Person centred therapy
5th November 2013
Essay 1: ‘Evaluate the claim that Person–Centred Therapy offers the therapist all that he/she will need to treat clients’.
In this essay I will look at the benefits and the disadvantages of person-centred therapy and consider whether it provides sufficient tools for the therapist to be effective in the treatment of the client.
Looking at the underlying theory (self-actualisation, organismic self, conditions of worth etc), and the originators of it, namely Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, I shall consider its strengths and weaknesses and look at the way in which Rogers explains and responds to psychological disorders to explore to what extent his approach might be useful in their treatment.
Person-centred therapy first came into being in the 1930s and 40s with work by Dr Carl Rogers which he based, in part, on work by Abraham Maslow. Both were considered to be the founders of humanistic psychology which was also based on phenomenology.
Maslow developed the idea of a ‘hierarchy of needs’ that suggested we are motivated by a series of needs that exist from birth. Each of these needs, the most basic of which is survival, has to be fulfilled. Our ultimate aim, after our physical needs have been met, and a sense of belonging and esteem achieved, is self actualisation (that is the complete fulfilment of one’s potential).
‘The central truth for Rogers was that the client knows best.’1 He believed that it was a counsellor’s task ‘to enable the client to make contact with his own inner resources rather than to guide, advise or in some other way, influence the direction the client should take’. 2 5th November 2013
Essay 1: ‘Evaluate the claim that Person–Centred Therapy offers the therapist all that he/she will need to treat clients’.
Many clients seek therapy because they are
Essay 1: ‘Evaluate the claim that Person–Centred Therapy offers the therapist all that he/she will need to treat clients’.
In this essay I will look at the benefits and the disadvantages of person-centred therapy and consider whether it provides sufficient tools for the therapist to be effective in the treatment of the client.
Looking at the underlying theory (self-actualisation, organismic self, conditions of worth etc), and the originators of it, namely Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, I shall consider its strengths and weaknesses and look at the way in which Rogers explains and responds to psychological disorders to explore to what extent his approach might be useful in their treatment.
Person-centred therapy first came into being in the 1930s and 40s with work by Dr Carl Rogers which he based, in part, on work by Abraham Maslow. Both were considered to be the founders of humanistic psychology which was also based on phenomenology.
Maslow developed the idea of a ‘hierarchy of needs’ that suggested we are motivated by a series of needs that exist from birth. Each of these needs, the most basic of which is survival, has to be fulfilled. Our ultimate aim, after our physical needs have been met, and a sense of belonging and esteem achieved, is self actualisation (that is the complete fulfilment of one’s potential).
‘The central truth for Rogers was that the client knows best.’1 He believed that it was a counsellor’s task ‘to enable the client to make contact with his own inner resources rather than to guide, advise or in some other way, influence the direction the client should take’. 2 5th November 2013
Essay 1: ‘Evaluate the claim that Person–Centred Therapy offers the therapist all that he/she will need to treat clients’.
Many clients seek therapy because they are