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Block 3 Unit 1 Roger’s Client Centered Therapy

1) What are the views of human nature in Roger’s client centered therapy? Discuss human nature as a view point from Roger’s therapy angle.

In Roger's client-centred therapy, human beings are viewed as possessing goodness and the desire to become fully functioning. This means they have an innate drive to live as effectively as possible. Rogers believed that if people are allowed to develop freely, they will flourish and become positive, achieving individuals. This faith in human nature is why it is considered a humanistic approach to counselling. 

Rogers' theory is based on a concept of personality referred to as self-theory. An individual’s view of self within the context of their environment influences their actions and personal satisfactions. If provided with a nurturing environment, people will grow with confidence toward self-actualisation. Without love and support, they are likely to see themselves as lacking worth and others as untrustworthy, which can lead to defensive behaviour and hamper growth toward self-actualisation. 

Key assumptions include:

• People are fundamentally trustworthy.
• People naturally move towards self-actualisation and health.
• People possess inner resources to move in positive directions.
• People respond to their uniquely perceived world.

2) Elucidate goals of client centered therapy.

The goal of client-centred therapy is to provide a safe and caring environment where clients can get in closer touch with essential positive elements of themselves that have been hidden or distorted. The aim is to promote greater congruence between a client's ideal and actual selves, leading to greater trust in their own ability to react effectively to people and situations.

3) Describe the general and specific goals of client centered therapy.

The general goals of client-centred therapy are:

• Becoming more open to experience
• Achieving self-trust
• Developing an internal source of evaluation
• A willingness to continue growing
• That fewer behaviours will be driven by stereotypes and more by productive, creative and flexible decision-making. Specific goals of client-centred therapy include:
• Increased self-esteem
• Greater openness to experience
• Closer agreement between the client's idealised and actual selves
• Better self-understanding
• Lower levels of defensiveness, guilt and insecurity
• More positive and comfortable relationships with others
• An increased capacity to experience and express feelings at the moment they occur.

4) Describe the counselling process of client centered therapy.

The counselling process of client-centred therapy involves the counsellor providing conditions that permit self-discovery and encourage the client's natural tendency toward personal growth. The core conditions for this are empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence (or genuineness). This approach emphasizes the client's self-actualisation and sees the client as the best resource for growth and change. The process involves a movement from purely cerebral to feeling states, as well as a change to an internal locus of control. It aims to help clients to rediscover denied experiences and get in touch with themselves.

5) What is empathy? How is useful in therapy?

Empathy is the counsellor's ability to understand the client at a deep level, from the client’s internal frame of reference, which is their unique experience of personal problems. This involves listening carefully to what is being conveyed, both verbally and nonverbally. Empathy helps the client to re-experience feelings, which can lead to increased self-awareness and problem resolution. It is important for the therapist to communicate their understanding of the client’s feelings and experiences to the client.

6) Describe unconditional positive regard.

Unconditional positive regard means valuing clients without any conditions attached, even when they experience themselves as negative or abnormal. This involves conveying warmth and acceptance. Many people who come into counselling have experienced conditional acceptance and may never have had the opportunity to be valued without any conditions. Rogers believed that the therapist's warmth and acceptance can encourage clients to accept themselves and become more confident in their ability to cope.

7) Elucidate the concepts of congruence, genuineness, transparency and concreteness.

Here's a breakdown of the other core conditions:

• Congruence and genuineness mean that the therapist needs to be real and true in the relationship. Individuals who cannot accept others or will not listen and try to understand cannot do Person Centered Therapy. The therapist must embody these qualities, and experience empathic understanding from the client's internal frame of reference as well as unconditional positive regard.
• Transparency relates to the counsellor’s willingness to be open and transparent in the relationship, allowing the client to see their genuine self.
• Concreteness is the counsellor's skill in focusing the client's communication on specific feelings, experiences, and behaviours that can occur when the other three conditions are employed without sufficient attention to identifying the client’s themes.

8) How does client centered counselling incorporate cultural awareness.

In culture-centered counselling, recognising the centrality of culture can augment therapy and result in effective treatment of all clients. This involves recognizing cultural assumptions and acquiring knowledge and skills to get beyond them, regardless of treatment model.

9) Discuss the various intervention strategies in client centered therapy.

Intervention strategies in client-centred therapy include:

• The therapist's attitude which is considered necessary and sufficient for change.
• The therapist needs to be immediately present and accessible to clients.
• Intensive, continuous focus on the patient's phenomenological world.
• A process marked by the client's ability to live fully in the moment.
• A focus on personality change, not structure of personality.
• Implied Therapeutic Conditions. The client and therapist must be in psychological contact, the client must experience distress and be willing to receive conditions offered by the therapist.
• Empathy, unconditional positive regard, and congruence which are the basic requirements to create a therapeutic environment.
• Active listening, and reflection of feeling and content, as well as paraphrasing, summarizing, and asking open questions.

10) Describe cognitive view of psychotherapy.

The sources do not describe a cognitive view of psychotherapy. However, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is described as being based on the concept that emotions and behaviours result primarily from cognitive processes, and that it is possible to modify these processes to achieve different ways of feeling and behaving. CBT proposes that almost all human emotions and behaviours are the result of what people think, assume or believe, and that it is what people believe about situations they face, not the situations themselves, that determine how they feel and behave.

11) Elucidate the roles and functions of therapist in client centered therapy.

The therapist’s roles and functions in client-centred therapy are to:

• Use self as an instrument of change.
• Focus on the quality of the therapeutic relationship.
• Serve as a model of a human being struggling toward greater realness.
• Be genuine, integrated and authentic.
• Openly express feelings and attitudes that are present in the relationship with the client.
• Be present and accessible to clients.
• Focus on immediate experience.
• Be real in the relationship with clients. Through the therapist’s attitude of genuine caring, respect, acceptance, and understanding, clients become less defensive and more open to their experiences and facilitate personal growth.

12) What important does therapist client relationship has? Explain.

The therapist-client relationship is of paramount importance in client-centred therapy, as it is the primary agent of growth for the client. The relationship is based on respect for the client, an empathic bond and the counsellor’s willingness to be open and genuine. The relationship facilitates the client’s self-actualisation. It is a safe place where the client can be truly listened to without evaluation or judgment. A central variable related to progress in person-centred therapy is the relationship between therapist and client.

13) Discuss being genuine, active listening reflecting contents and feelings as part of therapy.

Here's how being genuine, active listening, and reflecting content and feelings function in client-centered therapy:

• Being genuine: The therapist needs to be knowledgeable about themselves and comfortable with this information. They must be more congruent than their clients. It means being a helpful, attentive, caring person who is truly interested in the client and able to demonstrate that interest.
• Active listening: Requires highly attentive and interactive listening skills. This involves facing the client, leaning towards them, and making good eye contact. The therapist needs to hear and see what is being communicated, and then reflect the content and feelings of clients back to them to have value.
• Reflecting content and feelings: The therapist recognises and reflects the client’s stated words and the most obvious feelings. As the relationship develops, the therapist can begin to see and convey feelings the client is not aware they are expressing.

14) Discuss the various counselling process of client centered therapy.

In client-centred therapy, the counselling process is characterised by:

• The counsellor providing conditions that permit self-discovery and encourage the client's natural tendency toward personal growth.
• A focus on empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence/genuineness from the counsellor.
• The view that the client is their own best resource for growth and change.
• A movement from a cerebral state to feeling states.
• A change to an internal locus of control.
• An emphasis on the here and now and the client's perception of self and the world.
• The therapist's role as a facilitator of the client's self understanding.

15) What are the limitations of the client centered therapy?

Limitations of client-centered therapy include:

• It discounts the significance of the past.
• The basic concepts are often misunderstood, such as reflection of feelings.
• People in crisis situations often need more directive intervention strategies.
• Clients may expect a more structured approach.
• There may be a lack of focus on specific action planning, except as initiated by the client.