Download client centered therapy notes and more Cheat Sheet Psychotherapy in PDF only on Docsity!
CLIENT CENTRED THERAPY
Client-centered therapy, or person-centred therapy, is a non- directive approach to talk therapy. It requires the client to actively take the reins during each therapy session, while the therapist acts mainly as a guide or a source of support for the client. “Person centered therapy allows the client to steer the ship. The concept of client centered therapy might seem like a stretch — after all, most kinds of humanistic counseling essentially focus on the client. What sets this type of therapy apart, however, is that it centers the client in a more positive and inclusive manner, providing deeper insight into the difficult situation they’re facing while also maximizing their ability to resolve it on their own. This type of talk therapy supports a therapeutic process that encourages positive change within the client. In the 1930s, American psychologist Carl Rogers developed client centered therapy to serve as a contrast to the practice of psychoanalysis, which was widespread at the time. Rogers believed that no other person’s ideas could be as valid as one’s individual experience, and that exploring these experiences in a supportive, non-judgemental environment is necessary in order to achieve a positive therapy experience. Rogers’ theories on humanistic psychology gave rise to the client centered approach to psychotherapy, known as Rogerian therapy. Rogers used the term “client” rather than “patient” to promote equality in the therapist-client relationship. Traditionally, there was a power imbalance in the therapeutic relationship between the therapist and the patient, but client centered therapy emphasizes that the client’s experience is just as valid as a professional’s insight, and therefore the two parties in the therapeutic relationship should be viewed as equals. Relationship between therapist and client: 6 conditions:
Rogerian Therapy, also known as Client centred therapy, was developed in the 1940s by Carl Rogers. Rogers thought that everyone had the power to transform their lives for the better and hence created person-centred therapy as a method for granting patients more agency during treatment sessions. Rogers' way of psychotherapy is regarded as humanistic as it emphasises each person's positive potential. Typically, the therapist will not provide recommendations or make a formal diagnosis in Rogerian therapy. Instead, listening to the client and repeating what they say is the therapist's primary responsibility (Hopper, 2018). The six factors listed below, according to Rogers (1961), are both necessary and sufficient for personality changes to take place:
- Two persons are in psychological contact. This first requirement serves to clarify that the two individuals are to some extent in contact and that each creates a discernible impact in the other's experiential realm. The fact that this first requirement for therapeutic change is so straightforward suggests that it might be better to refer to it as an assumption or a prerequisite to distinguish it from the following conditions. Nevertheless, it is included since the remaining elements would be meaningless without it.
- The first, whom we shall term the client, is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious. There is a fundamental difference between the meaning of the circumstance as it is experienced by an individual and how that meaning is symbolised in awareness so that it does not conflict with the image of themself that the individual has in their mind. When an individual is unaware of such inconsistencies inside themself, they are only open to the possibilities of uneasiness and disarray. There are times when an experience is so abrupt or overtly inconsistent that it cannot be disputed. The individual is therefore open to such a possibility. If the individual faintly detects such an incongruence inside themselves, a tension state known as anxiety results. Such Anxiety is frequently observed in therapy as the patient gets closer to realising a part of their experience that is blatantly at odds with how they see themselves.
- The second person, whom we shall term the therapist, is congruent or integrated in the relationship.
- The communication to the client of the therapist’s empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard is to a minimal degree achieved. The sixth condition is that the client at least somewhat understands the therapist's acceptance and empathy for them. If these views are not communicated in some way, the client will not perceive them as being in the relationship, making it impossible to start the therapeutic process. Since attitudes are intangible, it could be more appropriate to say that a client interprets a therapist's actions and words as indicating some level of acceptance and comprehension on his part. Who Can Benefit From Client Centered Therapy? Client centered therapy can be beneficial to clients who are dealing with a wide range of issues, such as relationship problems, phobias, panic attacks, substance abuse, personality disorders, low self-esteem linked to depression, stress management, eating disorders, and trauma recovery, among others. The Rogerian approach can also be beneficial to individuals who are averse to therapy as a result of their fear of judgement or criticism thanks to the atmosphere of unconditional positive regard fostered by client centered therapists. Individuals looking to improve their self-awareness and problem-solving abilities can also benefit from person centered therapy with a trained counselor. it’s important to remember that the purpose of therapy isn’t always restricted to completely overcoming a difficult time in your life. It could also be a means of learning to accept yourself as you really are and letting go of guilt over past mistakes. Person centered therapy has been used in a broad range of circumstances, including work with adolescents, parenting difficulties, individual adults, as well as adult relationships. It is most effective for persons who are highly self-motivated, since much of the effort and direction actually comes from the client. Self-motivation may come from a desire to improve a life that is acceptable, but not up to one’s potential. Alternatively, the self- motivation may result from having reached a level of distress that the client can no longer tolerate. For example, one may be struggling with an
addiction, a frustrating work environment, or the end of a significant relationship. Any difficult situation may create the client’s state of incongruence. A common concern of clients who benefit from person centered therapy is a need for greater self-confidence. This is particularly true when the lack of confidence is related to social anxiety or fear of rejection, as opposed to a lack of confidence in one’s skills or talents. Because it is relationship based, person centered therapy is well suited for the client who seeks an increase in self-esteem or in becoming open to new experiences. 3 Therapist’s Function and Role According to Rogers, the therapist acts as a facilitator, assisting the clientin his or her personality change process and down the path to congruence and self-actualization. It is also important to note that through the therapeuticrelationship, the therapist often grows and changes as much as the client. Thus,the power of the relationship that Rogers describes influences both thetherapist and the client (Corey, 1986). In short, Rogers viewed the client-therapist relationship as one of equality,that is, the counselor does not keep their analysis and knowledge from theclient. Instead, the client progresses in his or her personality change(s)because of the "equality" of the relationship. "As clients areexperiencing the therapist listening in an accepting way to them, they graduallylearn how to listen acceptingly to themselves" (Corey, 1986). Since thecounselor cares for and values the client, the client also begins to see andbelieve in the worth and value of him or herself. It is a non-directive form of talk therapy, meaning that it allows the client to lead the conversation and does not attempt to steer the client in any way. This approach rests on one vital quality: unconditional positive regard. This means that the therapist refrains from judging the client for any reason, providing a source of complete acceptance and support (Cherry, 2017).
client, due to his or her lack of knowledge of the client. Only the client has enough knowledge of themselves to set effective and desirable goals for therapy. Other commonly gained benefits include: Greater agreement between the client’s idea and actual selves Better understanding and awareness Decreased defensiveness, insecurity, and guilt Greater trust in oneself Healthier relationships Improvement in self-expression Improved mental health overall. Cultural Awareness in Client-Centered Counselling In brief, the MC counseling competencies, as put forth by D. W. Sue et al. (1992), include three characteristics that apply to the development of the competent therapist. The therapist must develop (a) an understanding or knowledge of the client’s experience as a culturally different person, (b) an awareness of his or her own assumptions about culturally diverse people, and (c) culturally appropriate therapeutic interventions and skills. Knowledge of the client’s worldview. As the therapist develops an understanding of the client’s worldview, potentially rigid beliefs and attitudes toward the client’s culture are unearthed. The therapist facilitates this exploration by obtaining knowledge about the client’s cultural group, including the culture-specific attitudes toward mental health issues, help-seeking behavior, and appropriateness of counseling approaches. The therapist supplements this knowledge through experiential immersion in culturally different settings so that his or her “perspective of minorities is more than an academic or helping exercise”. Awareness of own assumptions. As the therapist develops cultural knowledge he or she becomes more aware of the relativity of cultural assumptions. The therapist’s attitudes about his or her own culture, as well as beliefs about other cultures, move from a state of rigidity toward a more dynamic viewpoint. In tandem, the therapist develops a deeper, more accurate understanding and subsequent ownership of ways in
which dominant group membership has benefited and affected him or her personally. The therapist also becomes aware of the effects that these socially constructed power differentials have on the relationship with culturally different clients—at times communicated through interpersonal style, office décor, therapy orientation, and so on. Culturally adapted interventions. The therapist’s attitudes toward helping and healing practices are extended beyond a mainstream, Westernized counseling approach. He or she moves toward respect and understanding of religious/spiritual values relating to mental and physical functioning, as well as indigenous, culturally specific healing practices, including the importance of family and community resources. As the therapist delves further into culturally different perspectives, he or she acknowledges the cultural bias affecting mainstream therapy practice, including monocultural diagnostic assessment procedures that may perpetuate barriers to mental health services. within a more collectivist-oriented culture, holding status as a divorcee might result in a defensive reaction within the individual—particularly the women—that would presumably be related to an unusually strong individualistic client stance (i.e., higher than “culturally normal” self- differentiation scores). As a result of therapy, the person becomes less defensive over time, returning to a more balanced self-concept that would include both individual and collectivist attributes (i.e., a lower self- differentiation score). Specifically, in a person-centred therapeutic climate, where the therapist’s intent is toward a nonjudgmental attitude, the client will likely be encouraged to explore individually chosen aspects of his or her worldview. Within an MC context, the tendency toward self-actualization —hypothesized to be the meta mechanism of change within a person- centred relationship (Quinn, 2011)— may operate within a client by moving him or her toward individual–collective equilibrium. In the process, the client accommodates and embraces various aspects of his or her culture-of-origin, while also retaining unique personal qualities as well. In this way, the client can remain a unique person, but within the context of a relationship with and responsibility to/for others. Thus, increased self-esteem will not always predict increased individuation. Rather, self-esteem will be the outcome of an increased sense of personal choice.
perceives the client’s illness myth and, gradually, as a result of this nonjudgmental intention to create a client–therapist cognitive match (Zane et al., 2005), the therapist will communicate unconditional positive regard to the client. As a result, it is hypothesized that this genuine positive regard and unconditional communication of acceptance and understanding of the client, or family, will become increasingly integrated into the client’s self-concept, or each family member’s “self-in-group” concept, resulting in a tendency toward unconditional positive self- regard: “It is the therapist’s genuine congruence in the relationship that authenticates this positive regard as real and something the client is able to own and believe in”. ASSIGNMENT ANSWER In the 1940s, Carl Rogers pioneered person-centered therapy. The humanistic approach, which is the foundation of Rogerian therapy (also known as person-centered therapy), is predicated on the idea that people have free choice and are capable of development and self-actualization. According to Rogers, people may access tremendous resources inside themselves for self- understanding and for changing their self-concepts, fundamental attitudes, and self-directed action if a specified environment of facilitative psychological attitudes can be developed. Each person is regarded to have the capacity and willingness to develop personally under this non-directive, empathic approach. According to Rogers, this intrinsic human urge is referred to as the "actualizing tendency" or self-actualization. He contrasted it to the pursuit of harmony, structure, and greater complexity by other living things. Six factors have been identified by Rogers (1957) as both essential and sufficient for therapeutic personality change. These six prerequisites, according to "The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Therapeutic Personality Change" (1992), are as follows: 1) Two persons engage psychologically with one another. 2) The first person, referred to as the client, is in a vulnerable or anxious state. 3) The therapist, the second, is integrated or congruent in the relationship. 4) The therapist has unconditional positive regard for the client. 5) The therapist strives to communicate to the client their sense of the therapist's empathetic grasp of the client's internal frame of reference. 6) The
communication to the client of the therapist’s empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard is to a minimal degree achieved. The Person-Centred approach to therapy that Rogers proposed revolves around the three fundamental elements that his method advocates as being essential to this method of therapy, namely unconditional positive regard, empathy, and congruence. I believe that regardless of whether they choose to use a person-centered approach or not, all competent therapists should provide these three basic environmental conditions. Once these conditions are met, a counsellor can then advance to a stage where their specialisation in a particular area will assist the client in resolving their issues. The therapeutic relationship between the client and the therapist is crucial, and the results of the therapy will reflect this relationship (Rogers, 2007). A stronger therapeutic bond would foster a sense of safety and trust between the client and the therapist, enabling the client to be more open about exploring their concerns. According to Rogers, although clients with a few particular illnesses that cause psychotic symptoms wouldn't be aware of the association, the understanding of it is still crucial. Additionally, the connection Rogers developed is more general in nature, has a wider application, and can be used with other schools of psychotherapy. One of the two people involved in the connection is a client who is in a vulnerable and nervous state (Rogers, 2007). This condition provides insight into the overall character of the customer, from those going through little stress to those exhibiting psychotic symptoms. The Person-Centred method was found to be "not especially helpful" when used as a tool to aid a sample of hospitalised schizophrenia patients, according to a 1957 assessment by Rogers and a few of his Chicago University colleagues. McLeod (2005) mentions the findings of another well-known person-centered therapist who observed that the effectiveness of the Person-Centred model was severely constrained when working with clients who were "stuck in their own private world," which serves as more support for this notion. Empathy helps increase adherence to therapeutic procedures by increasing client satisfaction with therapy. People could feel emotionally healed and deserving of respect as a result of it. Empathy supports the client's efforts to change their personality, helps the client to analyse their feelings, and may aid with emotional reprocessing. However, Rogers' use of the word "sensing" rather than "feeling" when discussing empathy (Hill, 2007) indicates a cognitive as
flexible and that the degree changes from client to client and from session to session. As previously stated, the therapist's role is to demonstrate empathetic understanding and unconditional positive regard through verbal and nonverbal responses. Despite the therapist's need to communicate, it is crucial for the client to recognise the empathy and unconditional positive regard. Silberschatz (2007) argued that although Rogers' six requirements were frequently required for therapeutic connection, they weren't always enough. Even though many clients undoubtedly benefit much from the therapist-offered conditions and relationship qualities that Rogers noted, there are other clients who require extra technical treatments (such as interpretations, homework, relaxation exercises, mindfulness training, etc). Additionally, the therapeutic process of change was not taken into consideration by Rogers' method when considering client's characteristics (Silberschatz, 2007). The ability of each person to benefit from therapy differs, and these differences contribute at least in part to therapeutic outcomes. The degree or quality of attachment type, the severity and duration of the difficulties, the client's desire or readiness to change, and reality testing are all factors that affect how effectively therapy works (Silberschatz, 2007). Additionally, there is no indication that the therapist has to possess any kind of academic background and expertise in the subjects of psychology, psychiatry, medicine, or religion. The three conditions—numbers three, four, and five—relate directly to the therapist and are traits of experience, not of knowledge. As a result, the professional training component is not mentioned. Although intellectual growth and knowledge acquisition have numerous positive effects, Rogerian theory makes no mention of them. Rogerian therapy is said to work best for those who are "worried well," but it is ineffective for people who have ingrained issues that call for other kinds of therapy. Kovel(1976) is another example of this perspective. The notion that while the client may use them in a variety of ways, the basic components of psychotherapy exist in a single configuration. Currently, therapists operate on the presumption that there are many more requirements for psychotherapy than those stated. To emphasise this, it should be noted that it is not stated, for example, that these prerequisites only apply to a specific type of client and that other types of clients require additional circumstances in order to affect psychotherapeutic change. For instance, the needs of a client experiencing anxiety may differ slightly from those of a client experiencing psychosis.
Overall, in my opinion, this therapy does have some drawbacks, but with the right amount of practise and consideration, these necessary and sufficient conditions can promote the client's wellbeing by fostering a safe environment where they are not judged and can express their most vulnerable sides while also learning new skills and improving their self-esteem. B) Briefly discuss Rogerian therapy’s applicability and suitability in the Indian context. Person-centered therapy(Rogerian therapy) is one of the most widely used paradigms of psychotherapy worldwide. Person-centered therapy has been employed in a variety of situations, including therapy with teenagers, parental challenges, adult individuals, and adult relationships. Let us explore its applicability and suitability in the Indian context. Indian scholars have long asserted that contemporary western psychotherapy and counselling have not been successful in India since the development of that country has mostly been a Euro-American endeavour. Psychology in the west has a long tradition of deliberately distinguishing itself from religion and metaphysics, abandoning its earlier emphasis on the soul in favour of the study of human behaviour. It was devoted to logical positivism and relied heavily on the inductive branch of logical scientific thinking. A significant amount of cross-cultural psychological literature has argued for a distinction between Western independent and Eastern interdependent selves like in India, that eastern people, especially those from India, have a tendency to define themselves in terms of their social connections rather than
In western societies, the person-centered concept of client and counsellor equality works extremely well. However, the construction of such equality is unworkable and meaningless in Asian societies like India, since family networks are also maintained on a hierarchical basis. First of all, an Indian clients would approach a counsellor believing that the counsellor had information that they do not, which would immediately create a power gap because Indian society values those who possess knowledge. Looking at the counsellor as the more competent person leads to the second problem. The client doesn't believe he has the resources or ability to take charge of his own life. The counsellor is only a facilitator in the client's own journey of healing and self-discovery, which goes against one of the fundamental pillars of person- centered therapy. In Indian contexts, clients go to the counsellor for help in solving their difficulties rather than trying to figure it out on their own. Additionally, cognitively operating and contractual in character, person- centered counselling involves clients agreeing to work with a counsellor on their issues. Asian civilizations, especially those of India, are primarily emotional rather than cognitive and relational rather than work-centered. In order to communicate their dependence requirements, clients often seek out therapists that they have a stronger emotional connection with (Laungani, 1999: 143). There are certain challenges with the person-centered approach in Indian contexts. Len Holdstock contends that person-centered therapy has to broaden its understanding of the self in order to offer a truly global perspective on human suffering and growth (Holdstock, 1993, 1996a and b). He asserts that the tactic conforms to the widely held notion in western society that the person is independent and autonomous. Holdstock contends that the west's emphasis on autonomy and freedom has resulted in a perspective of the self that may at first glance seem to paint an egocentric, egotistical picture of the person. Len Holdstock asserts that person-centered therapy must broaden its understanding of the self if it is to offer a truly global perspective on human suffering and growth (Holdstock, 1993, 1996a, and b). Although Rogers was well aware of the importance of others to and for each individual, he always began with the actualization of the self as a distinct social system unit (Holdstock, 1996b: 399). This, in my opinion, is essentially a westernised view of the self, which stands in stark contrast to the interdependent model prevalent in many non-western countries, such as India.
I would like to put forth the other side of the coin as well. Buddhism has a concept of self-actualization that looks to be comparable to Rogers'. This is due to the fact that all of its concepts see self-actualization as the realisation of human potential and contend that everyone possesses "an actualizing propensity that fosters growth, direction, and productivity." More so than Rogers, Buddhism emphasises the independence of people's thinking and behaviours from societal pressures rather than the significance of people accepting authority from outside sources. It might be claimed that, when taking into account such notions in Buddhism, the stress on autonomy and independence in the concept of self-actualization may not be a feature only of Western culture, even though it may prove to be an individualistic cultural outlook. That is to say, it might be argued that the cultural settings to which the PCA can be applied may be larger than the boundaries of Western cultures because Eastern philosophy has ideals of self-actualization that are comparable to Rogers'. In other words, the PCA may be relevant to non-Western regions' individualistic cultural groupings that uphold the autonomous self-view. Many person-centered researchers, such as Lago & Hirai (2013), believe that the PCA can be used with all client demographics. If we as therapists concentrate on what is common among people's motivations for therapeutic change, namely the actualizing tendency, then I personally agree with this, otherwise when I take all the factors into consideration, PCA needs to be made and practiced in a more inclusive manner according to the place and people like India. In terms of India, Since there may be and are variations in how people view themselves and, consequently, how they achieve self-actualization, I believe that though with proper knowledge and multicultural expertise it is possible to practice PCA in India but at the same time I feel it is a bit challenging in terms of its suitability and applicability in a country like India.
