Human Development
Client-centred therapy
Description:
Client-centred therapy is a process of disorganization and reorganization of the self. The new organization contains more accurate symbolization of a much wider range of sensory and visceral experience, a reconceptualized system of values based on the person's own feelings and experiences (in place of the old, largely borrowed, second-hand values). The change in organization is made by the individual because of the attitude of acceptance of the therapist to both the old and the new, enabling the person to handle the new and difficult reality perceptions necessary for the reorganization.The required characteristics of the therapist therefore include: a strong, consistent effort to understand the client's situation; an effort to communicate this understanding to the client; occasional presentation of a synthesis of expressed feelings; refusal to offer interpretations other than to summarize what the client is feeling; refusal to promote insight directly, or to give advice, praise, blame, or to teach or suggest programmes of activities, or to ask questions or suggest areas of exploration.
The permissive attitude is based on the view that the client has basic potentialities within him for growth and development. The main function of the therapist is to provide the atmosphere within which the person feels free to explore himself, to acquire deeper understanding of himself, and gradually to reorganize his perceptions of himself and the world about him by mobilizing his potentialities in the solution of his own problems. Diagnosis is held to be not only unnecessary, but unwise and detrimental. The job of the therapist is to communicate his sincere feeling that the client is a person of unconditional self-worth, of value regardless of his attitudes, ideas, and behaviour, and to reflect what the client is saying in such a way as to clarify his thoughts and make it clear that his feelings are fully understood. All responsibility for the course and direction of therapy is left to the client, including the speed with which the client faces certain problems in his life and the follow-up on apparently significant areas.
Application of this form of therapy has been extended beyond individual psychotherapy to marriage guidance, education, play therapy, group therapy, industrial and business administration, various aspects of religious work, in the training of counsellors and therapists, etc.
Broader:
Therapy Narrower:
Re-evaluation counselling