“Evaluate the Claim That Person-Centred Therapy Offers the Therapist All That He/She Will Need to Treat Clients
“Evaluate the claim that Person-Centred Therapy offers the therapist all that he/she will need to treat clients”
Simon Wakefield MANCH2A 12 – Yvonne Hale – Word Count -2339
Carl Rodgers was born in Illinois, Chicago On January 8th 1902. The fourth of six children he was educated in a strict religious environment. His early career choices included agriculture, history and religion, giving serious thought into joining the Ministry until the age of 20 when he began to re-evaluate his life and beliefs and went into teaching. Whilst earning his MA and latterly a PhD he embarked on the field of child study, especially that of cruelty to children and trying to help with prevention of cruelty to children. In later life while a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago he set up a counselling centre in which he carried out research and went onto put into practice and develop some of his theories which led to him publishing ‘Client centred therapy’(1951)
In order to evaluate the claim that Person Centred Therapy offers the therapist all that he/she will need to treat clients, I intend to first discuss and explain what PCT (Person-Centred Therapy) means at its most basic level, what the requirements or ‘Core Conditions’ that Carl Rodgers (1902-1987) stated were fundamental to the practice and success of this approach, and to offer a balanced opinion based on my view of both the positives and, importantly, some of the possible negative reactions or outcomes that could be experienced by both therapist and/or client when using PCT as the sole method of therapy.
Rodgers believed that every client who came to him, or in fact all people, had the answers or the solutions to their presenting problem within themselves. He said “the client knows what hurts, what direction to go, what problems are crucial, what experiences have been buried” (Rodgers 1961) By this he meant that the client has within their own minds all the knowledge that is needed to deal with
Simon Wakefield MANCH2A 12 – Yvonne Hale – Word Count -2339
Carl Rodgers was born in Illinois, Chicago On January 8th 1902. The fourth of six children he was educated in a strict religious environment. His early career choices included agriculture, history and religion, giving serious thought into joining the Ministry until the age of 20 when he began to re-evaluate his life and beliefs and went into teaching. Whilst earning his MA and latterly a PhD he embarked on the field of child study, especially that of cruelty to children and trying to help with prevention of cruelty to children. In later life while a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago he set up a counselling centre in which he carried out research and went onto put into practice and develop some of his theories which led to him publishing ‘Client centred therapy’(1951)
In order to evaluate the claim that Person Centred Therapy offers the therapist all that he/she will need to treat clients, I intend to first discuss and explain what PCT (Person-Centred Therapy) means at its most basic level, what the requirements or ‘Core Conditions’ that Carl Rodgers (1902-1987) stated were fundamental to the practice and success of this approach, and to offer a balanced opinion based on my view of both the positives and, importantly, some of the possible negative reactions or outcomes that could be experienced by both therapist and/or client when using PCT as the sole method of therapy.
Rodgers believed that every client who came to him, or in fact all people, had the answers or the solutions to their presenting problem within themselves. He said “the client knows what hurts, what direction to go, what problems are crucial, what experiences have been buried” (Rodgers 1961) By this he meant that the client has within their own minds all the knowledge that is needed to deal with