Getting Personal with Carl Rogers

As I dive into the theories of psychology and understand the different approaches I’ve uncovered several misconceptions about the client-therapist relationship, but also see the same misconceptions within the average population. We often think of psychology as laying on the couch with the counselor asking, “how do you feel about that?”. We continue to see this same representation within the MediThe mediadia has failed to change the representation of counseling and for many people, that’s the only experience they have with psychology, so they are unaware of the developments and often associate modern counseling with Freud and free association.

I’ve been educated about other psychologists but never to the same extent as Freud. I want to take this opportunity to expand the understanding of previous psychology to a theorist whose theory is still used in the modern world. To do this I chose Carl Rogers as the perfect psychologist to show a true evolution in the study of psychology and how drastically psychology has developed and expanded over what is considered a small amount of time.

Carl Rogers has several achievements within his career and is known for a variety of different concepts within the psychology community. I think this paper is an important opportunity for me to fully learn and understand how influential Carl Rogers has truly been in our society. And I hope to become half as well known and have a true impact on psychology as he has, and I hope more and more people become aware of Carl Rogers and go through the process of understanding him and how important he truly has been to the counseling relationship.

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In this paper I will go over Carl Roger’s major contributions to the psychology field whiincludedes the Person/Client center therapeutic approach, using unconditional positive regard when working with clients and other individuals. He was also very well-known for his work with students in terms of learner-centered teaching. He also contributed majorly to the development of the humanistic theory.

First, I want to begin by discussing Carl Roger’s predominant contribution to psychology and the therapeutic relationship. His concept of person-centered/Client-centered therapy has always been extremely appealing to me. I am so surprised that it took that long for a contribution like person-centered to become development. To start I want to state the obvious, person-centered is basically as a professional you take all our patient’s needs and put them above anything else, the clients’ needs are essential to maintaining a positive therapeutic relationship. Carl Rogers was one of the first people to focus on the client in psychotherapy and he is often well-known for people its cthe reator. Person-centered is still used today in many ways. It opened doors to focus on new ways of working with clients and how there are several different ways to approach a person and make the time be about them. It’s also important to address that person-centered wasn’t just about putting the client first, but it was about showing them you truly care and want to help them using empathy, genuineness, and of course unconditional positive regard. The point here is that using person-centered isn’t as simple and as easy as it seems. And this stem from the idea that people aren’t always genuine. I have spoken with many people who have had several different therapists, and that never seem to connect, and stay with one person because they don’t feel a genuine relationship with them. In my research, I was able to find a few articles referencing Carl Roger’s specific work in displaying person-center. And that is of course with the case of Gloria.

The point of the film was to display three different types of psychotherapy and how they affect and/or benefit/affect Gloria throughout the session. We see him implemimplementsent what is well known as Rogers’ therapeutic triangle (which is using the three main concepts previously stated). This triangle is used to describe how to use each of the three main ideas. has haa s client-centered in the center (obviously) and has the three terms at each point. From movement from one to the other, there is a specific way that the therapist should react and address the client. For example, when speaking with someone with true genuineness we aren’t trying to show how intelligent we are, or how much we can diagnose them, but we are using what we would say in normal conversation and applying it to their lives in hopes to show them we understand and truly care for them. To do this we often avoid jargon specific to us, it’s very important because not all clients will be educated to the same extent as you, and if we use things that they are uncomfortable speaking with then it can cause determent to the client-therapist relationship. Another example, in many cases people want a solution, and almost expect a solution from their therapist when that isn’t the end goal. The goal is to show them that someone cares, someone is listening, and we want to be a support for them, and that is why Rogers implements unconditional positive regard. Unconditional Positive Regard is a very popular practice. The whole idea is to remove all our own biases, our thoughts, and judgments and listen to our clients with an open and honest mind. For Roger,s it was important to avoid advice-giving and solutions to their problems. This is where one would use reflection, which states that the therapist is returning what the client has already started back to them, but in our own words. It allows the client to know you’re paying attention, listening, and understanding what they’re trying to say, but also always them to hear their thoughts in someone else’s words, which could quite possibly be a solution. And to finish off the idea of the person/client-centered approach it is important that a therapist state what they know. By this I mean, if a client asks a question and we’re unsure, it’s okay to say I don’t know, and it’s okay to say things like I hope. Rogers’ did that himself in the case of Gloria. And by doing so he was able to make their relationship that much stronger even though their session was very short and limited he was able to create a relationship of genuineness, unconditional positive regard, and empathy.

Person-centered is just one of the many concepts within Rogerian therapy techniques. Others include unconditional positive regard, reflection, reassurance when feelings of negativity arise, ignoring or avoiding advice, answering questions about the d/o (if one is present) and so much more. When creating this therapy, he ranted the client to feel comfortable and centered within their relationship. Therefore, he focused heavily on keeping their relationship equal. He didn’t want his clients to think of themselves as lesser than him simply because he was their therapist and a highly educated and intelligent man. He wanted to make sure they were seen on the same level, he is no better than the clients and no worse than the clients but they are both human, and equal, especially in the therapeutic relationship. This relationship is what is called an Egalitarian counseling relationship. Within this is when he coined the term client for the individuals to see him rather than the patient. Patient implies one is sick, and lesser and needs help. And for Rogers’ the therapy sessions weren’t about automatically helping and healing. It was about learning how they struggled to understand them and using that as a way to reflect a be that impartial listener that so many people need in their lives these days. He wanted the client to feel comfortable when talking to him. If a client feels inferior, stupid, or put down by their therapist that destroys the client-therapist relationship. With this Egalitarian relationship Rogers’ creates he creates the use of reflection as mentioned above. Reflection is such an effective approach to creating that relationship that therapists want in their sessions. It creates a true concept of understanding. It also really allows one to make sure they understand what the client is saying. Language is a tricky thing, and reflection allows the therapist to take what they heard and repeat it back to make sure that they are on the same page with the client, and if they aren’t it allows for clarification to occur. Rogers was so substantially important in the development of the client-therapist relationship that he is being taught so that his approach can perhaps be used even outside of the therapeutic setting