Person-centered therapy focuses on facilitating a client's self-directed growth through a therapeutic relationship characterized by empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard. The approach challenges the assumption that the therapist knows best and instead emphasizes the client's innate potential for self-understanding and problem-solving. For change to occur, the client must experience incongruence while the therapist maintains congruence and unconditional acceptance, allowing the client to perceive they are truly understood. The goal is for clients to develop more positive self-regard independent of others' expectations through exploring their experiences in a supportive environment.

1. Person-Centered
Therapy
Dr.V.Veera Balaji Kumar PhD
Psychologist

2. Person-Centered Therapy
 A reaction against the directive and psychoanalytic
approaches
 Challenges:
 The assumption that “the counselor 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

3. Basic Philosophy
 Human beings are inherently trustworthy
 Have potential for understanding
themselves and resolving their problems
 A therapeutic relationship can facilitate their
growth and maturity

4. Person-Centered Therapy
Emphasizes:
 Therapy as a journey shared by two fallible people
 The person’s innate striving for self-actualization
 The personal characteristics of the therapist and
the quality of the therapeutic relationship
 The counselor’s creation of a permissive, “growth
promoting” climate
 People are capable of self-directed growth if
involved in a therapeutic relationship

5. The Person-Centered Approach
 A humanistic theory—each of us has a
natural potential that we can actualize and
through which we can find meaning
 Shares with existentialism a focus on
respect and trust for the client

6. Humanism vs. Existentialism…
Humanism and Existentialism BOTH:
 Respect for client’s experience and
 Uniqueness of each individual
 Trust in clients ability to change
 Believe in freedom, choice, values,
personal responsibility, autonomy, meaning
 Place less value on techniques and more
on genuine encounter

7. Humanism vs. Existentialism…
Existentialism
 Clients come into
counseling because
they are facing
anxiety in trying to
construct an identity
in a world without
intrinsic meaning
Humanism
 Clients do not suffer
from anxiety in
creating an identity
 Clients need to
believe that they have
the natural potential
to actualize

8. Person-Centered
Theory of Personality
 Carl Rogers was concerned about the way
people treated each other and how they cared
for or didn't care for each other.
 He believed that children would develop a
good sense of their own self-worth or self-
regard if others (parents, teachers, or friends)
treated them as valuable and worthy.

9. Carl Rogers:
The Humanistic Approach
Two Basic Human Needs
Self Actualization: the need to fulfill all of one’s
potential.
Positive Regard: the need to receive
acceptance, respect, and affection from others.
Positive regard often comes with conditions attached (“Conditions of
Worth”): We must meet others’ expectations to get it. This is called
Conditional Positive Regard.

10. Basic Human Problem: The two needs
are often in conflict. Satisfying one may
mean giving up the other.
Effect on Personality: We get a false
picture of who we are—our interests,
motivations, goals, abilities.
Our Two Selves
Real Self
(“Organism”): all our
experiences (feelings,
wishes, perceptions)
Self-Concept: the
person we think we are
(e.g., “I am...”)

11. Self-Concept
 The organized set of characteristics that an
individual perceives as peculiar to himself /
herself.
 It is largely based on the social evaluations
he/she has experienced.
 When significant others provide positive
conditional regard for certain behaviour the
person interjects the associated values,
making them their own and acquires
“conditions of worth”.

12. Person-Centered Theory of
Personality
 When individuals were treated by others in a
way that was sometimes harsh, manipulative,
or self-serving, then the person was treated
conditionally.
 Conditions of worth (conditionality) develop
from conditional positive regard from others.
 Such conditions can make it difficult for a
person to become a fully functioning person.

13. Conditionality or Conditions of Worth
The process of evaluating one's own experience based on values
or beliefs that others hold.
 Conditional positive regard
 Receiving praise, attention, or approval from
others as a result of behaving in accordance with
the expectations of others.
 Fully functioning person
 A person who meets his or her own need for positive
regard rather than relying on the expectations of others.
Such individuals are open to new experiences and not
defensive.

14. Losing Touch with the Real Self
 We have a need for positive self-regard (to like and
respect ourselves).
 Conditional positive regard from others becomes
conditional positive self-regard.
 This means we will like and accept only those parts
of ourselves that other people like and accept.
 The self-concept pulls away from the real self; we
get a false picture of who we really are.
 This mismatch is called Incongruence.

15. Person-Centered Therapy:
The Goal is Congruence
Incongruence has many harmful effects. One is
that it prevents self-actualization. You have to
know “who you are” to fulfill your potential.
The therapist tries to bring the self-concept
closer to the real self:
Real
Self
Self-
Concep
t
Congruence

16. Organismic Valuing Process
• Individuals selecting goals based on inner
nature, internal rationality, and individual
decision making.
• It is a means for an individuals to fulfil their
actualizing tendency which is a desire and
need to develop and evolve as a person.
• This process uses organismic variables to
develop goals and make decisions.
• Organismic variables are the internal forces
and influences an organism’s behaviour.

17. • People who experienced a caring, supportive, and
loving environment during childhood were more able
and likely to trust themselves and their internal feelings
in regards to decision making and goal achievement.
• The organismic valuing process includes many
variables such as
• authenticity (being yourself),
• autonomy (making your own decisions and not
basing it on other people's desires),
• an internal locus of evaluation (not seeking the
approval of others), and
• unconditional positive self-regard.
Organismic Valuing Process

18. Fully functioning person
• One of Roger’s proposition was that
“Psychological adjustment exists when the concept
of the self is such that all the sensory and visceral
experiences of the organism are, or may be,
assimilated on a symbolic level into a consistent
relationship with the concept of self.”
• He describes this as the good life, where the
organism continually aims to fulfil its full potential.

19. Fully functioning person
The characteristics of a fully functioning
person:
1. A growing openness to experience –
2. they move away from defensiveness and
3. have no need for ‘subception’
(subception = subliminal perception = a perceptual
defence that involves unconsciously applying
strategies to prevent a troubling stimulus from
entering consciousness).

20. Fully functioning person
2. An increasingly existential lifestyle –
living each moment fully –
not distorting the moment to fit personality
or self-concept but allowing personality
and self-concept to emanate from the
experience.
This results in excitement, daring,
adaptability, tolerance, spontaneity, and a
lack of rigidity and suggests a foundation
of trust.

21. 3. Increasing organismic trust – they trust their own
judgment and their ability to choose appropriate
behavior. They do not rely on existing codes and social
norms but trust their own sense of right and wrong.
4. Freedom of choice – not being shackled by the
restrictions that influence an incongruent individual, they
are able to make a wider range of choices more fluently.
They feel responsible for their own behavior.
5. Creativity – it follows that they will feel more free to
be creative. They adapt to their own circumstances
without feeling a need to conform.
Fully functioning person

22. Reliability and constructiveness – they can be trusted to act
constructively. An individual who is open to all their needs will
be able to maintain a balance between them. Even aggressive
needs will be matched and balanced by intrinsic goodness in
congruent individuals.
A rich full life – he describes the life of the fully functioning
individual as rich, full and exciting and suggests that they
experience joy and pain, love and heartbreak, fear and courage
more intensely. Rogers' description of the good life:This process
of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-
hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming
more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to
be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life.
(Rogers 1961)[21]
Fully functioning person

23. A Growth-Promoting Climate
 Congruence - genuineness or realness
 Unconditional positive regard- acceptance
and caring, but not approval of all behavior
 Accurate empathic understanding – an
ability to deeply grasp the client’s subjective
world
 Helper attitudes are more important than
knowledge

24. Person-Centered Therapy
3 ATTITUDES THERAPIST MUST CONVEY
 Genuineness: open, real, honest
 Unconditional positive regard and
acceptance: value and accept client as they
are
 Empathetic understanding

25. Six Conditions (necessary and sufficient for
personality changes to occur)
 Two persons are in psychological contact – A DYAD
 The first, the client, is experiencing incongruency – i.e.
VULNERABLE AND ANXIOUS
 The second person, the therapist, is congruent or
integrated in the relationship – authentic not pretending.
 The therapist experiences unconditional positive
regard or real caring for the client
 The therapist experiences empathy for the client’s
internal frame of reference and endeavors to
communicate this to the client
 The communication to the client is, to a minimal degree,
achieved- Client recognizes the acceptance & empathy
that the therapist feels for them

26. Necessary and Sufficient
Conditions for Change
1. Psychological contact
A relationship must exist so that two people
may have impact on each other.

27. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
for Change
2. Incongruence in the client
 For change to take place, a client must be in a
state of psychological vulnerability.
 There is a discrepancy between individuals'
views of themselves and their actual
experience.
 Included would be depression, anxiety, or a
wide variety of problems.
 Although individuals may not be aware at first of
their incongruence or vulnerability, they will be
so if therapy continues.

28. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
for Change
3. Congruence and genuineness
 Therapists are aware of themselves.
 They are aware of their feelings, their
experiences as they relate to the client,
and their general reactions to the client.
 Therapists are open to understanding their
own experiences as well as those of the
client.

29. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
for Change
4. Unconditional positive regard or acceptance
 The therapist does not judge the client but
accepts the client for who he or she is.
 Accepting the client does not mean that the
counselor agrees with the client.
 With acceptance often comes caring and
warmth.

30. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
for Change
5. Empathy
 The therapist enters the world of the client,
leaving behind, as much as possible, his or her
own values.
 Since it is not possible to be "value free," the
therapist monitors his or her own values and
feelings.
 The therapist tries to understand the experience
of the client, what it is to be the client.
 Caring and warmth are expressed often in
statements of empathy.

31. Conveying Empathy
 Active listening to client’s narrative
 Eye contact, body language etc.
 Reflection - Paraphrasing or summarizing
what the client has just said or
communicated so far.
 Give clients permission to be themselves
without being judged

32. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
for Change
 6. Perception of empathy and acceptance
 Not only must the therapist unconditionally accept
and understand the client, the client must perceive
that he or she is being understood and accepted.
 Therapists' voice tone and physical expression
contribute to the communication of empathy and
acceptance.
 They are a part of the client's perception of
empathy.

33. Process of Therapy
Stage 1
Minimal self-awareness
Not likely to voluntarily present for therapy
Stage 2
Little sense of responsibility for difficulties
Stage 3**
Able to discuss self-experiences and feelings
Stage 4
Begins to accept responsibility for difficulties

34. Process of Therapy
Stage 5
Able to experience and express feelings in the
present
Stage 6
Realization of previously being stuck
Stage 7
Conditions of worth are replaced by internally
generated values

35. The Therapist
 Focuses on the quality of the therapeutic
relationship
 Serves as a model of a human being struggling
toward greater realness
 Is genuine, integrated, and authentic, without a
false front
 Can openly express feelings and attitudes that
are present in the relationship with the client

36. The Client’s Experience in Therapy
 1. Experiencing responsibility.
 2. Experiencing the therapist.
 3. Experiencing the process of exploration.
 4. Experiencing the self.
 5. Experiencing change.

37. Person-Centered Therapy
OUTCOMES OF THERAPY
 Increased Self-esteem
 Greater openness to experiences
 Better congruence between actual self
and idealized self
 Decreased defensiveness, guilt / shame
and Insecurity
 Positive and comfortable relationships
 Increased capacity to experience and
express their feelings at the moment they
occur

38. Person-Centered Goals in Therapy
 Become more self-directed.
 Increase positive self-regard.
 The client chooses the goals.

39. Assessment
 The Q Sort technique - used by Rogers to assess
change with therapy. Clients sort about 100 adjective
cards twice before and twice after therapy.
 Client rates adjectives in terms of how descriptive the
words are of their “current self” and of their “ideal
self.” The two sets of scores should correlate more
highly after than before therapy.
 Assessment occurs as therapists empathically
understand clients.

40. Person-Centered Therapy
STRENGTHS
 Empathy
 Phenomenological approach
 Reflection
 Increase self-understanding
 Genuine
 Unconditional positive regard and
acceptance

41. Person-Centered Therapy
WEAKNESSES
 Not much research on theory and practice
 Theory has not evolved since the 1960’s

42. Rogers’ Contributions
 Emphasized that the
therapeutic
relationship is the
primary agent of
growth
 Created a style of
therapy that can be
used by various
helping professionals