Person-Centered model of helping

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One approach to help you with an assignment like this one is to address each question, which you can then draw on for your final copy. This is the approach that this response takes. I also attached a helpful APA resource.

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RESPONSE:

1. Presentation of the Person-Centered model

This approach was first developed by the late Dr Carl Rogers (1902 - 1987). Person-centered therapy, which is also known as client-centered, non-directive, or Rogerian therapy, is an approach to counseling and psychotherapy that places much of the responsibility for the treatment process on the client, with the therapist taking a nondirective role (Rogers, 1980).

Specifically, the person-centered approach was developed from the concepts of humanistic psychology. The humanistic approach "views people as capable and autonomous, with the ability to resolve their difficulties, realize their potential, and change their lives in positive ways" (Seligman, 2006). Carl Rogers (a major contributor of the client-centered approach) emphasized the humanistic perspective as well as ensuring therapeutic relationships with clients promote self-esteem, authenticity and actualization in their life, and help them to use their strengths (Seligman, 2006).

Person-centered therapy has two primary goals, which are increased self-esteem and greater openness to experience. The therapist attempts to facilitate related changes and seeks to foster in clients the following: closer agreement between the client's idealized and actual selves; better self-understanding; lower levels of defensiveness, guilt, and insecurity; more positive and comfortable relationships with others; and an increased capacity to experience and express feelings at the moment they occur (Rogers, 1980).

Further, Bozarth (1998) provided a summary of the person-centered theory as follows:

1. The therapist must BE a certain way, congruent, in the momentary relationship to the client while experiencing unconditional positive regard towards and empathic understanding of the client's frame of reference.
2. The client must, at least, minimally perceive the two conditions of the therapist's experience of UPR towards and of EU of her.
3. The fundamental curative or promotional factor is the client's perception of the therapist's experience of unconditional positive regard. It can be no other way in Rogers' theory.
4. There are no goals of the person-centered therapist for the client. The only goal of the therapist is for her, to be a certain way.
5. The primary preparation of the person-centered therapist must be the development of her own unconditional positive self-regard.
6. The primary condition is the growth hypothesis; i.e., the actualizing tendency.
7. The necessary and sufficient conditions hypothesized by Rogers are ultimately one condition in unity with the growth hypothesis.

2. Your view of helping and how your chosen model fits within your viewpoint

This asks for your personal view of helping and how it fits with person-centered therapy. Does your view of helping reflect these principles?

3. The relationship between the clinician and the participant as it relates to Person-Centered model.

The relationship between the therapist and the client is non-directive. The therapist is supportive, non-judgmental and does not work out what the client's problem is; this is the client's work. In other words, the therapist merely facilitates self-actualization by providing a climate in which clients can freely engage in focused, in-depth self-exploration (Person Centered Therapy, 2007). ...