Carl Rogers’ Client-Centered Therapy

Current psychotherapy places great importance on the relationship between the therapist and the client, who is considered an equal who must be understood and respected. However, this was not always the case.

Carl Rogers and his client-centered therapyor in the person, marked a very significant turn in the conception of psychotherapy. In this article we will describe Rogers’ therapy, as well as this author’s analysis of the clinical process in general and the therapist’s attitudes that allow the intervention to be successful.

Carl Rogers and client-centered therapy

Client-centered therapy was developed by Carl Rogers in the 1940s and 1950s. His contributions were fundamental to the development of scientific psychotherapy as we know it today.

Rogers’ work is part of psychological humanism, a movement that vindicated the goodness of human beings and their innate tendency towards personal growth against the coldest and most pessimistic perspectives of psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Rogers and Abraham Maslow are considered the pioneers of this theoretical orientation.

For Rogers psychopathology derives from incongruence between the experience of the organism (“organismic self) and the self-concept, or sense of identity; Thus, symptoms appear when behavior and emotions are not consistent with the person’s idea of ​​themselves.

Consequently, therapy must focus on the client achieving this congruence. When you do so, you will be able to develop fully, being open to the experiences of the present and feeling confident in your own body.

Probably Rogers’ most important contribution was the identification of common factors that explain the success of different therapies. For this author – and for many others after him – the effectiveness of psychotherapy does not depend so much on the application of certain techniques as on whether it goes through specific phases and the attitudes of the therapist.

Phases of therapy

Based on his research, Rogers proposed a basic and flexible scheme of the psychotherapeutic process; To this day this model is still used, regardless of the theoretical orientation of the therapistalthough each type of therapy can focus on a specific stage.

Later authors such as Robert Carkhuff and Gerard Egan investigated Rogers’ proposal and developed it. Let’s see what the three main phases of psychological therapy are.

1. Catharsis

The word “catharsis” comes from classical Greece. where it was used to refer to tragedy’s ability to purify people by making them feel intense compassion and fear. Later Freud and Breuer called their therapeutic technique, consisting of the expression of repressed emotions, the “cathartic method.”

In this model, catharsis is exploring one’s own emotions and the vital situation on the part of the client. Egan speaks of this phase as “identifying and clarifying conflictive situations and untapped opportunities”; It is about the person being able to focus on the problem in order to be able to solve it during the following stages.

Rogers’ person-centered therapy focuses on the catharsis phase: it promotes the client’s personal development so that they can later understand and solve their problems on their own.

2.Insight

“Insight” is an Anglo-Saxon term that can be translated as “intuition”, “introspection”, “perception”, “understanding” or “deepening”, among other alternatives. In therapy this term denotes a moment in which the client reinterprets their situation as a whole and perceives “the truth” – or at least begins to identify with a given narrative.

In this phase the role of the client’s personal goals is key; According to Egan, in the second stage a new perspective is built and a commitment to new objectives is generated. Psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy focus on the insight stage.

3. Action

The action phase consists, as its name indicates, of act to achieve new goals. In this phase, strategies are prepared and applied to solve problems that block well-being or personal development.

Behavior modification therapy, which uses cognitive and behavioral techniques to solve clients’ specific problems, is probably the best example of psychotherapy focused on the action phase.

Therapeutic attitudes

According to Rogers, the success of therapy depends fundamentally on certain conditions being met; considers that these are necessary and sufficient for therapeutic change, and therefore more important than any specific technique.

Among these requirements, which refer to the attitudes of the client and the therapist, Rogers highlights the three that depend on the clinician: authenticity, empathy and unconditional acceptance of the client.

1. Psychological contact

There must be a personal relationship between the therapist and the client for therapy to work. Furthermore, this relationship must be meaningful for both parties.

2. Client inconsistency

Therapy will only be successful if there is an incongruence between the client’s organismic self and his or her self-concept. As we have previously explained, the concept of “organismic self” refers to physiological processes and “self-concept” to the sense of conscious identity.

3. Authenticity of the therapist

That the therapist is authentic, or congruent, means that he is in touch with his feelings and that he communicates them to the client openly. This helps create a sincere personal relationship and may involve the therapist making self-disclosures regarding his or her own life.

4. Unconditional positive acceptance

The therapist must accept the client as he is, without judging his actions or thoughts, in addition to respecting him and being sincerely interested in him. Unconditional positive acceptance allows the client perceive your experiences without the distortion of everyday relationshipsand therefore can reinterpret itself without a priori judgments.

5. Empathic understanding

For Rogers, empathy implies the ability to get into the customer’s perspective and to perceive the world from it, as well as to experience its feelings. The therapist’s understanding makes it easier for the client to accept himself and his experiences.

6. Customer perception

Although the therapist feels true empathy for the client and accepts him unconditionally, if he does not perceive this, the therapeutic relationship will not develop properly; Therefore, the therapist must be able to transmit to the client the attitudes that will help them change.