What is Person-Centred Therapy?
Person-centred therapy is psychotherapy or counselling rooted in the ‘person-centred approach’ (Wilkins, 2015, p. 3), so you can use either term – they mean essentially the same thing.
Carl Rogers is the name most commonly associated with person-centred theory – a therapist himself, he noticed a shift in the thinking that guided his therapeutic approach. For Rogers, the question of “how can I treat, or cure, or change [a] person?” became “how can I provide a relationship which a person may use for their own personal growth?” (Rogers, 1961, p. 32). This went against the common ideas (at the time, at least) of mental health treatment being a medical challenge, and also the idea of the therapist being an ‘expert’ in anything they encountered.
For Rogers, neither idea seemed realistic – hypothesising instead that with the right kind of relationship, a person can discover within themselves a capacity to make best use of that relationship for growth, resulting in change and personal development (Rogers, 1961). In other words, with the right therapeutic relationship, a person can make the most of that relationship to arrive at change and personal development under their own steam – without needing to be explicitly told what they should or shouldn’t do.
What theories is person-centred therapy grounded in?
According to Casemore (2011) the person-centred approach “draws on three [distinct] philosophical beliefs: humanism, existentialism and phenomenology”.
Humanism, as defined by Reeves (2018, p. 68), argues that every individual “has the potential for growth and development”, existentialism argues that “we all possess free will and make choices based on our beliefs and experiences”, while phenomenology “asserts there is no one, single reality but rather reality is constructed through our own individual experience”.
The humanist, existentialist and phenomenological schools of thought give us the initial context for the birth of the person-centred approach, though their conclusions and learnings are not integral to person-centred therapy. As Wilkins (2015, p. 13) writes, “the value of the [person-centred] theory lies more in its construction than its propagation”. These philosophical theories may inform the person-centred approach, but they are, or should be, out of a therapist’s awareness when sat face-to-face with a client (Wilkins, 2015: 13).
What needs to exist in a person-centred therapeutic relationship for it to succeed?
When constructing the person-centred theory, Rogers (1957, p. 95) arrived at six “necessary and sufficient” conditions that need to be present between a therapist and client for therapeutic change to take place:
Two people must be in psychological contact
The client should be in a state of ‘incongruence’, wherein they are “vulnerable or anxious”
The therapist should be in a state of ‘congruence’, wherein they are “integrated in the [therapeutic] relationship”
The therapist should experience unconditional positive regard for the client
The therapist should experience an empathic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference
Points 4 and 5 should be implicitly communicated to the client
These six conditions should be present throughout the therapy.
What else should I know about person-centred therapy?
The person-centred approach, in its purest sense, is non-directive – that means the classical person-centred therapist would not take a history, would not ask leading or probing questions, would not volunteer interpretations or explanations about the client to the client, does not offer advice or even reassurance, and does not evaluate a client’s ideas or plans (Brodley, 1997).
That said, many person-centred practitioners (myself included) tend to find a version of person-centred therapy that better fits the kind of practitioner they want to be – I know I have absolutely asked questions, volunteered interpretations, offered advice and even, when asked, evaluated a client’s ideas. For me, and I imagine many therapists would agree with me, it’s not only finding a version of the approach that works for you, but also adapting your approach based on individual client need – there’s no one-size-fits-all in mental health, or at least, I’ve yet to find one!T
TL;DR
Person-centred therapy is psychotherapy or counselling grounded in the person-centred approach, the godfather of which is Carl Rogers – who challenged how mental health treatment was approached at the time to instead emphasise creating relationships to allow people to develop under their own steam, and in their own time. For Rogers it was less about telling you what to do to better your mental health, but to create the space for you to arrive at those same conclusions yourself – that’s the essence of the approach, in a nutshell.
Sources
Brodley, B. T. (1997). The nondirective attitude in client-centered therapy. The Person-Centered Journal, 4(1), 18-30.
Casemore, R. (2011). Person-centred counselling in a nutshell (2nd ed.). SAGE.
Reeves, A. (2018). An introduction to counselling and psychotherapy : from theory to practice.
Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of consulting psychology, 21(2), 95.
Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person : a therapist's view of psychotherapy.
Wilkins, P. (2015). Person-Centred Therapy : 100 Key Points. Taylor & Francis Group. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/salford/detail.action?docID=4218744