Carl Rogers Person Centered Therapy

917 Words2 Pages

Person-centered, or client-centered therapy, is a therapeutic framework established by Carl Rogers in the 1940s and 1950s ( Rogers, 1965; Prochaska & Norcross, 2013). Rogers (1965) argued that all human beings possess an inherent urge, or actualizing tendency, to maintain and amplify their emotion, physiological, and societal well-being. By doing so, humans propel themselves towards effectiveness and greater welfare, allowing them to shift from control by external influences to control from internal influences. Furthermore, Rogers (1965) believed that reality was a largely subjective experience. As such, people behave and feel the way that they do based off of the feedback of others within this perceived reality; this includes gender roles, racial identity, and religious orientation. As humans develop, they embrace these perceptions, creating their own self-concept or an identity that is based off of the relationships they have with other people within their life. …show more content…

People naturally seek out love, affection, and positive regard in order to feed the self-concept that they have created. When people receive this unconditional love and affection, such as when a child smiles at her mother and receives a reciprocating smile back, she feels prized and important. When she doesn’t receive this love and affection, however, she feels rejected and unloved. Each subsequent expression of positive regard, though inconsistent, becomes more important and intoxicating than one’s own sense of self. Accordingly, the child will begin to give up her own self-actualizing tendencies for “other-love,” creating a sense of self-regard that only values what significant others think and act toward and about the

Open Document