Lecture
An important task of this section is to build an understanding that the development and use of psychotechnical tools is based on particular personality theories and scientific methodology, which determine the strategic directions and tactical principles of providing psychological assistance. This task is accomplished through the systematic exposition of a number of psychological theories and the practical models of psychological counseling that stem from them. A psychologist beginning to practice counseling first needs to become familiar with the variety of methodological and theoretical approaches in order to make conscious choices of means and methods for providing psychological assistance to clients in various problem situations.
The founder of «person-centered» counseling is Carl Rogers. In 1940, Rogers published the book «Counseling and Psychotherapy» (Counseling and Therapy). The essence of the central hypothesis of the person-centered approach is as follows:
- every person has within themselves great resources for self-understanding, and for changing their self-concept and the behavior regulated by their "self",
- these resources are activated only when an appropriate climate is created, characterized by helping psychological attitudes: empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard37.
In 1951, Rogers presented his theory of personality and behavior in the concluding chapter of the book «Client-Centered Therapy» (Client-centered Therapy).
The perceptual, or subjective, frame of reference. Behavior can be viewed either from the standpoint of an outside observer or from the standpoint of those performing the actions in question. The former view behavior from an external point of view, while the latter view it from an internal, subjective, or perceptual, point of view. Rogers declares his fundamental belief in the subjective and notes that a person lives essentially in their own personal and subjective world and is driven by subjective goals and subjective choices. The emphasis on the subjective, perceptual view of clients is what led to the establishment of the term «client-centered». Clients' perceptions are regarded as their version of reality.
The actualizing tendency. One of the fundamental tenets of Rogers's theory is the idea that a tendency operates throughout the universe that promotes its development - a constant striving toward ever greater order and interconnected complexity, evident at both the inorganic and organic levels. The actualizing tendency is the basic motivational inner drive. Every person has an innate tendency to develop their capacities for the purpose of maintaining and reproducing themselves, as well as expanding the boundaries of their «self». Through the striving toward actualization, people move toward self-regulation, self-improvement, and freedom from control by external forces.
Person-centered counselors believe that all psychological difficulties are caused by blockages of the striving toward actualization. Consequently, the counselor's task is to activate the positive motivational impulse inherent in all people.
The organismic valuing process. This process involves the meticulous, continuous consideration of experience and the ordering of values within that experience in accordance with their capacity to satisfy needs connected with the actualizing tendency. As people grow, their valuing processes increasingly help them reach a level of self-actualization that allows them to become aware of and sense their inner experiences.
A person is constantly exposed to events and encounters facts that can be recognized through sensory and visceral elements inherent in the organism from birth. People may not be aware of much of what they experience. Full experiencing of a feeling means that the experience, awareness, and expression of that feeling are entirely congruent.
Rogers believed that if experience is perceived, then it has entered awareness, and however vague the understanding of that experience may be, it need not be expressed through verbal symbols. Perception, or awareness, may or may not correlate with experience or «reality». People often function abnormally, moving organismically in one direction while their conscious life flows in another.
The concept of the «self». The «self» can be viewed as the real, basic organismic «self». This is the meaning given to the word «self» when it is used in popular expressions such as «Being true to one's own "self"», «Being oneself». People's self-concepts are their perceptions of themselves, which do not always correspond to their own experience or organismic «self». In cases where the «self» and the self-concept are not congruent, the striving to actualize the self-image can interfere with satisfying the deeper need to actualize the organismic «self».
Conditions of worth. From early childhood, a person develops a need for positive regard from others. Evaluations based more on the opinions of others than on the individual's own organismic evaluative process are called conditions of worth. Conditions of worth are extremely widespread, since individuals' behavior is all too often culturally and socially conditioned. People develop a second type of evaluative process. The first type is the organismic evaluative process, which accurately reflects the actualizing tendency. The second type is a process associated with conditions of worth, based on the internalization or "introjection" of other people's evaluations. Thus, people often seek out or avoid certain experiences in order to satisfy needs that are false rather than real.
Family life. Rogers found that parents are able to regard a child with unconditional positive regard only to the extent that they unconditionally respect themselves. By "unconditional positive regard," Rogers meant parents' ability to value the child highly even when they cannot equally approve of all of the child's actions. The higher the degree of unconditional positive regard parents show toward a child, the fewer conditions of worth the child develops, and the higher the level of his or her psychological adjustment.
Subception and anxiety. With the concept of "subception," Rogers describes the mechanism by which sensory and visceral experience can be denied or inaccurately perceived. The organism's reaction to "subception" is anxiety, or tension. Under anxiety, incongruence (or lack of correspondence) between the self-concept and experience may enter awareness or understanding. This produces changes in the currently dominant self-concept. The reactions of an individual who has taken a defensive stance in connection with tension involve regarding experience from absolute and rigid positions (through excessive generalization, confusion of facts, and a tendency to rely on abstractions rather than to test reality).
The self-concepts of severely dysfunctional people block accurate perception of broad areas of their essential sensory and visceral experience. However, if a situation arises in which essential experience is felt suddenly or too intensely within a zone of high incongruence, the defense mechanisms may prove ineffective. This happens when the intensity and significance of the experience for the person is great, or when the experience appears unexpectedly. Previously blocked experience, as it were, "breaks through" into awareness. People find themselves confronted with such a large amount of denied experience that they are unable to cope with it; as a result, a state of disorganization develops and the likelihood of a psychotic breakdown increases.
Characteristic features of the self-concept. The self-concept is a set of perceptions of oneself, or a set of means by which people interact with life in such a way that they manage to satisfy their needs. Effective self-concepts allow people to perceive experience realistically, regardless of whether that experience originates from their organism or from the surrounding environment; in other words, such self-concepts make people open to experience.
Ineffective self-concepts can persist for a long time because they sometimes serve as a means of satisfying a need. In addition, ineffective self-concepts contain many conditions of worth and are generated by people's need for positive regard. For this reason they can become deeply embedded in the structure of self-concepts. Third, the more deeply conditions of worth are embedded, the more stubbornly they persist, since changing them would provoke anxiety due to the perceived incongruence between one's self-image and one's actual experience.
Some of the substantive areas of people's self-concepts include the following elements: the physical, social, and sexual spheres, feelings and emotions, tastes and preferences, work, leisure, intellectual pursuits, philosophy, and values. People differ in the significance they attach to these areas, as well as in the kinds of self-concepts they hold in these spheres.
+The self-concept can be viewed as a structure consisting of various self-concepts interconnected in various ways. The self-concept is also a means or process by which people interact with the environment and ignore, deny, distort, or accurately perceive experience. Some self-concepts may be congruent with (corresponding to) actual experiences. Other self-concepts may differ to varying degrees from actual experiences (in which case one speaks of incongruence between the self-concept and experience).
To account for certain discrepancies in a person's self-awareness, Rogers uses the concepts of "real" and "ideal" concepts. Real concepts represent a person's perception of themselves in reality. Ideal concepts reflect a person's idea of what they would most like to be.
The goal of person-centered counseling is to help the person achieve full functioning, or maturity. Personal maturity is defined by the following qualities: openness to experience and the ability to perceive life realistically; rationality and the absence of a defensive orientation; taking responsibility for one's differences from others and for one's own behavior; a creative attitude toward one's environment; acceptance of other people as unique individuals; high self-esteem; a high regard for other people; open and free reactions based on immediate experience; and the display of a high level of self-awareness when required.
Openness to experience produces more effective behavior, in which people have a broader perceptual field and are more often able to act in accordance with their own choice rather than out of felt necessity. Openness to experience can also foster greater spontaneity and creativity, since people who are open to experience are less constrained by the straitjacket of conditions of worth.
Rogers considered it a tragedy that most of the defense mechanisms people possess prevent them from even imagining how rationally they could act.
People can be considered "personally responsible" if they take on responsibility for their own self-actualization, rather than merely feeling responsible for others. Recognition of personal responsibility is a central part of the self-concepts of effective people.
Self-esteem is another important part of the self-concepts of effective people. A person who respects themselves is characterized by a high degree of unconditional self-regard, or self-acceptance. Self-esteem is based more on the organismic valuing process than on praise and the satisfaction of other people's needs. People characterized by a high degree of unconditional self-regard value themselves even when they cannot rate all of their behavior and all of their personal traits highly.
Good personal relationships, as Rogers believed, involve accepting other people as unique individuals, holding others in high regard, relating to them openly and freely on the basis of immediate experience, and having the capacity, when necessary, to communicate a high level of self-awareness to others.
Rogers believed that congruence, authenticity, or "realness" are probably the most important elements of ordinary life interactions. Rogers placed the greatest importance on empathy in cases where the other person is anxious and vulnerable.
+Self-actualizing people are able to identify with other people. Because of this, they tend to promote the self-actualization of others as well as their own self-actualization. Another important trait of the self-actualizing personality is the ability to draw a sharp distinction between ends and means, as well as between good and evil. As Maslow's research showed38, the main distinguishing traits of fully functioning, or self-actualizing, people are six: openness to experience, rationality, personal responsibility, self-esteem, the capacity to maintain good personal relationships, and an ethical life. All of these qualities are both goals and means of the self-actualizing tendency, and all of them presuppose the existence of effective self-concepts.
Person-centered counseling does not rely on specific techniques. Rogers believed that the effectiveness of counseling is determined, above all, by the quality of the interpersonal interaction between the counselor and the client. In person-centered counseling, the thoughts and feelings of both clients and counselors are of great importance. There are no formal evaluation criteria, since all clients are regarded as individuals experiencing difficulties in self-actualization due to the presence of conditions of worth. If counselors were to evaluate clients from their own external point of view, they would risk replicating the very circumstances that led to the clients' acquiring and maintaining certain conditions of worth.
There is a connection between how accurately person-centered counselors identify the causes of their clients' self-alienation and inner divisions, and how well they are able to help their clients grow and heal. Person-centered counselors strive to create a relational climate that can serve as an antidote to the emotional deprivation their clients have experienced.
In 1957, Rogers listed six conditions that are necessary and sufficient for therapeutic personality change. These conditions must be present over a period of time sufficient for constructive personality change to occur.
First, there must be psychological contact between the two people.
Second, the client must be in a state of incongruence and be vulnerable or anxious.
Third, the counselor must be «congruent, or integrated, in the relationship».
Fourth and fifth, the counselor must experience «unconditional positive regard for the client» and «empathic understanding of the client's frame of reference».
Sixth, the counselor must be able to adequately communicate to the client this empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard. Rogers considered congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathy to be elements necessary for creating a relational climate that fosters therapeutic growth.
Congruence. Words such as authenticity, realness, openness, transparency, and presence are used to understand the essence of congruence. Counselors should keep in mind that congruence is the most important condition of the relationship. Therefore, it is important for the counselor to perceive the feelings they are experiencing, to be aware of them, and to communicate them if necessary. It is enough for counselors to be fully themselves. The counselor should not be afraid to share their client's feelings. In the process of counseling, both counselors and clients can attain an altered state of consciousness characterized by the emergence of a sense of coming into contact with a special spiritual (transcendent) reality. Rogers believed that, as a counselor, he worked most effectively when he was closest to his inner intuitive «self». Rogers writes: «It seems that my inner spirit has reached out and touched the inner spirit of the other person. Our relationship transcends itself and becomes part of something larger. Profound growth, healing, and an inflow of energy take place»39.
Unconditional positive regard. The concept of «unconditional positive regard» is connected to Rogers' deep belief that clients are capable of constructive change. Developing unconditional positive regard (associated with selfless caring, high valuing of the partner, their emotional acceptance, and respect) requires the counselor's commitment to personal integration, since a counselor can respect clients' capacity to achieve a high level of constructive self-direction only to the extent that this respect is an integral part of their own personality.
Unconditional positive regard is equivalent to love, expressed in accordance with the Christian concept of «love for one's neighbor». Unconditional positive regard does not mean that counselors must approve of everything their clients do. The essence of this stance is that the likelihood of clients moving forward increases when they are praised for their humanity and experience feelings of safety and freedom.
Empathy. Rogers attached great importance to the process of empathy in counseling. He understood empathy as sensing the client's inner world as if it were one's own, while retaining the "as if» quality. By showing tact, sensitivity, and understanding of clients' problems, counselors should convey to them their perception of the clients' inner world and personal meanings. Counselors should also communicate to clients their commitment to understanding their inner world, frequently checking the accuracy of their understanding and showing a readiness to take remarks into account and make corrections. An empathic attitude helps create an emotional climate in which clients can help their counselors understand them more accurately.
True empathy has no evaluative or diagnostic quality whatsoever. Nor does empathy imply mechanical reflection.
Through communication with a congruent counselor, the client gradually also becomes more congruent. In a favorable climate, clients need less of a defensive stance and less external validation, and gradually begin to open themselves up to counselors, despite the possible painfulness of such self-disclosure. Counselors who accept clients and highly value their right to truly be themselves allow them to share the part of themselves they consider embarrassing, «wrong», or frightening. Counselors also give clients the opportunity to share the part of themselves that they like, without judging such openness. As the relationship between counselor and client develops, mutual congruence may arise, which makes it easier for each of them to maintain a genuine relationship.
Most often, clients experience a lack of self-esteem. Understanding and accepting the hidden and unacceptable part of oneself in the course of empathic interaction with the counselor helps clients overcome alienation and reconnect with the human race. The counselor's genuine concern for their clients' true «self» and high regard for them allow clients to think of themselves with greater respect. Gradually, clients develop the capacity for self-acceptance. As clients' sense of self-worth develops, they begin to shift their «locus of evaluation» from the standards and beliefs of others toward their own views. Thus, clients become less vulnerable to the destructive effects of conditions of worth.
+Clients' awareness that the counselor is sensitively attentive to their feelings gives clients the opportunity to experience and analyze their own feelings and thus understand themselves better. In addition, clients come to realize how important it is to listen to their own feelings themselves - this makes it possible to develop appropriate courses of action and determine a life direction for the future, as well as to experience empathy toward other people, thereby improving the quality of their relationships with others.
Counselors who lack sufficient congruence, empathy, and unconditional acceptance can only increase the degree of their clients' incongruence, the degree of their negative self-attitude, and the extent of their lack of empathy.
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