Significant Aspects of Client-Centred Therapy: A Summary

Summary of a paper, Significant Aspects of Client-Centred Therapy, given at a seminar of the staff of the Menninger Clinic and the Topeka Veteran’s Hospital, Topeka, Kansas on May 15 1946 by Carl R. Rogers.

1. The process of client-centred therapy is predictable.

If therapeutic conditions are present then the client’s constructive forces will be released.
If the client’s constructive forces are released then therapeutic results will occur.

Therapeutic conditions:

The counsellor agrees that the client is responsible for himself, and is willing for the client to keep that responsibility.
The counsellor relies on the client’s constructive force for therapeutic change.
The counsellor creates a warm and permissive atmosphere where the client is as free to withhold expression as he is to give expression to his feelings. iv.The counsellor sets limits on the client’s behaviour and not on the client’s attitudes.
The counsellor sensitively reflects and clarifies the client’s attitudes. vi.The counsellor refrains from questioning, probing, blaming, interpreting, advising, suggesting, persuading and reassuring the client.

Therapeutic results:

Catharsis by the client.
Insight by the client.
Positive choice and action by the client.

2. The client possesses constructive forces necessary for therapeutic change.

The client has constructive forces to become mature, socially adjusted, independent and productive.
The client has constructive forces that have been either entirely unrecognised or grossly underestimated.
If the counsellor provides guidance at crucial points then the client can take responsibility for himself, assimilate insight and make choices for himself.
A positive relationship exists between the level of trust of the client’s constructive forces, by the counsellor, and the level of release of the client’s constructive forces, by the client.

3. The client is the centre of the therapeutic relationship.

The counsellor has to believe that the client truly has a creative potential in him.
The counsellor has to believe that the client is unique.
The counsellor has to believe that the client alone can work out his own individuality.
The counsellor has to provide deep understanding and acceptance of the client’s attitudes.
Understanding is achieved through sensitive reflection and clarification of the client’s attitudes.
Acceptance involves neither approval nor disapproval.

References

Carl R. Rogers (1946) Significant Aspects of Client-Centered Therapy. [On-Line]. Available: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Rogers/therapy.htm. (January 24, 2012)