Person Centered Theory
A Review of Rogers’s Person-centered Therapy in Self Perspective:
Critical Evaluation and Integrative Improvement
Date of submission: 10 December 2007 (Monday)
This paper was divided into three parts. The first part was to summarize the basic concepts of Rogers’s phenomenological approach of personality. Carl Rogers, who was the pioneered humanistic counselor and psychotherapist, advocated “Client-centered Therapy” (now known as “Person-centered Therapy” derived from his basic fundamental constructs including self, subjective experience, congruence, unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding, etc. (Fernald, 2000; Motschnig and Nykl, 2000; Snyder, 2002) have had much influences on the psychotherapy in recent years. As Kirshenbaum (2004) summarized that there were continuity of Rogers’ ideas and research validating many of Rogers’ contributions. Thus, the second part was to discuss the contributions of “Person-centered Therapy” from the critical review and arguments of its strengths and weaknesses, my opinions would be offered to show my full supports to Rogers in the paper. The third part was to elaborate some recommended improvements in latest empirical research, psychotherapy and personality development, with a view to showing my agreements on the integration of good and proved valid and reliable variables in different approaches, including phenomenological, psychoanalytical and behavioral approaches, etc., in addition to technological application, in other words, one approach complemented with other different ones, for increasing the effectiveness for personality and psychotherapy development.
Part I: Basic Constructs
Self
Rogers (1959, as cited in Mccann and Sato, 2000) contended that the perceived self was central and subjective in the individual’s phenomenological approach, affecting how the individual behaved and perceived the world with the self-concept, serving as perceptions of events and
Critical Evaluation and Integrative Improvement
Date of submission: 10 December 2007 (Monday)
This paper was divided into three parts. The first part was to summarize the basic concepts of Rogers’s phenomenological approach of personality. Carl Rogers, who was the pioneered humanistic counselor and psychotherapist, advocated “Client-centered Therapy” (now known as “Person-centered Therapy” derived from his basic fundamental constructs including self, subjective experience, congruence, unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding, etc. (Fernald, 2000; Motschnig and Nykl, 2000; Snyder, 2002) have had much influences on the psychotherapy in recent years. As Kirshenbaum (2004) summarized that there were continuity of Rogers’ ideas and research validating many of Rogers’ contributions. Thus, the second part was to discuss the contributions of “Person-centered Therapy” from the critical review and arguments of its strengths and weaknesses, my opinions would be offered to show my full supports to Rogers in the paper. The third part was to elaborate some recommended improvements in latest empirical research, psychotherapy and personality development, with a view to showing my agreements on the integration of good and proved valid and reliable variables in different approaches, including phenomenological, psychoanalytical and behavioral approaches, etc., in addition to technological application, in other words, one approach complemented with other different ones, for increasing the effectiveness for personality and psychotherapy development.
Part I: Basic Constructs
Self
Rogers (1959, as cited in Mccann and Sato, 2000) contended that the perceived self was central and subjective in the individual’s phenomenological approach, affecting how the individual behaved and perceived the world with the self-concept, serving as perceptions of events and