Who Is Carl Roger's Client-Centered Psychotherapy?

Carl Roger’s client-centered psychotherapy is a unique approach to psychotherapy, based off of the principles of humanistic psychology. Humanistic psychotherapy is as its name states; a therapy which study and analyzes the person as a whole, rather than the individual parts of their personality. When people think of psychotherapy, they tend to visualize a therapist, sitting behind a person laying down on the long couch, probing their minds with various questions and thoughts. This questioning and discussion eventually leading to a solution to the client’s issues. This is not the case when it comes to Carl Rogers. The discussion is started and driven all by the client themselves. The therapist does not ask any leading questions, have any conversations

As the meetings progress, the client will get more comfortable and more open towards the therapist, and will come to understand that they must fix themselves, rather than expecting an answer from the therapist. Rogers believed that “If [he] can provide a certain type of relationship, the other person will discover within himself the capacity to use that relationship for growth, and change and personal development will occur” (Rogers, 1961). This meaning that as a client, you must have a trustful, fulfilling relationship with your therapist in order to have a successful therapy. As a practitioner of client-centered therapy, I would find it very difficult to not respond in certain ways to the client. I would feel that by not responding and conversing that I am being paid to listen to them only. It would be difficult to not use my morals and bias to tell them what they should do in every situation that arises. If I were to just tell my client what he/she should do, then they will never truly be able to make decisions for themselves and will always rely on me for

Carl Rogers is considered one of the pioneers of counseling therapy, and has been influencing therapy practices since the beginnings of his theory in the early 1940s. Rogers based his methods off of humanistic psychology. Rogers lived from 1902 to 1987, experiencing many important events in our countries history. He lived through World War II which was a turning point for the study of psychology, as the need for psychologists grew before and after the war. Rogers studied psychotherapy at a multitude of universities before the war, and during the war. As a child, he was raised by a family whom was “close and warm” but all lived by “strict religious standards” (Corey, 2009). Therefore, he had quite a lonely childhood, and rather than pursuing social connections, he sought out academics. Rogers first originated the humanistic theory of psychotherapy, which he based his client-centered therapy off of. Through his therapy, he states that it is a necessity to be non-judgmental and believed that if his mother were to hear his theory, she would be negatively judging him. The time period in which Rogers developed the theory was post-WWII, which the world was in a unique place having just come out of the largest war to date. At this time, there was a lot of openness to change, and his theory allowed one to do that. His contribution to the field of psychotherapy was loosely based off of previous theories where the client discovers various aspects of themselves through these