Person Centred Approach Essay

The person-centered approach views the client as their own best authority on their own experience, and it views the client as being fully capable of fulfilling their won potential for growth. It recognizes, however, that achieving potential requires favorable conditions and that under adverse conditions, individuals may well not grow and develop in the ways that they otherwise could. In particular, when individuals are denied acceptance and positive regard from others-or when that positive regard is made conditional upon the individual behaving in particular ways-they may begin to lose touch with what their own experience means for them, and their innate tendency to grow in a direction consistent with that meaning may be stifled.
One reason this may occur is that individuals often cope with the conditional acceptance offered to them by others by gradually coming to incorporate these conditions into their own views about themselves. They may form a self-concept which includes views of themselves like, “I am the sort of person who must never be late”, or “I am the sort of person who always respects other”. Because of a fundamental need for positive regard from others, it is easier to “be” this sort of person-and to receive positive regard. Over time, their intrinsic sense of their own identity and their won evaluations of experience and attributions of value may be replaced by creations partly or even entirely due to the pressures felt from other people. That is the individual displaces personal judgments and meaning with those of others. Psychological disturbance occurs when the individual’s self-concept begins to clash with immediate personal experience – i.e., when the evidence of the individual’s own senses or the individuals own judgment clash with what the self-concept says “ought” to be the case.
Unfortunately, disturbance is apt to continue as long as the individual depends on the conditionally positive judgments of others for their sense of self-worth and as long as the individual relies on the self-concept designed in part to earn those positive judgments. Experiences which challenge the self-concept are apt to be distorted or even denied altogether in order to preserve
it. The person-centered approach maintains that three core conditions provide a climate conducive to growth and therapeutic change. They contrast starkly with those conditions believed to be responsible for psychological disturbance. The core conditions are: 1) Unconditional positive regard, 2) Empathic understanding, 3) Congruence. The first- unconditional positive regard-means that the counselor accepts the client unconditionally and non-judgmentally.
The client is free to explore all thoughts and feelings, positive or negative, without danger of rejections on condemnation. Crucially, the client is free to explore and to express without having to do anything in particular or meet any particular standards of behavior to “earn” positive regard from the counselor. The second-empathic understanding-means that the counselor accurately understands the client’s thoughts, feelings, and meanings from the client’s own perspective. When the counselor perceives what the world is like from the client’s point of view, it demonstrates not only that that view has value, but also that the client is being accepted. The third-congruence- means that the counselor is authentic and genuine. The counselor does not present an aloof professional façade, but is present and transparent to the client. There is not air of authority or hidden knowledge, and the client does not have to speculate about what the counselor is “really
like”. Together, these three core conditions are believed to enable the client to develop and grow in their own way-to strengthen and expand their own identity and to become the person that they “really” are independently of the pressures of others to act or think in particular ways. As, a result, person-centered theory takes these core conditions as both necessary and sufficient for therapeutic movement to occur-i.e., that if these core conditions are provided, then the client will experience therapeutic change. Finally, the person-centered approach takes the clients as their won best authorities. The focus of person-centered therapy is always on the client’s own feelings and thoughts, not on those of the therapist- and certainly not on a diagnosis or categorization. The person-centered therapist makes every effort to attempt to foster an environment in which clients can encounter themselves and become more intimate with their own thoughts, feelings and meanings.