therapists part to
encourage clients to listen to themselves and follow their own directions, particularly when they make
choices that are not what the therapist hoped for.