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Concept
Person-centered therapy
Summary
Person-centered therapy, also known as person-centered psychotherapy, person-centered counseling, client-centered therapy and Rogerian psychotherapy, is a form of psychotherapy developed by psychologist Carl Rogers beginning in the 1940s and extending into the 1980s. Person-centered therapy seeks to facilitate a client's self-actualizing tendency, "an inbuilt proclivity toward growth and fulfillment", via acceptance (unconditional positive regard), therapist congruence (genuineness), and empathic understanding.
Person-centered therapy was developed by Carl Rogers in the 1940s and 1950s, and was brought to public awareness largely through his highly influential book Client-centered Therapy, published in 1951. It has been recognized as one of the major types of psychotherapy (theoretical orientations), along with psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, classical Adlerian psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy, existential therapy, and others. Its underlying theory arose from the results of empirical research; it was the first theory of therapy to be driven by empirical research, with Rogers at pains to reassure other theorists that "the facts are always friendly". Originally called non-directive therapy, it "offered a viable, coherent alternative to Freudian psychotherapy. ... [Rogers] redefined the therapeutic relationship to be different from the Freudian authoritarian pairing."
Person-centered therapy is often described as a humanistic therapy, but its main principles appear to have been established before those of humanistic psychology. Some have argued that "it does not in fact have much in common with the other established humanistic therapies", but by the mid-1960s Rogers accepted being categorized with other humanistic (or phenomenological-existential) psychologists in contrast to behavioral and psychoanalytic psychologists. Despite the importance of the self to person-centered theory, the theory is fundamentally organismic and holistic in nature, with the individual's unique self-concept at the center of the unique "sum total of the biochemical, physiological, perceptual, cognitive, emotional and interpersonal behavioural subsystems constituting the person".
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