Evaluate the Claim That Person-Centred Therapy Offers the Therapist All That He/She Will Need to Treat Clients

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Evaluate the claim that Person-Centred Therapy offers the therapist all that he/she will need to treat clients For this assignment I have been asked to ‘Evaluate the claim that Person-centred Therapy offers the therapist all that he/she will need to treat clients’. In order to do this I need to fully understand what Person-centred Therapy is and what it involves. For this reason I will start by evaluating Person-centred therapy itself and how it works. I will then look at the strengths and weaknesses, before coming to my ultimate conclusion. What is Person-Centred Therapy? The theory behind this was influenced by the work Carl Rogers did with emotionally troubled people, where he believed that we have a remarkable capacity for self-healing and personal growth, which then leads to self-actualisation. Unlike Freud who emphasised the importance of psychological continuity, meaning that our past is a key determinant of the present, Rogers felt the key was with the person’s current perception and how we live in the ‘here and now’. Rogers also noticed most centrally to his theory that people when explaining their situation would refer to themselves directly, showing their understanding of ‘self’ or ‘self-concept’. This is crucial as self-concept is a central component of our overall experience and influences our perception of the world and perception of self within it. However, the way people perceive themselves (their self-concept) is not always in line with the reality of how they are perceived by others. It is possible to perceive yourself as being different to the reality, but as long as the person believes that perception, the reality doesn’t matter, their self-esteem will be governed by the perception that they own. When our perception of our self is not in line with the reality, or our self-image is not in line with our self-ideal, we are said to be in
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