Client Centered Therapy Essay

I chose the Client-Centered Approach or Person-Centered Therapy. This humanistic approach was developed by Carl Rogers, who assumed that human beings are essentially good, self-motivated and have the potential for positive change and to live up to our full potential if the appropriate conditions are present in a therapeutic situation. Rodgers’s theory assumes that if a person has a broken sense of self-concept and he or she cannot grasp the understanding that we oversee our own destinies, behaviors and attitudes will develop that are self-harming. Self-concept is the central component of Rogers approach in that the goal of Client-Centered Therapy is creating a therapeutic environment that will improve how clients think about, evaluate or perceive

The counselor shows that he or she understands the thoughts and feelings of the client, however empathy does not mean the counselor shows approval for wrong-doing on the part of the client. The counselor is careful to give constructive responses so that the client can explore his or her own feeling and thoughts, so that he or she is able to to come up to solutions to problems for his or herself. Unconditional positive regard means that the counselor values the client no matter what they have done, how they think, what they say, or how they feel. They counselor fully accepts, in a genuine way, who the client is as a person and what they have done whether it is good or bad. It make the client feel accepted an valued for the person they are and allows for a non-threatening environment for them to explore their thoughts and feeling and possibly allow them to recognize that their own thoughts and feeling have been destructive to themselves and their lives.
For the counselor to be genuine, he or she must be open and honest in the relationship with the client as well as with his or herself. In this way the counselor becomes a role model and, showing the client how they should be with his or her own interpersonal