Client Centered Therapy - Research Paper Example

Finding My voice within the realm of Client-Centered Therapy Introduction The realm of client-centered therapy as taken from the Person-Centered Therapy covers different parts than a single unified approach. This variation goes back to the time of early 1960 when Eugene Gendlin, a follower of Carl Roger, remarked that clients more accustomed to get internal experiences benefited better from the therapy. He developed a philosophy and a practice called, ‘focusing’ dwelling on clients to focus around their felt senses. Taking feedback from client-centric therapy, psychotherapists like Les Greenberg and Robert Elliott developed a ‘process-experiential' approach to psychotherapy (also known as ‘emotion focused' therapy (EFT), which delineated wide therapeutic functions like ‘two-chair dialogue' employed to help clients get an answer to their intrapersonal problems. The EFT therapy bears the impression of Rogerian relational functions by including expertise and methods from the area of Gestalt Therapy (Cooper). 1. Natural Clinical Styles Charlie O’Leary has specified a classical type of client-centric style for couples and family work. Natalie Rogers has framed a ‘client-centered expressive arts therapy.' Peter Schmid has written widely on the development of client-centered group work. Other than that, there have been many endeavors to abstract and develop client-centered methods of working with specific client groups like children and youth and people in distress (Cooper). Off late, there have been experiments on including the thoughts and methods of other orientations into client-centered relational view. In Belgium, for example, Germain Lietaer and companions have been including psychodynamic-interpersonal functions into their client-centered/ experiential work; cognitive-behavioral types of PCT have come into practice. Also there have been attempts to involve existential and phenomenological methods of working into a person-centered approach (Cooper). 2. Clinical Assumptions The Rogerian person-centric approach functions on certain assumptions, essential for the realization of positive personality changes to happen such as: 1. Psychological contact between two persons. 2. The first person, the client, is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious. 3. The second person, the therapist, is congruent, or integrated in the relationship. 4. The therapist feels unconditional positive concern for the client. 5. The therapist shares and easily comprehends the client's internal frame of mind and attempts to share this understanding with the client. 6. The experience sharing of the client with the therapist's empathic understanding and unreserved positive concern is attained in less proportion (Tursi & Cochran 387). According to Turner, a major assumption in all types is that the clients have within themselves the responses to their problems and issues (10). As per the Rogerian approach no other reservations are necessary. If these six conditions remain for long period of time, this is fine to continue with the process of positive personality change (Tursi & Cochran 387). The abovementioned six assumptions are the relationship attributes of the PCA, called as “core conditions.” Other techniques besides cognitive can be included with a person-centered relational structure. 3. My Clinical Assumptions As a clinician, I am not interested in giving directions to my clients. For me, the true value lies in not giving directions of any sort to the client by employing directive methods from other therapies. For me it would be like cheating on the very basics of client-centered therapy. I want to follow the current trend of person-centric therapists known as ‘classical client-centered,’ who follow the principle of non-direction vigorously. This branch of therapy is growing and developing (Cooper). I want to follow the non-directional client-centric therapy. 4. The Clinical Approach I Utilize as per my Therapeutic Skills The most revolutionary, crucial and significant approach so far has been the coming into being of a client-centric approach used for badly handicapped people, the mentally ill or requiring special treatment, named ‘PreTherapy'. My therapeutic skills match with Pre-Therapy, which originated in the 1970s by the Gendlin-trained therapist Garry Prouty. It uses a range of very concrete, sometimes even word-for-word reflections (for example, ‘You said that you were feeling hungry', ‘You are touching the wall') to help develop a rapport with the mentally ill clients re-establish with their emotive, physical and social world. Case study research indicates that Pre-Therapy can be very supportive. Further, it is becoming popular in clinical surroundings with varied client groups like people with dementia, geriatric populations and those on the autistic ambit (Cooper). As a clinician, I would transfer the benefits of the PCA approach to clients. I would respect the client’s natural progression towards self-realization. I would leverage from the given conditions to gather, strengthen, and actualize the naturally happening positive growth prospects. I would encourage my clients to develop their self respect and feel a sense of responsibility for taking their own decisions with the added support from relational experience. My emphasis would be to inculcate the deficient skills by not giving any directions to the client but through natural discussions specific to an individual’s needs (Tursi & Cochran 387). As a clinician, I would not try to impress upon the client to change the thought patterns but let the client decide the natural and rational course of internal thought-patterns. It would help the client in becoming in charge of leads taken and changes accepted. These insights into the client thought patterns are crucial for the long-lasting impact on the personality development of the client. Giving sufficient time to the client to react and adjust to the self-imposed changes is a necessary step (Tursi & Cochran 387). While attending to the clients who have undergone tragic experiences in life, in stead of labeling their experiences as irrational, I would let them struggle with their outbursts to come out brave and less affected by completely passing through the metamorphosis of emotions. It is important for the affected client to understand that such tragedies have powerful repercussions, which cannot be erased totally, thus, bringing them nearer to the harsh tragic realities of life. Clients would be more capable of facing and realizing their actual potential through recognition of the evidence. A client-centric relational framework can express empathy to the client’s experiences, permitting sufficient space to the client to acknowledge experiences in stead of ignoring or avoiding them (Tursi & Cochran 387). By working on the assumption of Rogers that clients have within themselves the answers to their problems, I would dwell on the approach of showing empathy, concern, and positive listening attitude towards their problems preferably in family-system therapy. Like Henggeler, a clinical psychologist by training, I would apply Multi-Systemic Therapy (MST) to consider the childhood and adolescence period of clients and treat the problem children in their own natural environment by analyzing their genograms to find out the reason of the root cause and supportive elements in an adolescent’s life (Herbert). Following keenly Rogers’ growth-model theory of therapy, as Rogers provided to clinicians in 1959 and concluded in 1980, “Individuals have within themselves vast resources for self-understanding and for altering their self-concepts, basic attitudes, and self-directed behavior; these resources can be tapped if a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided” (qtd. in Moon 115), I would provide that facilitating environment to the clients with assumptions of congruence, empathic understanding, and unconditional positive regard (Moon 277). I would tread on the footsteps of Rogers by practicing a non-directive attitude towards clients by working on my therapeutic skills, as viewed from the Gloria session. I would work on the drawbacks of the model for client-centric counseling (Moon 277). Works Cited Cooper, Mike. “Person-centered Therapy: The Growing Edge.” Therapy Today 6. (2007): n. pag. Web. 28 September 2010. . Herbert, Wray. “Networker News, No Gurus Need Apply.” Psychotherapy Networker 31.1. (2007): n. pag. Web. ProQuest. 28 September 2010. Moon, Kathryn A. “A Client-Centered Review of Rogers with Gloria.” Journal of Counseling and Development 85. 3. (2007): 277. Gale Group. 28 September 2010. Turner, Phillip. “An Unworkable Theology.” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life154. (2005): 10. Gale Group. 28 September 2010. Tursi, Michael M. and Cochran, Jeff L. “Cognitive-Behavioral Tasks Accomplished in a Person-Centered Relational Framework.” Journal of Counseling and Development 84. 4. (2006): 387. Gale Group. 28 September 2010. Read More