Chapter 6

Person-centered
Counseling
I’m looking for the angel within.
—Michelangelo

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Chapter objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
• Outline the development of client-centered counseling
and Carl Rogers
• Explain the theory of client-centered counseling,
including its core concepts
• Discuss the counseling relationship and goals in client-
centered treatment
• Describe assessment, process, and techniques in
client-centered counseling
• Demonstrate some therapeutic techniques
• Clarify the effectiveness of client-centered counseling
• Discuss client-centered play therapy
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 Carl Rogers
• Childhood marked by close family ties, a strict
religious and moral atmosphere and the
appreciation of hard work.
• Attended graduate school at Union Theological
Seminary
• Fellowship at Institute of Child Guidance
• At Ohio State University as a professor began to
publish cases in “client-centered therapy”

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 Carl Rogers
• While at University of Chicago wrote Client-
Centered Therapy (1951)
• Eventually moved to Western Behavioral
Sciences Institute and in La Jolla formed
the Center for Studies of the Person
• Spent most of his time working with and
writing about person-centered therapy with
groups

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 Nature of People
• rational,
• socialized,
• forward-moving,
• realistic beings
• negative, antisocial emotions result of frustrated
basic impulses
• once free of defensive behavior, reactions
positive and progressive

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Person-Centered Counselor
Believes People:
• Have worth and dignity and deserve respect
• Have the capacity and right to self-direction
• Can select their own values
• Can learn to make constructive use of
responsibility
• Have the capacity to deal with their feelings,
thoughts and behaviors
• Have the potential for constructive change

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 Theory of Counseling
1. Two people in psychological contact
2. Client is in a state of incongruence
3. Therapist is congruent and involved in
relationship

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 Theory of Counseling (Cont.)
4. Therapist has unconditional positive
regard for client
5. Therapist has empathetic
understanding of the client’s frame of
reference
6. Communication of empathetic and
positive regard is achieved.

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 Theory of Counseling
• All 6 conditions necessary for personality
change
• The sixth condition, the basis for trust between
counselor and client, is especially vital.
• Thompson & Henderson maintain that the six
conditions provide a sound foundation for most
standard methods of counseling children

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 Theory of Counseling
• Do not give advice, ask question or make
interpretations
• Put clients in position of charting the
direction of their counseling interviews
• Limit responses to summaries and
clarifications of the content, feelings, and
expectations for counseling presented by
the client

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 Theory of Counseling
Clients receiving person-centered counseling
learn more about themselves and their
unsolved problems than they have ever known
before because they are in the teaching role of
trying to help counselors understand their (the
clients’) situations. The task of the person-
centered counselor is to take periodic oral
quizzes on how much they are learning and
understanding.

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 Theory of Counseling
Active Listening Process
• paraphrase
• summarize
• reflect feelings
• clarify

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 Theory of Counseling
• Counselor creates a warm and accepting
atmosphere for client
• Counselor reflects client’s inner world with
warmth, acceptance, and trust
• Main goal is assisting people in becoming more
autonomous, spontaneous and confident
• Ultimate goal is for client to be a fully functioning
person who has learned to be free and who can
counsel self

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 Counseling Method
• Counselor as person vital, a model
• Possess and demonstrate openness,
empathic understanding, independence,
spontaneity, acceptance, mutual respect
and intimacy
• Strongest techniques: congruence
(genuineness), unconditional positive
regard (respect) and empathy

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 Rogers’s Six Principles
• First principle: “…I have found that it does
not help, in the long run, to act as though I
am something I am not.”
• Second principle: “I have found it
effective…to be accepting of myself.”
• Third principle: “I have found it to be of
enormous value when I can permit myself
to understand another person.”

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Rogers’s Six Principles (Cont.)
• Fourth principle: “I have found it to be of
value to be open to the realities of life as
they are revealed in me and in other
people.”
• Fifth principle: “The more I am able to
understand myself and others, the more
that I am open to the realities of life and the
less I find myself wishing to rush in.”

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Rogers’s Six Principles (Cont.)

• Sixth principle: “It has been my

experience that people have a
basically positive direction.”

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 Landreth: Counselors
Concentrate On
• The child rather than the problem
• The present rather than the past
• Feelings rather than thoughts and behaviors
• Understanding rather than explaining
• Accepting rather than correcting
• The child’s wisdom and direction rather than the
counselor’s
The inner person of the child and what the child is
and can become are the focal points.
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 Active Listening
• Carkhuff systematized Rogers’s concept
into usable model
• Believes counselors typically respond on
any of five levels relating to the three
phases of counseling
• Phase I is where you are now
• Phase II is where you would like to be
• Phase III is planning how to get from I to II
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 Carkhuff’s
Levels of Communication
Level One: Discounting Feelings
• “Oh don’t worry about that--we all have
problems worse than that.”
• “If you think you have a problem, listen
to this.”
• “You must have done something to
cause that.”

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 Carkhuff’s
Levels of Communication (Cont.)
Level Two: Giving Advice
• “You need to study harder.”
• “You should eat better.”
• “Why don’t you make more friends?”
• “How would you like your brother to
treat you the way you treat him?”
• “You should look for another job.”
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 Carkhuff’s
Levels of Communication (Cont.)
Level Three: Summarize the Problem
• “You feel _____ because ______ .”
• “You are sad because your best friend
moved.”
• “You are happy because your team
won.”

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 Carkhuff’s
Levels of Communication (Cont.)
Help for Level 3:
• First counselors ask themselves whether
client is expressing pain or pleasure
• Then find the correct feeling word to describe
the emotion
• Do not parrot the exact words of the client
but capture the feelings to help them
recognize their emotions as indicators of
their direction in life
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 Carkhuff’s
Levels of Communication (Cont.)
Level Four: Summarize the Goal

• “You feel _____ because ______ and

you want__________.”

• “You are anxious because you have to

give a speech and you want to be
more confident about it.”
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 Carkhuff’s
Levels of Communication (Cont.)
Level Five: Initiate a Plan

• “You feel _____ because ______ and

you want__________. We can begin
by looking at what you have been
doing to solve the problem.”

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Motivational Interviewing
• person-centered
• directive approach for increasing intrinsic
motivation to change by investigating and
confronting ambivalence
• mixes person-centered fundamentals of warmth
and empathy
• techniques of questioning and reflective listening
• incorporates goals about change and provides
specific interventions to encourage the client toward
behavioral change.
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Motivational Interviewing
Four principles
1. The counselor uses reflective listening to convey
understanding of the message and caring for the
person.
2. The counselor must develop the discrepancy between
the person’s stated values and his or her current
behavior to create motivation for change.
3. The counselor addresses resistance with reflection
rather than confrontation.
4. The counselor supports the client’s self-efficacy by
giving the message that the client is capable of change.
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 Summary for Children
• Counselor provides a warm, caring
environment
• Children can explore their emotions and
consequences of their action
• Can evaluate the alternatives and select
one to try
• With young children, counselor may have to
assume a more active role

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Child-Centered Play Therapy
Basic Principles
1.The counselor has a genuine interest in the
child and builds a warm, caring relationship.
2.The counselor accepts the child
unconditionally, not wishing the child were
different.
3.The counselor institutes a feeling of safety
and permissiveness in the relationship,
allowing the child freedom to explore and
express.
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Child-Centered Play Therapy
Basic Principles (Cont.)
4. The counselor maintains sensitivity to the
child’s feelings and reflects them in a way
that increases the child’s self-understanding.

5. The counselor strongly believes in the child’s

capacity to act responsibly and solve
personal problems, and allows the child to do
so.

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Child-Centered Play Therapy
Basic Principles (Cont.)
6. The counselor trusts the inner direction of
the child, allowing the child to lead the
relationship and refusing to override the
child’s direction.
7. The counselor does not hurry the process.
8. The counselor uses only the limits
necessary for helping the child accept
personal and appropriate responsibility.

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Child-Centered Play Therapy
Counselor lives out these messages:
• I am here (nothing will distract me).
• I hear you (I am listening carefully).
• I understand you, and I care about you.

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 Evaluation of Child-Centered
Counseling
• Efficacy of the child-centered approach
occurs in the counseling relationship, the use
of the core conditions and attitudes, and the
flexibility and openness of the counselor
(Presbury, et al, 2007)
• Clients report high values on their therapists’
active listening, feedback, and expressions
of empathy

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