Understanding the Person Centred Approach - Part 1

- The Therapeutic Relationship -

Whatever stage of your counselling journey you are on; whether you have recently begun seeing a counsellor, have extensive experience of counselling or if you are just becoming interested in the idea of seeing a counsellor; you may find yourself wondering what counselling is actually all about.

You may have heard people (or even your counsellor!) say “trust in the process,” but what is that process?

In order to try and answer some of these questions we have decided to write a series of blogs entitled “Understanding the Person Centred Approach”.

We were also aware that some people may be familiar with other counselling modalities such as CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and Freudian therapies (Psychodynamic/ Psychoanalysis) and these blogs will allow us to show how the Person Centred approach that we use at LPG differs from other forms of counselling.

Fundamentally, the aim of the series is to provide more information about how the Person Centred Approach works and to de-mystify the counselling process.

To start us off part 1 will look at what constitutes a “therapeutic relationship” within the Person Centred Approach, providing definitions and descriptions of some key terms.

Carl Rogers, who pioneered the Person Centred Approach, characterised a therapeutic relationship as a relationship in which:

“At least one of the parties has the intent of promoting growth, development, maturity, improved functioning, improved coping with life of the other.” (Rogers, 1967, pg.39)

In order to cultivate the sort of relationship that would help in achieving these aims, Rogers concluded that there are six necessary and sufficient conditions that must be met. These conditions are:

Condition 1. Two persons are in psychological contact.

In its most basic form this simply means that some sort of relationship must exist between the client and counsellor, where we both have some awareness of the other’s role and expectations and there is willingness on both sides for counselling to take place.

Condition 2. The first, whom we shall term the client, is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious.

Incongruence in this sense would be some area in which a client’s ideal self differs from their real self. Therefore, while new issues can often be uncovered over the course of counselling, a client must have something that they wish to work on in the first instance for the therapeutic relationship to be formed.

Condition 3. The second person, whom we shall term the [counsellor], is congruent or integrated in the relationship.

Congruence is often described as genuineness and requires we, as counsellors, present our real selves in the relationship, without façade, and that we are non-defensive and open to experience. While congruence at first glance seems a simple concept it can often be the most challenging condition for counsellors as it involves a lot of work cultivating self-awareness, learning to be more open to what is coming up for us and aware of how that could impact our ability to offer a therapeutic relationship.

Condition 4. The [counsellor] experiences unconditional positive regard for the client.

This means that, while not necessarily condoning a client’s words or actions, we suspend our judgment; respecting our clients’ right to live as they choose and viewing them positively as people, irrespective of what they tell us.

Condition 5. The [counsellor] experiences an empathic understanding of the client's internal frame of reference and endeavours to communicate this experience to the client.

In contrast to sympathy, where one feels sadness or pity for another, empathy is an understanding of a client’s emotions, what they are experiencing and how that is affecting them. Empathy involves trying to understand what clients tell us from their frame of reference; not thinking “how would I feel,” but trying to really get into “how does it feel for this client.”

Condition 6. The communication to the client of the [counsellor’s] empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard is to a minimal degree achieved.

This means that through our verbal and non-verbal communication a client is made aware that we feel empathy and positive regard for them.

Rogers found that, if all these conditions are present in the relationship, growth will take place and the relationship can be considered therapeutic.

Sometimes you may hear people talking about the Core Conditions; this refers to congruence, empathy and unconditional positive regard. The Core Conditions are the counsellor dependant conditions, they are what the counsellor is “doing.” However, it is important to remember that Rogers always considered all six of his conditions holistically as a description of one, genuine, unified state of being with a client and not simply as techniques to be applied.

In this blog post I have attempted to give a brief outline of the theory of what constitutes a therapeutic relationship in the Person Centred Approach. However, if you are considering booking a session with us and have any questions about our approach to counselling, please get in touch. Any questions can be sent to: hello@lpg.scot

Look out for the next posts in the series where we will be bringing you more information and insight into the Person Centred Approach.

Bibliography

Mearns, D. & Thorne, B. (1988). Person-centred counselling in action (4th ed.). London: Sage Publications.

Rogers, C. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21(2), 95-103.

Rogers, C. (1967). On becoming a person: A therapist's view of psychotherapy. London: Constable.

Schmid, P. (2002). Knowledge or Acknowledgement? Psychotherapy as ‘the art of not-knowing’—Prospects on further developments of a radical paradigm. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 1(1-2), 56-70.

by Paul Johnson