Roger's_Theory

Produce an essay demonstrating your knowledge of person centred theory and its application in practice. A critical analysis of the efficacy of the approach is required with a balanced evaluation of the researched opinions for and against its effectiveness. Person centred theory finds it roots in the work of Carl Rogers. An influential American counsellor and psycho therapist. Early in his career he realised the importance of the person in the counselling process. When writing about a counselling experience that, despite Rogers insights, came to an unresolved conclusion. Rogers wrote,  [this] helped me to experience the fact--only fully realized later that it is the client who knows what hurts, what directions to go, what problems are crucial, what experiences have been deeply buried. It began to occur to me that unless I had a need to demonstrate my own cleverness and learning, I would do better to rely on the client for the direction of movement in the process. Rogers (1961c:11) It was this insight that Rogers developed into a life long practice that became known as the person centred theory. Knowledge of key concepts and person centred theory Organismic self With a gestalt flavour the term organismic refers to the entireity of the individual as being 'more than the sum of its parts'. We have a drive to grow physically and psychologically- an actualising tendancy. We need to know what is of value to that growth. Personcentred theory calls this ability to weigh up and value experiences positively or negatively, the organismic valuing process. For example, If we are hungry we will rate food highly and move towards it. Once the hunger is satisfied, food loses it high value status. Humanistic psychologists tend to focus on the whole person rather than isolating different processes such as behaviour, thoughts, or feelings. If we listen to our 'organismic valuing process' we will know what will help us move towards our potential. (Dryden and Mytton, 1999:77) Mearns and Thorne (2002) give a good example of this process and its dysfunction. Child: [Falls over and cuts his knee: runs crying to his mother for comfort or assurance] Mother: What a silly thing to do. Stop crying and do not be such a baby. It’s hardly bleeding. Child: [Thinks it’s stupid to fall over; it’s wrong to cry; I shouldn’t want mummy’s support but I need it. But I wanted to cry; I wanted mummy’s cuddle: I wasn’t stupid. I don’t know what to do. Who can I trust' I need mummy’s love but I want to cry.] Mearns and Thorne (2002:9) When the organismic valuing process comes in to conflict with the need for approval the resulting dysfunction is confusion. The child wanted his mother’s love but to get her approval he must not cry. Where this happens repeatedly the individual develops a self concept that makes him distrustful of his organismic valuing process. It is through the counselling process that this organismic valuing process can be restored. Client: I feel very sad: it’s an overwhelming feeling. Counsellor: As if you have no option but to give yourself to the sadness. Client: That sounds very frightening- as if I shall lose control. But I never lose control. [suddenly bursts into tears.] Counsellor: Are you saying that you are ashamed of your tears' Client: [Long pause] No ...for the first time for years I feel in touch with myself... it feels OK to be crying. Mearns and Thorne (2002:10) This gives an example of the roots of the clients sadness. Through this revelation a new sense of self is able to emerge. self concept The self is a key concept in Roger’s writng and although implicit in his writing the self concept is too. Rogers noticed that clients often expressed their problems in terms of their self. For example, they might say, 'I don't know who I am', 'I don't seem to be able to be me', or 'I don't let anyone see my real self, I hate my self'. This self is the real inner life of the person. Unlike the real inner self, the self-concept develops through interactions with others: 'you are a brave boy', 'aren't you an observant child', 'why are you always so naughty''. The development of the self is often referred to as self-actualisation and is therefore a subsystem of the actualising tendency. So in the above example the child’s self wants to be loved and accepted but a self concept is being developed that suggests that to be loved and excepted he must not cry. So the self concept is informed and the self is the real sense of a person inside. Introjects Introjects are the internalisation of the values and beliefs of significant others. Parents are a good example of this. If one young child hits another child he will experience a level of satisfaction. The parental intervention which suggests the child should not do this is a learned response; an introject. In order to introject (or take on board as if they were his own) the values of his parents, the young infant would have to deny and distort its own experience of satisfaction. It is often when such introjects are exposed that an individual is able to move into a new sense of self. Conditions of worth Rogers used the phrase 'conditions of worth' to describe the way a person has positive self regard only when approved of by parents and significant others. If her mother's love and approval was conditional on Jane stopping her bookthrowing behaviour Jane would have to introject (take on as if her own) her mother's values. By denying or distorting her pleasure when pulling books off the shelf she would then be able to maintain self-regard (one's view of one's own worth). The healthy way of resolving this conflict would require Jane to retain her own evaluation which in this case could be 'I enjoy doing this. I also enjoy pleasing my mother, her distress when I behave like this is dissatisfying to me'. Her behaviour would then become a balancing of these two needs-sometimes she will behave to satisfy her need to please her mother and sometimes she will satisfy her own pleasure playing with the books. internal and external locus of evaluation If Jane has to continue to distort her own experience in the need for positive regard, eventually the voice of her real inner self will be silenced. When this happens she will cease to trust her organismic valuing process (the inner instinct that knows what is best for her) and her personal growth will be stunted. Internalising the values and beliefs of others leads to a negative self-concept since the standards set are usually unrealistically high. Cut off from their own sense of value and inner resources, individuals continually strive for the conditional positive regard they feel they need. They fail and a vicious circle begins. They begin to behave as others perceive them. In our example, if Jane is constantly being told off by her mother and perceives that her mother's love is conditional upon good behaviour, she will fail more and more. Jane will become fearful; she will never know whether her next action or utterance will bring condemnation or praise from her mother. As she starts school |she will see herself as a failure and behave accordingly and will be unlikely to succeed at her studies. This will further reinforce her sense | |of worthlessness. | |The child now has two valuing processes governing behaviour: the organismic valuing process and the conditions of worth process. Individuals | |are deceived into believing that decisions based on the latter are actually based on their own valuing process. If many significant conditions | |of worth are imposed the psychological consequences can be severe | The importance of the therapeutic relationship in Person Centred Counselling. Need for positive regard As the awareness of self surfaces, the child develops a need for love and acceptance-or positive regard. It was irrelevant to Rogers whether this need is inherent or learned, the fact is that it is there and could have a strong influence on the developing child. The child's behaviour is shaped by the need for approval and it will therefore do things to please its parents even to the extent of ignoring its own inner feelings. Rogers gave the example of a young infant who found it satisfying to hit its baby brother. The pleasure derived from this may be consistent with the child's sense of itself as loveable. At this early age the infant has no perception of the brother's frame of reference (that is what the brother experiences when he is being hit). When the parents see this behaviour they may disapprove of it and give the message that the behaviour is bad and the child is not loveable. This is inconsistent with the infant's own valuing process (which values the behaviour highly) and with its sense of self as loveable. This is an example of how conflict can arise between the inner self (I am loveable) and the selfconcept (I do bad things and am unloveable). Application of theory to practice Three things a counsellor must show EMPATHY: experiencing others feelings and thoughts while remaining objective Communicate to someone your understanding of his/her thoughts and feelings Helps clients understand themselves Understand clients world as they see and feel it unconditional positive regard congruence Critical analysis and evaluation. STRENGTHS Empathy Phenomenological approach Reflection Increase self-understanding Genuine Unconditional positive regard and acceptance WEAKNESSES Client is not challenged Too simplistic No interventions/techniques Undirected Not all clients are able to find their own answers Not much research on theory and practice Theory has not evolved since the 1960’s Myths Carl Rogers was reluctant to come to Britain (indeed his first visit was in 1978 when he was 76 years of age). His reluctance was particularly related to the fact that he did not think the British were particularly interested in the person-centred approach to therapy or education. Not only were the sales of his books much lower than in other European countries, but more important than that the book reviews he had had in Britain, while they were mainly positive, were also in his view pretty unsophisticated. I have also been frustrated by this lack of understanding of the complexities of the person-centred approach which I have found quite prevalent in this country. I am fed up hearing people describe the person-centred approach as: "oh, that's where the therapist just sits passively and does not do anything". I would like to take this opportunity to try to explode some of these myths. Myth 1: "The person-centred approach is passive" This view of the p-c approach may be due to the fact that empathy is one of the key concepts. Since empathy implies listening and giving the other person space, the therapist may appear "passive". However, listening is by no means a passive activity: not only is it dammed hard work to pick up not just the surface meaning, but also the depth meaning in the client's expressions (just try focusing at levels eight or nine on the Carkhuff scales for any length of time with a client), but listening demands the therapist actively refrains from interfering with the process by slipping in his own interpretations. It is amazing how seldom we do really listen to a client: so much of our time we spend thinking about his problem, and trying to come up with "clever" things to say. Neither does listening mean being totally silent: listening demands that we check out our understanding, and in so doing communicate our success or failure in comprehension. Listening is an active process. Myth 2: "The person-centred approach is non-directive" This can be directly related back to Rogers' early writing before about 1950. As I have said earlier he used the term incorrectly, but as a means of emphasis. The person-centred approach is less directive than many other therapeutic and educational approaches, but there is no way that it is non-directive. Any form of intervention has a degree of directivity. (If we were in a restaurant and someone at the far end of the room broke down in tears and distress, and if we stayed exactly where we were and waited until the person got themselves together, then we would have been totally non-directive!) Myth 3: By the same token person-centred therapy is not "value-free". Michael Polanyi in his magnificent book on the philosophy of science entitled "Personal Knowledge", clearly explodes the myth of "value-free" sciences. Similarly the person-centred approach is not value-free. When I say to my client: "I see that you have been really torn by three quite different alternative courses of action: leaving your husband, staying with him, or ending it all". That statement may sound "non-directive" in the sense that it is not pushing one particular course of action, but it is directive in the sense that it is pushing the client to review the alternatives. Neither is it "value-free" - far from it - it clearly communicates an openness on the part of the therapist to give consideration to all three alternatives expressed by the client, hence giving expression to the values: "it is important that I be open to the way my client construes his problem", and "it is not my place to manipulate my client towards particular solutions which may be preferred by me". Do not mistake these values as being value-free. 3 of 7Myth 4: An extension of this is the assertion that the person-centred approach is "good because it is non-political" While it is certainly true that the person-centred approach does not fit neatly into any of the political parties in this country, it is most certainly not a-political. The following are just a couple of the political hypotheses implicit in the person-centred approach. a. "If you accept other people they are more likely to be able to accept themselves and others." b. "If you are consistently genuine with other people they are more likely to begin to value genuineness in themselves and others." Imagine what these would mean to society if they were given widespread expression. Far from being a-political, the person-centred approach is revolutionary, albeit a "quiet" revolution. Myth 5: "being congruent" does not imply total and unswerving openness Imagine what a therapy session would be like if we had to express every single feeling which drifted through us whether or not it was related to the client, and regardless of the strength of the feeling. There would not be much space left for the client. "Being congruent" means being sufficiently self-aware and open to express feelings which relate to the business of the client or our relationship with him, and which are relevant to the client and/or the therapeutic relationship. Often students ask me: "but surely you don't always tell your client when you are angry with him'" My answer is "no, I don't always, and sometimes I do". Sometimes my "anger" is a passing rather than a persistent feeling, and even sometimes when it is persistent and really strong, my client is heavily involved in something else and my anger is not appropriate at that time, but should come out later, if it endures, else the relationship will be threatened. (We could borrow from Gestalt here to diverge into the fact that "my anger" is truly mine and nothing to do with the other). I want to move on to "skills" now, but just in case anyone still holds any myths about the necessary passivity, non-directivity, or for that matter the "gentility" of the person-centred approach, I have lifted, out of context, some therapist statements to clients: - "I'm really pissed off at you - no I am not pissed off, I fucking angry as hell at you."' - "Almost all of this session you've really been getting up my nose - you've been whining all day about how everything is everyone else's fault and nothing to do with you". - "You seem intent on getting me to admit that you are a hopeless case - that you are no good at anything - and you're damn near succeeding." - "I am really scared of you." - "Why don't you tell him to fuck off'" - "You owe me £50.00 for our last series of sessions." These are not necessarily anti-therapeutic to the relationship, indeed the opposite may be true. Although if they are not followed up by the therapist some of them may be anti-therapeutic. Bibliography Rogers, C. R. (1961c). This is me. In C. R. Rogers, On becoming a person: A therapist's view of psychotherapy (pp. 3-27). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Four Approaches to Counselling and Psychotherapy. Contributors: Windy Dryden - author, Jill Mytton - author. Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1999 The Person-Centred Approach to Therapy Dave Mearns: (Paper presented at the Scottish Association for Counselling, 31st May, 1980. For private distribution)