Exploring Attitudes and Values in Person Centred Therapy

The Person Centred Approach and Its Principles

Acknowledge and explore their attitudes, values and defences and explore their potential impact upon the therapeutic relationship, linking to theory, mainly focusing on the Person Centred Approach.   

Reflect Upon Diversity And Difference And How Their Own Values And Beliefs Influence Their Reactions To Others.

Admitting the main concepts related to psychology provided by Abraham Maslow, Rogers said that each individual can achieve his/her goals, wishes, as well as desires in life. A self-actualization is said to be occur while these goals. Central to the personality theory given by Roger, it can be said that it is related to the self-concepts (Cooper et al. 2013).  This can be explained as "the consistent and organized set of different beliefs and perceptions about oneself. Concentrating on the person cantered approach provided by Rogers, it can be said that in a particular state of incongruence an individual enters into the person cantered therapy. It comes under the role and responsibility of the therapists to reverse the particular situation. As focus on the person’s subjective view of the world, it is also called client cantered approach. In contrast to the other therapies, here the patient or client himself/herself takes responsibility of improving his or her life (not the therapist).  This also explained as a deliberate change from both the behavioural as well as psychoanalysis therapies, in which the patient is diagnosed and after that treated by a particular doctor (Nelson et al.2014, pp.513). In addition, the client rationally and consciously decides for themselves what not going well or what is wrong and what actions need to be taken for correcting it. The therapist acts as a counsellor or a friend and listens as well as encourages the client on a higher level.

In contrast to the attachment theory (which explains having deep emotional bond that connects two persons), the main intention of this theory is to enhance the feelings of self-confidence, self-worth, self-motivation, and minimize the level of intolerance and incongruence within the individuals. However, this approach proposed by Roger mainly operates focusing on three major principles, which are discussed below;

It is necessary for the therapist to be congruent with the parson or client

The therapist will provide clients withseveral unconditional positive regard.

Therapist will behave like a counsellor or a friend with the client and will show empathetic understanding to the patient.

As an essential part of this theory (that is the Person Centred Counselling), the author Carl Rogers has suggested seven stages for showing the growth of a client and enhancement of his or her self-development, these are as follows:

The Seven Stages of Self-Development

Stage 1: The client will show very resistant and defensive behaviour towards change

Stage 2: Client might become less or slightly rigid and may also discuss about other people or any external events.

Stage 3: By avoiding the discussion of any present events, he/she may discuss about himself/herself.

Stage 4: By expressing the deeper feelings or discussing about the personal feelings the client can develop personal relationship with the counsellor (Csillik 2013, p.351).

Stage 5: The client can also their current emotions and feelings. It can also noticed that they can highly rely on their own decision making capacity and can accept higher responsibility for performing their own actions.

Stage 6: Clients can also show quick growth towards the congruence as well as start to develop different unconditional positive regards for others.  Activities in this stage can identified as a signal, which explain the therapy is going to be end.

Stage 7: This is the last stage and it explains that the client has recovered successfully. He/she is a self-actualised and fully functioning person, who shows positive and unconditional regards as well as empathic to others. By relating the received therapy with their real life environments and present situation, they can drive their daily life towards positivity.

This theory has provided me an idea about self-actualised and self-belief and condition of worth. The condition of worth can be identified as a set of conditions that we need to uphold and by which the other people will accept us as worthy of their affection and love (Lago 2013, p 209). Injected values also sometimes important for personality development and are adopted from others as reference. For improving his/her personality, the person can evaluate the information, can take own decision and judgement; which is identified as locus of evaluation.

There exists numerous factors that might affect an individual’s ability of flourishing; example of such factor is, minimal self-esteem, less self-reliance and fear of openness towards any kind of new experiences. I think, the main motto of person-centred approach theory is that the environment as well as personal relationships of an individual can greatly affected due to these factors. In such cases, therapy is given in a comfortable and neutral setting, where the patients will about themselves and their own capabilities (Ahola et al.2014). The essential concept that I learnt from this theory is self-actualisation of the psychological environment and fulfilment of different personal potentials, which involves; sociability (the desire to known by others and to know others and need of being with other people); welcoming new opportunities, experience; being trustworthy and trusting others, being curious, creative as well as compassionate. The therapist plays a great role here and understands the client from their perspective and experience and positively value their personal feelings. This will help the clients feel motivated, accepted, and having a self-realization about their own potentials. In my point of view, it is also beneficial for the clients in reconnecting with their own values and have a sense of their self-worth, and hence, enabling them in finding their own way of moving forward.

Self-Actualisation and Self-Belief

I think interacting with other people will help a person to learn many new value and concepts that he/she can use for improving their personality. Relationships are formed due to emotional attachment, trust and deeper feelings of a person with another. Somehow, diversity and difference also plays a greater role in affecting the relationship and personal feelings of an individual. Diversity can be perceived or real difference among different people and these difference can be explained in terms of gender, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status and many such factors (Rhode and Packel 2014, p.377). However, on a broader concept, the diversity can be divided into four categories: difference in the ability and skills, occupation, attitude and value and personal trait. The main component of maintaining a relationship is communication. However, I think due to presence of language issues, relationships are affected majorly. These factors are: motivation, learning environment, teaching at home, personality and support received at home from the family members and relatives (Tsui and Tollefson 2017, p. 40). Stereotype is another factor responsible for affecting the individual beliefs and personal relationship of a person. It is explained by the over-generalized belief that people have about a significant category of individuals. Sometimes it is also explained as the expectation, which individuals might have about other individuals associated with a particular group (Mackie and Hamilton 2014). Apart from these, there exist many other factors such as, religious and cultural belief, family structure, the society individuals stay, also put major impact on the individual reaction, believe, behaviour and relation.

Reference

Cooper, M., O'Hara, M., Schmid, P.F. and Bohart, A. eds., 2013. The handbook of person-centred psychotherapy and counselling. Macmillan International Higher Education, pp. 47-55

Csillik, A.S., 2013. Understanding motivational interviewing effectiveness: Contributions from Rogers' client-centered approach. The Humanistic Psychologist, 41(4), pp.350-363.

Lago, C., 2013. The person-centered approach and its capacity to enhance constructive international communication. In Interdisciplinary applications of the person-centered approach (pp. 201-212). Springer, New York, NY.

Mackie, D.M. and Hamilton, D.L. eds., 2014. Affect, cognition and stereotyping: Interactive processes in group perception. Academic Press.

Nelson, L., Cushion, C.J., Potrac, P. and Groom, R., 2014. Carl Rogers, learning and educational practice: Critical considerations and applications in sports coaching. Sport, Education and Society, 19(5), pp.513-531.

Rhode, D.L. and Packel, A.K., 2014. Diversity on corporate boards: How much difference does difference make. Del. J. Corp. L., 39, p.377.

Tsui, A.B. and Tollefson, J.W. eds., 2017. Language policy, culture, and identity in Asian contexts. Routledge, pp. 39-43.