Carl Roger’s Person-Centered Theory free essay sample

Rogers himself is a good example of creative person at work which he continued to expand and revise his theory. He as applied his work to diverse clinical group and settings include schools system, hospital, management, family therapy, group therapy, and foreign relations (Rogers, 1970; 1977; 1980; 1983). Roger’s Person-Centered approach to counseling emphasized the important dimension of â€Å"self†. The self concept is the person’s picture of the self and self-evaluation of this picture of this picture. The self concepts defined as the â€Å"individual dynamic organization of concept, values, goals, and ideals which he should behave† (Shostorm and Brammer, 1952, page 8). Various terms such as â€Å"concept of self†, â€Å"self-images†, and â€Å"self-structures† are used to describe this personality construct. The main sources of these personal, evaluations are direct experience and the values and concept of parent, which are incorporated as if directly experienced. The concept of self is a learned attribute, a progressive concept staring from birth and differentiating steadily through childhood and adolescence like an unfolding spiral. We will write a custom essay sample on Carl Roger’s Person-Centered Theory or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page This concept been monitored by doing a sample on two-year old child when she or he begin to realize that she or he has an individuality of his or her own with pressing and distinctive needs and powers. This growing awareness of himself or herself as a unique person is his or her concept of self. This self takes on various subjective attributes in the form of â€Å"I am†(his nature), â€Å"I can†(his capacities), â€Å"I should or should not†(his values), and â€Å"I want to be†(his aspirations);(Shostorm and Brammer, 1952). The development of self concept is influenced by an individual’s need for positive regard or approval from his or her parents or primary caregivers. Rogers believes the need for positive regard is a universal need and the developing child learns an internalized sense of worth based on his or her perception of the regards received from significant other. One’s self-regard comes to depend on the condition of worth that one has learned through interaction with significant others. The child need to retain the love from his or her parents gets in conflict with his or her own needs and desires. Experiences perceived to be incongruent in other word inconsistent with the self concept will lead to feelings of being threatened, anxious, confused, and inadequate. Because incongruent experiences tend to threaten their self-images, people attempt to use â€Å"defense mechanisms† to deny or distort the perception of these experiences to reduce the threat to the self-concept. The client self-definitions capacity concept and aspirations run partially along these lines: â€Å"I am a young adult†; â€Å"I respect my parent’s opinions†; â€Å"I don’t want to do work that I can’t do it†; â€Å"I like to be admired†. Yet the client experiences the fact he in an environments which the client’s parent expressed themselves and he value their judgment which test the client that he has the ability to do work. When the person above is not acting in accord their self-concept, we might say that the person is incongruent in the sense that the person awareness of threat, anxiety and her consequent defensiveness are high. The person concept of self and experiences as perceived are dissimilar. Congruence is the term used by self-theorist, particularly Rogers (1951) to imply the close matching of awareness and experience. If a client is aware of communicating a feeling that he genuinely experiencing, his behavior is said to be congruent or integrated. If a client is aware of trying to communicate a feeling of love to another person, for example he experiences hostility toward that person; the recipient of his feeling may experience an awareness of phony communication. The recipient is often aware, furthermore of unconsciously motivated defensives underlying the client inaccurate communication. This illustration point up the clear incongruence between experiences and awareness because the client is aware of and what he genuinely experiencing are two different phenomena. This condition is also an illustration of nature of defense from a self-theorist’s view point. The principal counseling implication of this theory of congruence it would seem is that the counselor’s problem is how to help client to face courageously the incongruence between awareness and experiences so that communication of their real experiences in full awareness and not defensively distorted. Although the â€Å"self† is the key structural construct, Rogers’s principal assumption or central hypothesis of the self-theory group is that the individual has self-actualizing growth tendency or need. The organism strives not only maintain itself, but also enhance itself in the direction of wholeness, integrations, completeness, and autonomy. Hence, the client is believed to have capacity to solve her or his problem. The main implication of this view is that the counselor’s role is to create an interview â€Å"climate† and to use techniques that allow natural growth forces to healthy and creative behaviors. A third assumption, central to phenomenological views, is that people â€Å"reality† is that which they perceive. External events are significant for individual only insofar as they experience them as meaningful. The phenomenologists say that the way to understand individuals is to infer the â€Å"phenomenological fields† from their behavior. In other word, to really know a person, the observer, or the counselor, must know how the individual views as environments and himself. Thus, the term internal frame of references has come to common use in counseling with the implication that the counselor must try to perceive clients perceptual worlds as closely as they can. These viewpoints explain why the client-centered counseling group focuses on deep understanding and acceptances of client attitudes. A key assumption of client-centered counseling is those clients who have been heard in this understanding way are better able to become self-actualized. Thus, the phenomenological approach places a premium on the emphatic skills f psychotherapist. Rogers has been the model of this skill of entering the unique perceptual world of client. Therapeutics process In Carl Roger’s Person-Centered Theory, the counseling relationship is considered the central means for promoting healing and growth. The function of counselor is to establish a therapeutic climate in which client experience the necessary freedom to explore areas of their lives that now are either denied to awareness or distorted. According to Rogers, change in occurs as a result of an interaction between the therapist and clients. There is strong emphasis on being relationship of unconditional positive regard toward the client and on client’s experience himself or herself within that relationship. In the relationship climate, individuals experience permission to experiences and work through their internal conflicts. There is less concern about the direction in which clients will move and more concern about providing a relationship where they can move freely and safely in exploring their own feelings. The person-centered theorist claims that these behaviors automatically change in socially desired direction when the client’s perception is more differentiated and when the client discovers for one’s self more satisfying ways of meeting his or her own and society’s needs. This therapeutic climate is fostered by relationship conditions of empathy, positive regard, genuineness offered by the therapist that focus clients current experiencing rather than on interpreting past history or the transference relationship. The exclusive focus in therapy on the present personalized experiences of the client is the sources of the terms person-centered therapy. The therapist focuses on his or her attention on the needs and experiences of the clients. Rogers believes that empathic understanding has a curative effect on the client. Rogers know that healing is occurring through the client’s experiencing an intensely human interaction within the context of an emotionally real relationship. In person-centered therapy, it is therapist openness to his or her own experiencing and willingness to share that with the client that provides the basis for therapeutic change. The therapist willingness and consistency in truthfully reporting their feeling and experiences in the relationship removes some the risk of sharing feeling with another. Person-Centered therapy has undergone an evolution since its inception. Hart (1970) has described Rogers’s work occurring within three phases. The first phase (1940-1950) might be called the nondirective therapy. The functions of the therapist were to create a permissive, nondirective atmosphere and aim to create a safe therapeutic climate. Rogers’s technical interventions consistent primary of accepting the client clarifying what they want to say. During the second reflective psychotherapy phase (1950-1957), emphasis was placed on creating a non threatening relationship. The counselor role’s was not to interpret but rather to attend to the client felt experiencing or affect. The experimental psychotherapy phase (1957-1970) began with Rogers’s statement of the necessary and sufficient conditions for personality change occur. To a much greater extent than in earlier years, a wide range of therapist behaviors was permitted in order to express the basic relationship attitudes of empathy, positive regard, and congruence. There was focuses on the therapist experiencing and expressing his or her own immediate feeling in the relationship. Roger’s emphasis shifted away from attention to technique such as reflection of feelings and toward an increased focus on the importance of the basis therapist attitudes. Rogers’s Person-Centered therapy has generated numerous research contributions to the sciences and practice of counseling. Many researchers have studied the facilitative condition of empathy, genuineness, and acceptance that Rogers hypothesized as necessary and sufficient condition of therapy. Truax and Mitchell (1971) reviewed research on the therapy in attitude tend to be effective during the therapy. However, in more recent review of the literature, Gelso and Carter (1985, page 220) state that the condition originally specified by Rogers are neither necessary nor sufficient, although it seems clear that such a condition are facilitative. They also suggested that client’s deterioration is not related in a clear, linear way to low counselor facilitativeness but rather to a complex constellation of therapist and client relationship variables. Gelso and Carter point out that much of research based on the Roger’s theories has looked at therapist variables and has ignored the two way interaction that a therapeutic relationship involves. The principal mark of Roger’s Person-Centered theory is its postulation of a self-concept. A second distinguishing characteristic is the belief in the innate positive growth potential or self-actualizing power of the organism. The main focus is on the relationship of counselor to client. In this relationship, the counselor attitudes of honesty, trustworthiness, and genuine concern are crucial. A main difference from other dynamic approaches appears to be effort to build and maintain a nonthreatening, anxiety-reducing relationship in which growth that can take place from the beginning. Another difference from other approaches is the increased amount of responsibility placed upon the client compared to that ascribed to the counselor. His immense power came from the fact that once he discovered something, he followed it through. He saw no reason to limit it by all those irrelevancies that stop most people. So he was able to launch practices that revolutionized the field. He insisted on testing his new therapy to show that it worked. To Rogers that meant objective, quantitative research. But there were few usable procedures and no examples of research in psychotherapy. Such research was considered impossible because therapists had never let anyone listen in, let alone measure and compare. Rogers recorded therapy sessions on the clumsy glass discs of that time. He was accused of ‘violating the sanctity of the analytic relationship’ – another war. Rogers wanted comparative research, and he tried hard to get the psychoanalysts to record and test their therapy. For years their reply was ‘You can record the residents’ (in other words, the trainees). It showed whose sanctity was being protected. Roger’s group was the first (by 20 years) to analyses every sentence of hundreds of transcripts and to measure outcomes on psychometric (and other newly devised) tests given to the client before and after therapy, and also given to a control group. Rogers won that war too; such research is now common. Roger’s discovery had implications for other fields, and he followed them up in his usual way: Is it just as true in education that a deeper process develops from inside? Rogers began teaching by handing out lists of ‘available resources’ and then pursuing the good sense of each student’s proposal. The result, each time, was an enormously excited class directing its own exploration. Without assignments, students read and did more than ever under the old system. Rogers soon contributed to a new literature that influenced a generation of educators. Carl Roger’s Person-Centered Theory that related to myself 1. On the 19 June 2010, I received offer letter to pursue my studies in degree which make me in dilemma either I should accept the offer or not. My mind were so confused and I searching for my self-concept within myself and asked question to myself if I going to UNIMAS, will I face threatening situation from the senior which make myself in jeopardy? Will I achieve the target of my life? Will I secure my future if I continue my degree in UNIMAS? These questions were answer when I talk to my parent about it. My parent advises me that for each question have it own answer. They tell me that university life is going to be a challenging life and will make me more independent in my life so I can take a good decision in my life which I can secure my future in my own decision making sense. 2. On the March 2010, I was in the middle of conflict of love and future. I been love with partner for almost three years which my partner is one year elder than me. When she finish her studies Bachelor in Business Administration (BBA), she start to talk about our future which it a good communication among the couple but the way she talking about the matter I can feel that she losing confident on our love slowly which I can’t take it. I try my level best to solve her dilemma in love and same time with our future. The problem is her family background is full of problem in all aspect which makes her hard to finalize her decision in our future and love. So I take a decision which I don’t if it is a right decision or not. I tell her that settles everything in her life which will secure her future life very well and after she accomplishes everything in her life then I and her talk about love matter. I make her to rediscover her self-concept in decision making and make her realize that we need a high confident in life to get what we want in our life. 3. In April 2010, I face a tough conflict between the love of my parent and love of my partner. My parent always worried about me whenever I went out to see my partner which in safety wise. My family especially my mum and dad know about my partner but the concern on my safety because my partner family don’t know about me and who am I to her. So when I come meet her, I always go back early as what I promise to my parent that I will back home in time. This make her sad and make her think that I less spending time with her. When I spend time with her a bit longer, my dad will call me and where I am now and what time I will back. I always denied to my parent that I on the way to home and that make my partner uncomfortable which she think that I am in trouble because of her. So I and my partner take decision which satisfied both side. 4. In November 2008, it was the month of every student will pray to them self to get good result in their Entrepreneur Business Project which groups are perform well will obtain Diploma in Business Management. My group was the third group to present the Business Plan. Me and my anxiety to perform because the first two groups fail to perform well. So I hold my nervousness very well and make our self confident that we can go through this situation but the real obstacles is to answer the question that has been shoots by my lecturer with the background of Master and PhD holders. I and my group try our level best to answer the question throw toward us. So when we complete answered the question, I and my group member waiting for the result which play a major role in our future and when the result finalize, I and my group gets A- for the business plan and my group member thanks me because the effort we put get a good result. All the above example are related to the Carl Roger’s Person-Centered which emphasized on myself which really happen in my life and still happening which I’m still searching answers for each problem that occurs in my life and the Carl Rogers’s Theory plays a solution role a part of my life.