Revising the Person-Centered Approach: Pushing on the Envelope, but Not Very Hard

Copyright © 2011 by D. (Doug) William Bower

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Preface

Introduction: Highlights (More or Less)

A Pilgrimage Towards Becoming Person-Centered

Self-Actualization

Regarding Change

Power Stuff

Acceptance:

Empathy:

Congruence/Genuineness:

Psycho-Social Assessment and the PCA

The Person-Centered Approach as Ethics

On A Person-Centered Religion:

A Criticism of the Person-Centered Approach

Of Carl Rogers

Implications of the Person-centered Approach for Pastoral Counseling

Awkwardly Exploring The Paul Tillich – Carl Rogers Dialogue

Dedication

In 1987 I attended the first annual Warm Springs Person-Centered Workshop. I had the privilege to be among the students working with Jerold Bozarth from the University of Georgia counseling psychology department who helped plan the event. About 2 weeks prior to the occasion, Carl Rogers died. Nat Raskin, Barbara Brodley, Fred Zimring, Dave Spahn, Sam Mitchell, and Chuck Devonshire attended. Rumors were floating around that Carl Rogers’ health was such that he would not be able to attend. No one expected to receive news of his death though. There was an atmosphere of sadness, but also optimism regarding the workshop and the future of the Person-Centered Approach.

I dedicate this work to my UGA peers who either helped organize the event or participate in it. These included: Dottie Morgan, Ann Schwartz, Carol (Top) Topping, Phil Barrineau, Joanne Cohen, Polly Payne, Howard Ellis, Elizabeth Strickler-Kirkpatrick, and Jeff Penick. Jeff’s name isn’t on the 1987 roster of attendees, but is on the 1988 list.

We have pretty much gone our separate ways even losing contact with each other. Dottie, Ann, Jo, Elizabeth and I still get to Warm Springs for the annual event. It becomes a reunion of sorts. Each has made a commitment to practicing the approach as they understand it.

Preface

Pushing the envelope is what those in test flying do when they take their machine past the point where it has ever been before

James Lovell

At one of the annual Warm Springs Person-Centered workshops, a psychiatrist attended who was interested in Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing. He was accused of not being Person-Centered. I considered the interaction with him as an attack. It felt self righteous and dismissive. It certainly reflected a narrow view of what it means to be Person-Centered. Over the years I have heard the charge That’s not Person-Centered so many times that I cringe on hearing it.

In Person-Centered/Client Centered: Discovering the Self that One Truly is, I noted that I keep pushing on the envelope of this approach. I am still pushing, not satisfied that I have captured the movement, the flexibility, or the different slant I want to address regarding the Person-Centered Approach. I want to get at the approach as a person to person approach free of legalism. I want to get at an approach that appreciates Carl Rogers, but doesn’t depend on him. I seek to address an approach that is open to various interpretations of what it means to be Person-Centered.

In my own pilgrimage, I came to question the principles of nondirectiveness, nonjudgmentalness, and unconditional positive regard. I came to regard a rigid, uncompromising adherence to nondirectiveness as a form of directiveness. Come hell or high water, the therapist is to be nondirective. I found my colleagues in the approach to be every bit as judgmental as any group of people I associate with. On top of that I have known for years that I am judgmental and got tired of trying to be nonjudgmental. In addition, I experienced feeling judgmental with clients, even if I kept that judgmentalness to myself because Person-Centered Therapists are supposed to be nonjudgmental. Still, I saw those clients change though I was experiencing judgmentalness. Finally, sort of, I can’t for the life of me figure out how positive regard can be viewed as unconditional. I found no criteria are available to determine if positive regard is actually unconditional. I certainly don’t have a clue how clients can possibly determine if the therapist’s positive regard is actually unconditional or just regular positive regard. Naturally, this impacts the so-called Necessary and Sufficient aspects of the Person-Centered Approach. Such questions do not undermine that a great deal of research has been done that demonstrates that the Person-Centered approach is at least as effective as any other approach. That also means that research as demonstrated it is not as effective. However, the effectiveness of all the approaches to therapy has been called into question.

Thus, I present this push on the envelope. I am simply saying to interested persons, be open to discovering the approach based on a personal frame of reference and the ability to interpret the approach. Adherents are not obliged to speak to or about the approach in such as way as to confirm to Carl Rogers’ understanding of the approach. Adherents are also not obliged to confirm to the understanding that others espouse either.

Introduction: Highlights (More or Less)

This chapter entails a great risk, missing what the approach is about, while offering a questioning, and a view through my eyes. It occurs to me that dealing with the person-centered approach is rather like engaging modern art. The eyes of the beholder interpret and highlight what leaps out. And so, I present my views here, not as fact, nor as final word, but as a glimpse at how I see the approach.

Rogers a Snap Shot History

I am bias about this. I am convinced that the world around us has a major impact on our beliefs. I am sure I believe this because of what I have been exposed to myself from Freud to Whitehead to Rogers there would be support for this position. The slants would be different, Freud being deterministic; Whitehead being process oriented allowing for external influences while internal influences put their own unique twists, and Rogers allowing for more independence on one’s personal growth through self-actualization. Still even Rogers who argued that human beings are basically good asserted that society creates or fosters bad behavior (Rogers, 1981).

However, in my bias I am not prepared to say just how Carl Rogers was influenced by the world around him.

Carl Ransom Rogers was born on January 8, 1902, the fourth child of Walter Rogers and the former Julia Cushing. Kirschenbaum (1979) wrote, Carl was a sickly child – slight, shy, prone to tears, often the target of jokes and teasing by his older brothers (p. 2). Kirschenbaum also indicated that Carl received a great deal of attention from his mother and siblings.

The family lived in a middle class setting in Oak Park, Illinois for a time and later on a farm close to Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

Of interest to me was that Carl Rogers was raised in a religious home with Calvinism and Fundamentalism being a foundation for the family religious practices. With Calvinism’s legalism and Fundamentalism’s rigidity, basic premises of Scripture would have been a part of Carl Roger’s life as well as presuppositions of the Congregationalist tradition in which they worshiped.

Kirschenbaum points out the family spent a great deal of time together and Carl spent his high school years socially isolated from his peers. Since dancing was not allowed for the Rogers, and that was what the young people mostly did at parties, he had practically no social life. Personally, I suspect it would be quite difficult to overcome shyness without having access to a social life. However, Carl Rogers did and it enabled him to reach out to the world through his theory.

China

In 1921, Carl Rogers was selected to represent the United States Y.M.C.A. at the World Student Christian Federation Conference to be held in Peking, China. Kirschenbaum quotes him as saying, Surely God wants me for some great task, something that he is saving for me alone … Surely God’s hand is visible in this last and greatest opportunity and responsibility that has come upon me (p. 23).

During that trip his religious views were changed radically. To my knowledge Carl Rogers never again used the language above to describe a religious position.

However as a fundamentalist Christian myself, I keep seeing his Humanistic position as quite consistent with my own position. His position on nonjudgmentalness is actually closer to the Christian position than Christians might want to admit as Christ demonstrated concern about believers being judgmental. Do not judge so that you will not be judged Matthew 7:1 (NASB), comes to mind.

While there is often a great deal of emphasis in the person-centered approach upon Unconditional Positive Regard, the Rogerian notion of acceptance often seems to be to reflect the traditional Christian song Just as I Am. And while the notion of empathy, entering into the world of another may not be directly found as such in the Scripture, and if it is I couldn’t find it, certainly that principle is consistent with Love thy neighbour as thyself Matthew 22:39 (KJV) and with the Christian notion of the incarnation of Jesus who, emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men Philippians 2:7 (NASB). This image projects the Christ as one was willing to enter the world of human beings as if.

Surely, it is always dangerous to stand dogmatic in such statements. It may be like comparing apples and oranges. However, it does indeed strike me that attitude and intention are important components in these positions. Thus, I find the attitudes and intentions compatible

For whatever reason, Carl Rogers chose to consciously and deliberately reject the traditional jargon in which he was reared. That he did though doesn’t mean that others raised in similar traditions have to.

New York

Newly married, Carl and Helen headed to New York City. He had decided to attend Union Theological Seminary over Princeton. Being biased that settings, people, and events influence peoples’ lives, I can’t help but wonder if the world would have ever heard of Carl Rogers had that decision ever been made. There is no way to know this as he did indeed choose to attend Union.

It appears here that any remnant of faith was purged by his studies. He shifted here to a more secular position. Exposure to courses at Teachers College at Columbia appeared to help solidify this secularization and probably further laid seeds for his theory and practice. He soon left seminary for the clinical and educational psychology program at Teachers College.

As a developing psychologist, Rogers took a Fellowship position at Child Guidance. Between his dissertation and his work there, I can’t say there is much a hint of the theory that was to come. However, I can’t imagine that Rogers didn’t demonstrate the conditions he was to later espouse as being therapeutic.

Rochester

In Rochester Rogers appeared to be exposed to the realities of troubled children in relationship to available assessment and treatment. A position with the Child Study Department of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children exposed him to a multi-disciplinary team and a multi-disciplinary process of engaging troubled children. He even developed assessment instruments useful to the process.

However, I am convinced from my reading of Kirschenbaum that it was foster parents which may have been the most instrumental in moving Rogers towards his theory of helping. He in what appears to me as a glimpse of that to come Rogers is quoted by Kirschenbaum as saying that certain types of attitudes were important.

1. An attitude of intelligent understanding … 2. A consistency of viewpoint and discipline … 3. An attitude of interested affection … 4. Satisfaction in the child’s developing abilities. (Rogers, 1979, pp 73-74.).

These struck me this way, empathy, congruence, acceptance, and a basic trust or belief in the ability of the child to function.

Now I have to admit my bias. I am reading about and writing about Rogers having been influenced by the person-centered approach. And I also can not help but wonder how much of Rogers interview with Kirschenbaum was influenced by Rogers looking back through his own theory and thus recalling experiences and interpreting recollections through Rogers’s present experiences being influenced by his own theory. A here and now theory does lend itself to wondering if past recollections actually don’t say more about the present than the past. And so I

I also found myself wondering about Kirschenbaum’s own interpretation of Rogers’s biographical material. Writing Rogers’s drive toward health Kirschenbaum wrote, This fundamental axiom, in my opinion, represents the basis of all Rogers’ subsequent work after he left Rochester. Later on, some of his important work went into supporting his theory that human beings, like animals and plants, have an innate ‘drive toward health’ which can be nurtured by the right type of environment (pp. 75-76).

I leave my revisit of Carl Rogers’s Rochester Years (above) feeling that Rogers had experiences which had profound influences on the development of his theory and practice.

I found it hard to get away from the influences or Rochester. Above, foster parents demonstrated important aspects of relating that helped children. Later, Rogers was influenced by Samuel Hartwell who supplied genuine efforts to establish rapport with children. I certainly have to say there was a great deal of warmth concerning the brief descriptions about Dr. Hartwell.

Further, during this time Rogers apparently began seriously questioning the use of persuasion and suggestion during therapy. Allegedly he found that these methods were external sources of motivation. I assume that he noted that it was difficult to motivate children using these efforts.

Rogers then began having a loss of appreciation of a more interpretative methodology that he had employed himself. On one occasion while attempting to help a woman gain insight into the problems of her son, he reached a point of being flabbergasted and ended the session. However, the woman upon finding out that the Center worked with adults returned to her chair and began sharing deeply and profoundly her own experiences about her situation with her son. It seems to have had a major impact on Rogers and possibly contributed further towards his shift away from the models he had been exposed to. This shift seems to be related to another important theme in cct/pca, that the client knows what the problem is and is often, if not always, the best person to describe the problem.

As this discovery continued to unfold, Rogers was influenced by Rank. It appears that several aspects of Ranks theory were of interest to Rogers. However, the will of the client as a directive force in the client was one of the important slants. Also the attitude of noninterference and trusting in the client’s ability to change and grow were important.

A rewording of his position led to the following for conditions for therapy: 1) Objectivity - the real demonstration of interest in the client without being taken aback by what the client presented or did; 2) Respect for the client - accepting the client as the person he or she is; 3) Self-understanding - knowing the emotional and cognitive aspects of who the therapist truly is; And, 4) Psychological knowledge - being familiar with the behavior of human beings (Kirschenbaum, 1979, p. 96-97).

Ohio State

According to Kirschenbaum, it was during Rogers’ time at Ohio State that he adopted two key words regarding this evolving approach, client, and nondirective.

The use of the word client appears to an effort to get away from the following model of a patient. A patient is usually regarded as a ‘sick’ person. He expects the doctor to cure him, to do something to him, to assume much of the responsibility for his well-being. The assumption is that the doctor, because of her training, can know, even better than the patient, what is wrong with him and can prescribe the necessary method of treatment (Kirschenbaum, p. 115).

The term client was seen as a more equalitarian word as it indicated two parties interacting equally. Rogers wanted a client to be able to come for psychological help – counseling or therapy – in much the same spirit that a client comes for legal counsel or consults an accountant or architect (p. 117).

Before moving to the term nondirective, I want to share some responses. It certainly is true that patients are treated as described above. However, changing the word doesn’t change that. Also, in order to qualify to be a patient in psychotherapy or counseling, one is usually a person. I do understand that there are psychotherapists for animals. Yet, traditionally a patient is still a person.

In addition, people coming for counseling and/or psychotherapy are in distress. They come to deal specifically with dealing with their psycho-social state. While a person going to an accounted or lawyer may be in distress, he/she goes to these to deal with matters of money, or matters of law. There still remains the atmosphere of I know more about accounting or law than you do. So the word client actually doesn’t remove the issue of expertise.

The other key word shift was the term nondirective. The basic assumption of this term is captured in the following statement the counselor takes no responsibility for directing the outcome of the process’ (Rogers, 1942, p. 115).

Let it be said plainly that the concept of counseling set for in this book is by no means the only possible concept. There are other definitions of the counseling process, and other ways of defining the counseling relationship. Probably the commonest definition of the process is that the counselor discovers, diagnoses, and treats the client’s problems, provided that the counselee gives his active cooperation in the procedure. The counselor, according to this viewpoint, accepts a major responsibility in solving the problem, and this responsibility becomes the focus of his efforts (p. 115).

Of interest to me is that the so-called directive approaches don’t call themselves directive. This distinction was manufactured by Rogers as a means to distinguish the approach he was espousing from the standard approaches of the day.

At this point, it is probably appropriate to present Rogers’ 1942 views of the characteristics of nondirective counseling. 1) It aims directly toward the greater independence and integration of the individual rather than hoping such results will accrue if the counselor assists in solving the problem (Rogers, 1942, p. 28). 2) This newer therapy places greater stress upon the emotional elements, the feeling aspects of the situation, than upon the intellectual aspects (p. 29). And 3) This newer therapy places greater stress upon the immediate situation than upon the individual’s past (p. 29).

Not sounding foreign to the later material on the Necessary and Sufficient Conditions Rogers (1942) presented 12 characteristic steps