Person-Centered Approach

PERSON-CENTERED
APPROACH
Carl Ransom Rogers
THE NATURE OF HUMAN NATURES
• People are positive, forward-moving, basically
good, rational, socialized, realistic, cooperative,
constructive and trustworthy.
• Have the tendency and capacity to move from
their psychological maladjustment to a state of
psychological adjustment.
• Individuals have the capacity to guide, regulate and
control themselves in self-chosen ways, therefore,
not necessitating the direction of the therapist
SOURCES OF DIFFICULTY
• Discrepancy between the real self and ideal self,
thought and reality, self and experience, self-
perception and others’ perceptions leads to
incongruities. The attempt to attain an idealized
image causes people to lose sight of what they
truly are and brings about incongruities which
make individuals unreal and untrue to
themselves. This leads to the individuals’ failure
to see themselves as worthy.
GOALS OF COUNSELLING
Individuals must be helped to become fully
functioning, with optimal psychological adjustment
and maturity and complete congruence, openness
to experience, and extensionality.
In other words, they must be helped to move
toward self-actualization or the experience of full
humanness manifested in the thorough enjoyment
of life in all its aspects.
MAJOR FOCUS
• The clients’ subjective world of reality, their
internal frame of reference, or their
phenomenological world is the major focus.
• There is an attempt to focus on the clients’
capacity to discover, by themselves, ways to more
fully encounter reality.
• The here and now feelings and perceptions of the
clients, rather than the then-and-there feelings
and events are thus attended.
THE ROLE OF THE COUNSELOR
The counsellor should:
Assume the client’s internal frame of reference
Perceive the world as the client sees it
Perceive the client as the client sees himself/herself
Communicate this empathic understanding to the
client.
Ensure that the client arrives at his/her own decisions
and demonstrate complete respect for such decisions
4. Leave the primary responsibility for the process
to the client since he/she has the capacity to
move toward a state of psychological health.
5. Act as a facilitator and created a relationship in

which the individual is free to experience the
necessary freedom to explore areas of life that
are denied.
The role of the counsellor is not to solve the
problems, instead, to provide an atmosphere in
which the client, through the exploration of his/her
situation, comes to see himself/herself and his/her
reactions more clearly and accept his/her attitudes
more fully.
Carl Rogers (1946)

To arrive at the goals of counselling, the
counsellor must perform several tasks:
1. Make himself/herself immediately present and accessible to the client.
2. Focus on the here-and-now experience created by the relationship between the client and the counsellor.
3. Understand and empathize with the unique experiential world of the client.
4. Leave the primary responsibility for the process to the client since he/she has the capacity to move toward
a state of psychological health.
5. Act as a facilitator and create a relationship in which the individual is free toe xperience the necessary
freedom to explore areas of life that are denied.
4. Leave the primary responsibility for the
process to the client since he/she has the
capacity to move toward a state of
psychological health.
5. Act as a facilitator and create a relationship

in which the individual is free to experience
the necessary freedom to explore areas of
life that are denied.
Rogers maintains that the role of the
counsellor is not to solve problems.
Instead, the counsellor’s role is to provide
an atmosphere in which the client, through
the exploration of his/her situation, comes
to see himself/herself and his/her reactions
more clearly and accept his/her attitudes
more fully.
COUNSELLOR
CHARACTERISTICS/SKILLS
1. Listening skills
2. Genuine acceptance
3. Unconditional positive regard
4. Non-judgemental attitude
5. Non-possessive warmth
6. Accurate empathy
7. Concreteness
8. Congruence and authenticity
THE CORE-PRINCIPLES OF A PERSON-
CENTERED COUNSELLOR (O’Leary, 1999)
1. The counsellor actively seeks to become aware of, to represent
accurately, and to accept all parts of himself/herself;
2. As the gap between the concept of self and ideal self decreases,
defensiveness diminishes;
3. The diminished gives the counsellor the freedom to hear and
see another person more actively and objectively;
4. As the expectations of the other lowers, the counsellor is more
able to receive people as they are with less conditional positive
regard;
5. Consequently, the client is able to experience that his/her
communication is received without judgement;
6. accordingly, the client feels the increasing possibility of
being understood;
7. In conjunction, the client feels that the positive regard
he/she experiences in unconditional;
8. he/she then becomes increasingly able to become aware of,
represent himself/herself accurately, including those
previously denied or rejected;
9. This results in minimizing the gap between the client’s self
concept and ideal self;
10. The client then feels less need to be defensive;
11. He/she then becomes increasingly able to see and hear
another, including the counsellor, actively and objectively.
LEADS AND RESPONSES
• Acceptance • Empathic
• Restatement communication
• Clarification • Reflection of feelings
• Summarization • Paraphrasing
• General leads • Self-disclosure
• Feedback-giving
The counsellor must have the ability to
refrain from using the following:
1. Advice-giving
2. Evaluating
3. Criticizing
4. Judging
5. Question/probing
6. Moralizing/preaching
7. Imposition of values
PERSON-CENTERED
COUNSELLING is not a
technique-oriented. It is more
concerned with the relationship
established between the client and
the counsellor.
The case illustrates how the repeated use of reflection of
feelings, empathic communication, and paraphrasing moved
the client from a negative to a positive state. Furthermore, it
demonstrated that by merely focusing on the client’s feelings
and perceptions of reality, and even without attempting to
solve the problem directly, the client can actually come up
with solutions to her problems. Hilda was 25 and she seemed
emotionally convoluted, torn between heart and mind. But
even a one-session therapy was sufficient to help her come
up with what she could do, without direct leading,
suggesting and advising from the counsellor.
Compatibility with Filipino traits
and culture
Perhaps one the factors that
created a desire for the
approach was its emphasis on
the concern and respect for the
individual, regardless of who
and what he/she was. This is
very much part of the Philippine
culture.
“The Filipino is deeply aware of his human
dignity (pagkatao) and his worth as a person
(amor propio) and is very sensitive to the
violation of his personhood. That is why
“paggalang” ranks very high as a Filipino
values. The Filipino wants to be respected as a
person and desires to do things on a personal
level because the feeling of the other is more
important than the job to be done.
Alongside with the democratic
handling of clients was the
predominant belief that a
decision made as a consequence
of the insights of the client
himself/herself, had greater
chances of being carried out
than one that was made for
him/her.
One of the strongest attractions of the
approach may really have been its
emphasis on the relationship between
client and counsellor.
The Smooth Interpersonal

Relationship or what is more popularly
known as SIR has always been very
strong value in the Philippines.
A. Describe the nature of human as seen in
the person-centered counseling.
B. What is the main goal of counselling in
this technique?
C. What is the source of difficulty being
traced in person-centered counselling?
D. What are the seven abilities that a
counselor must refrain from using in this
technique?
E. Compare and contrast clinical to person
centered approach in counseling in terms
of dealing with the counselee.

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PERSON-CENTERED

5. Act as a facilitator and created a relationship in

Carl Rogers (1946)

5. Act as a facilitator and create a relationship

The Smooth Interpersonal

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