Client Centred Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory

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Early on in the preface the reader is faced with Rogers' philosophical roots when he refers to himself as 'a midwife to a new personality.

The client doesn't leave the therapeutic process with fixed answers, one could say that they feel more lost after therapy than before, but therapy has equipped him with the ability to navigate the confusion of his inner contradictions.Client-Centred Therapy crystallises the great progress that has been made in the development the techniques and basic philogopy of counselling. The way I understand it, Client Centered Therapy is about providing a warm, accepting echo chamber to the client. This text expresses the deeply held belief that what is genuine and has real meaning cannot sometimes be expressed in words. I'll mainly be outlining what I interpreted as the general gist of the material as well as particular points that felt impacting along with page citations for certain references (wherever I've recorded them). Published in 1951, this appraoch was way ahead of its time; Rogers putting the client front and centre, thereby forever altering the client-therapist relationship from a top-down affair to a together-forward undertaking; yes, some of the ideas are outdated and the presented science does not hold up to today's standards; it is the therapeutic paradigm shift that makes this worth your time.

While I had liked his Freedom to Learn, I found CCT to be very boring after the first sections on at least two accounts. Equally admirable is Rogers' claim that the therapist must involve himself personally in the therapeutic process. As this process continues, we carve a model of reality that becomes more and more refined, more and more accurate. Or as one client states in a follow-up interview one year after the conclusion of therapy: ‘I’m not self-conscious like I used to be…I don’t concentrate on being myself. Moreover, great consideration is given to the uniqueness of the relationship between client and therapist, culminating in the personal experiences of both.It is the role of the therapist to reflect (and accept) the expressions of the client with the emotional obfuscation removed. Rogers is particularly sharp and expressively clear in some of his approaches concerning therapy and philosophy of the therapeutic relationship. In my own journey I have found this to be the best approach and empowers the client to make their own path through therapy, rather than be given homework and exercises or have an analyst try to piece together the parts to come to a conclusion for you. Through his thought provoking statements this book helped me reflect on my practice and hopefully helped me become a better counsellor.

By contradicting experience with self-concept (I shouldn't be attracted to the same sex [because society, relatives, and religion say so], I can't be attracted to the same sex [because this would render me unlovable], therefore I am NOT attracted to the same sex [because I fear the outcome, whether consciously or otherwise]), anxieties and disconnect with one's self arise. What happens next is what makes Client Centered Therapy more subtle and complex than the touchy-feely impression people may get from it. I think a *casual* reader would probably prefer to start with his other work, but anyone learning about or working in PCT itself really needs to read and understand this psychological classic. It would only stand to reason that such familiarity with basic considerations of life would go hand in hand with proposing fundamental roots of human behavior and introspection as Rogers attempts to do in this publication.Maybe this approximation is only my own but I found Rogers' view to be similar to that of Zen Buddhism. The final chapter presents a formal treatment of the psychological therory which is basic to the whole client-centred point of view, not only in counselling but in all interpersonal relations.

He received many honors, including the first Distinguished Professsional Contributor Award and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association. The major stumbling blocks of this sort appear to be his concepts of "self" and "self-actualization.This is what eventually leads to the easing of tensions that grew from inconsistencies in experience and self-concept. Many apparently find this more 'academic' approach harder to digest than his less "theoretical" works, but on the other hand this is still very easy to read and powerful in its approach. When his ideas were unproven, he had the intellectual honesty to highlight the potential weak spots of his theory.