Psychological contact refers to the therapist and client being "on the same page" psychologically. If a client is going through a very difficult psychotic episode or is under the influence of medication, street drugs or alcohol, this might make it very difficult for the therapist and client to be in psychological contact.
As well as the therapist transmitting unconditional positive regard and empathy, the client also needs to understand and accept that the therapist is there as a genuine person trying to help them. The client must accept and feel, at some level, the unconditional positive regard and empathy the therapist is displaying toward them. Finally, there needs to be client incongruence i. For this reason, no one can successfully be sent for therapy.
It has to be the client's own choice driven by a difficulty or issue they want to resolve. To answer this, we need to turn back to the s and s, when psychoanalysis was the predominant therapy.
Unlike person-centred therapy, psychoanalysis relied on the therapist being a blank slate , distancing themselves from the client, and not getting involved on a personal level. In other words, the therapist reveals little or nothing of their own personality in therapy. They adopt a veil of expertise and act as the expert. This humanistic approach was pioneered by Rogers, Maslow, Rollo May and other psychologists.
The therapist had to be real, genuine and active in the therapeutic relationship. Rogers believed that one of the reasons that people struggled in their lives was because they were working to conditions of worth and introjected values. The people they wanted to be, were being pushed away by themselves to please others. Rogers believed that by using the core conditions of empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard, the client would feel safe enough to access their own potential.
The client would be able to move towards self-actualisation , as Maslow called it, to be able to find the answers in themselves. Whilst it may seem obvious in counselling and other situations, it remains a fact that some clients are unable to form meaningful relationships with counsellors, or can do so only with considerable difficulty.
Examples include some people experiencing psychotic episodes, or those in catatonic states. There are critical voices who are not convinced that counsellors can consistently display the core conditions in the therapy room.
One such detractor is author Jeffrey Masson. He writes in his book Against Therapy Untreed Reads :. Precisely because the client is seen for only a limited time less than an hour, once a week , the therapist is in theory; whether it actually happens is something else again able to suspend his judgment.
In fact, the therapist is not a real person with the client, for if he were, he would have the same reactions he would have with people in his real life, which certainly do not include "unconditional acceptance," lack of judging, or real empathic understanding.
We do not "really accept" everybody we meet. We are constantly judging them, rejecting some, avoiding some and they us with good reason. No real person really does any of the things Rogers prescribes in real life. So if the therapist manages to do so in a session, if he appears to be all-accepting and all-understanding, this is merely artifice; it is not reality. It was during this time that Rogers developed his approach to therapy, which he initially termed "nondirective therapy.
Rogers wrote 19 books and numerous articles outlining his humanistic theory. In , Rogers was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. He continued his work with client-centered therapy until his death in Rogers believed that all people possess an inherent need to grow and achieve their potential.
This need to achieve self-actualization , he believed, was one of the primary motives driving behavior. For psychotherapy to be successful, Rogers suggested, it was imperative for the therapist to provide unconditional positive regard to the client. This means that the therapist accepts the client as they are and allows them to express both positive and negative feelings without judgment or reproach.
Rogers believed that the formation of a healthy self-concept was an ongoing process shaped by a person's life experiences. People with a stable sense of self tend to have greater confidence and cope more effectively with life's challenges. Rogers suggested that self-concept begins to develop during childhood and is heavily influenced by parenting. Parents who offer their children unconditional love and regard are more likely to foster a healthy self-concept.
When our self-image does not line up with our ideal self, we are in a state of incongruence. Rogers believed that by receiving unconditional positive regard and pursuing self-actualization, however, people can come close to reaching a state of congruence. Rogers suggested that people who continually strive to fulfill their actualizing tendency could become what he referred to as fully-functioning.
A fully-functioning person is one who is completely congruent and living in the moment. Like many other aspects of his theory, unconditional positive regard plays a critical role in the development of full functioning. Those who receive nonjudgmental support and love can develop the self-esteem and confidence to be the best person they can be and live up to their full potential. With his emphasis on human potential, Carl Rogers had an enormous influence on both psychology and education.
Beyond that, he is considered by many to be one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century. More therapists cite Rogers as their primary influence than any other psychologist. As described by his daughter Natalie Rogers, he was "a model for compassion and democratic ideals in his own life, and in his work as an educator, writer, and therapist. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas and none of my own ideas are as authoritative as my experience.
It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me. Rogers, C. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Cohen, D. A Critical Biography. London: Constable. Thorne, B. London: Sage. Ever wonder what your personality type means? He was taught to read at home before he attended kindergarten, where he was deemed so advanced that he immediately joined the second-year students.
In , the Rogers family bought a farm in the neighbouring suburb of Glen Ellyn. There, the young Rogers gained his appreciation of the scientific method, by observing moths and other living things. In this, he outlined the perceptual shifts experienced by a client during a series of counselling sessions. Click for a list of Carl Rogers Quotes. In , Rogers attended the University of Wisconsin to study agriculture but soon changed course to study history instead.
A year later, he attended the World Student Christian conference in Beijing and spent six months in China. In , Rogers graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history.
He initially enrolled at the Theological Seminary in New York to become a church minister. However, in , he married Helen Elliot and decided against a career in religion, instead signing up to study psychology and teaching at the University of Columbia.
On graduating, he took a position at the Rochester Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, later serving as Director.
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