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Person Centred Therapy

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Section A
1. Person- centred Psychotherapy
Carl Rogers (1920-1987) was one of the most influential pioneers and inspiration behind person-centred psychotherapy. Rogers and his colleagues where innovators that refined the concepts and methods of person-centred therapy and that would later become one of the most influential and controversial of therapeutic approaches.
During the 1940’s Rogers developed nondirective counselling. His theory was developed in four stages over the span of his career. This was a new direction of counselling that highlights that the direction and locus of control in therapy were clearly centred in the client, shifting the power to the person seeking help away from the therapist. The client rather than the therapist determined the direction and goals of therapy and the therapist’s role was to help the client clarify feelings.
He described his new approach in a speech in 1940, December 11 titled “Newer Concepts in
Psychotherapy” as follows:
“The aim of this newer therapy is not to solve one particular problem but to assist the individual to grow, so he can cope with the present problem...It relies much more heavily on the individual drive towards growth, health and adjustment...This newer therapy places greater stress on the emotional elements...then on the intellectual aspects....(It) places greater stress upon the immediate situation than upon the therapeutic relationship itself as a growth experience.”(David J. Cain, 2008 )
This new approach was revolutionary and Rogers transformed commonly accepted therapeutic processes such as the therapist giving advice, suggestions, direction, persuasion, teaching, diagnosis or interpreting behaviour. Rogers (1942) objected to these approaches because they assume that the therapist is the one most competent in what are the goals of the individual and the values of what

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