Client Centred Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory

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One might say that there is less self-consciousness and more self…That the self functions smoothly in experience, rather than being an object of introspection. It's probably going to be hard to formulate my thoughts on this material in a consistent and progressive manner.

This text expresses the deeply held belief that what is genuine and has real meaning cannot sometimes be expressed in words. Where other schools of psychology had a flavor of armchair philosophy, Rogers meticulously studied transcripts of his therapy sessions, trying to identify what worked and what didn't. Carl Rogers theorized that this level of disintegration and reintegration of the self can only occur in the total absence of judgment, in an environment of positive acceptance. It's a key person-centred text that every counsellor or would-be counsellor should own, but it's a world away from many of today's more easily accessible texts. I read "On becoming a person" and "A way of being" first and was steeling myself up to read this giant of a book after already being on a bit of a carl rogers overload.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. It's this part of truly understanding the self that is necessary to understand what is going on in front of us or in our own heads. For Rogers, the warm attitude of the practitioner for the client, the love (if he dares to go that deep) is felt by the client, and that love assists the client in the scary process of exploring his inner depths.

I will most certainly be re-reading sections of the book again and using it to inform my approach to counseling moving forward.Zen of course claims to also not be wholly transmitted through words but I would at least approximate it to experiencing experience. What was really eye-opening for me was in the latter stages of the book, when Rogers talks about how person-centred therapy should be taught.

It is once they accept all manners of gradient in assessing situations and see themselves as the assessors and judges of all things good and bad with no one thing actually possessing "good" or "bad" elements free from relative assessment that the client moves toward a more self-aware level of relation to the world around them.This is also where he lays out the "6 core conditions" and outlines his own theory of personality development and therapeutic change.