Person Centered Therapy

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Third Paper – Person-Centered Therapy Mark A. Weedon Amridge University 24 May 2011 Abstract Care Rogers is considered the father of the Person-Centered Therapy approach to counseling. Carl used his personal life experiences as a catalyst to research his ideals and formulate his theory. Although there are other contributors to this style, he remains the predominate figure. The main difference between Person-Centered Therapy and the practices before are that of who is the principal head of the session. The person-centered approach, or humanistic approach, deems that the client and therapist are on a level playing field and learn more from each other than client from therapist. Rogers believed that humans are basically good and have the ability, and want to, to become free and move forward in their lives. This worldview of therapy is closely related to the view of Christianity in that people are good and want to be better than they currently are. Person-Centered Therapy Person-Centered Therapy sounds self-explanatory, and in a very basic sense, it is. Carl Rogers is the foremost developer of this type of therapy, which is centered on the client. He believed that people are very capable of self realization and self actualization if given the right atmosphere. Rogers changed his major several times in college before settling in to study clinical psychology. He, like many philosophers before him, drew his deep passion for the study of people from his own experiences as a child in the family circle. One of the principals Rogers believed in to the core was that he didn’t have all the answers and his theory wasn’t the end all. He maintained flexibility in growth of his theory and knowledge of his approach just as he did in his belief that people are ever growing. (Corey 2009) Up until the 1940s psychotherapy was a hierarchical relationship

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