Client Centered

Theory: Client Centered

Theorist: Carl Rogers

Focus: Client centered (humanistic) therapy focuses on the client’s natural ability to identify and resolve issues and promote their own personal growth. Creating an open and positive client-therapist relationship and therapy environment fosters this ability.

Strengths: Client-centered therapy enables the client by putting them in control of the direction and focus of their sessions. They are given the tools and environment to make their own leaps and bounds in their progress and decide which issues are most important to focus on.

Weaknesses: The same attributes of client-centered therapy that are strengths can also be weaknesses. Because the client drives the progress and there is no set structure for the sessions or direction they can take, the progress is dependent on the motivation of the client. If the client is reluctant or without direction, progress can take longer and be more difficult to achieve.

Techniques: In client-centered therapy, the most important technique is to create an open, accepting relationship with positive regard from the therapist to the client. The therapist must work to make the client completely comfortable expressing all of their feelings truly and openly without fear of being judged. This allows the client to address their true self without altering their thoughts and feelings as they usually do to the outside world.

Personal example: One of my friend’s father struggled with drug addiction while we were in high school. My friend wasn’t close with has family and never thoroughly expressed his feelings about his fathers issues and how they affected him and throughout his childhood. During college, we lived together for a while and we would hang out together often and have long talks. He opened up to me and I made sure that I allowed him to express all of his feelings and thoughts without judging him and making him feel valid in all of his thoughts. This allowed him to talk and discover for himself how he felt about what had happened and how these events affected him.