Person centered group development

By Saul McLeodupdated Carl Rogers was a humanistic psychologist who agreed with the main assumptions of Abraham Maslowbut added that for a person to "grow", they need an environment that provides them with genuineness openness and self-disclosureacceptance being seen with unconditional positive regardand empathy being listened to and understood. Without these, relationships and healthy personalities will not develop as they should, much like a tree will not grow without sunlight and water.

Alexander Raths Definition Person-centered therapy, which is also known as client-centered, non-directive, or Rogerian therapy, is an approach to counseling and psychotherapy that places much of the responsibility for the treatment process on the client, with the therapist taking a nondirective role.

Purpose Two primary goals of person-centered therapy are increased self-esteem and greater openness to experience. Description Background Developed in the s by the American psychologist Carl Rogers, client-centered therapy departed from the typically formal, detached role of the therapist emphasized in psychoanalysis and other forms of treatment.

Rogers believed that therapy should take place in a supportive environment created by a close personal relationship between client and therapist.

Beginning in the s, person-centered therapy became associated with the human potential movement. This movement, dating back to the beginning of the s, reflected an altered perspective of human nature. Previous psychological theories viewed human beings as inherently selfish and corrupt.

The human potential movement, by contrast, defined human nature as inherently good. Self-actualization, a term derived from the human potential movement, is an important concept underlying person-centered therapy.

It refers to the tendency of all human beings to move forward, grow, and reach their fullest potential. When humans move toward self-actualization, they are also pro-social; that is, they tend to be concerned for others and behave in honest, dependable, and constructive ways.

The concept of self-actualization focuses on human strengths rather than human deficiencies. According to Rogers, self-actualization can be blocked by an unhealthy self-concept negative or unrealistic attitudes about oneself.

Rogers adopted terms such as "person-centered approach" and "way of being" and began to focus on personal growth and self-actualization. He also pioneered the use of encounter groups, adapting the sensitivity training T-group methods developed by Kurt Lewin and other researchers at the National Training Laboratories in the s.

More recently, two major variations of person-centered therapy have developed: The concepts and methods he developed are used in an eclectic fashion by many different types of counselors and therapists.

Three interrelated attitudes on the part of the therapist are central to the success of person-centered therapy: Therapists who function in this way have all their feelings available to them in therapy sessions and may share significant emotional reactions with their clients.

Congruence does not mean, however, that therapists disclose their own personal problems to clients in therapy sessions or shift the focus of therapy to themselves in any other way. Unconditional positive regard means that the therapist accepts the client totally for who he or she is without evaluating or censoring, and without disapproving of particular feelings, actions, or characteristics.

The therapist communicates this attitude to the client by a willingness to listen without interrupting, judging, or giving advice. This attitude of positive regard creates a nonthreatening context in which the client feels free to explore and share painful, hostile, defensive, or abnormal feelings without worrying about personal rejection by the therapist.

In other systems of therapy, empathy with the client would be considered a preliminary step to enabling the therapeutic work to proceed; but in person-centered therapy, it actually constitutes a major portion of the therapeutic work itself.

A primary way of conveying this empathy is by active listening that shows careful and perceptive attention to what the client is saying. This technique shows that the therapist is listening carefully and accurately, and gives clients an added opportunity to examine their own thoughts and feelings as they hear them repeated by another person.

Generally, clients respond by elaborating further on the thoughts they have just expressed. According to Rogers, when these three attitudes congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathy are conveyed by a therapist, clients can freely express themselves without having to worry about what the therapist thinks of them.

Even negative expressions are validated as legitimate experiences. Because of this nondirective approach, clients can explore the issues that are most important to them—not those considered important by the therapist.

Based on the principle of self-actualization, this undirected, uncensored self-exploration allows clients to eventually recognize alternative ways of thinking that will promote personal growth. The therapist merely facilitates self-actualization by providing a climate in which clients can freely engage in focused, in-depth self-exploration.

Rogers worked extensively with people with schizophrenia later in his career. His therapy has also been applied to persons suffering from depression, anxiety, alcohol disorders, cognitive dysfunction, and personality disorders.

Some therapists argue that person-centered therapy is not effective with non-verbal or poorly educated individuals; others maintain that it can be successfully adapted to any type of person. The person-centered approach can be used in individual, group, or family therapy.

With young children, it is frequently employed as play therapy. There are no strict guidelines regarding the length or frequency of person-centered therapy. Generally, therapists adhere to a one-hour session once per week.

The client also decides when to terminate therapy. Outcome studies of humanistic therapies in general and person-centered therapy in particular indicate that people who have been treated with these approaches maintain stable changes over extended periods of time; that they change substantially compared to untreated persons; and that the changes are roughly comparable to the changes in clients who have been treated by other types of therapy.Quality Care & Advocacy Group, Inc.

Terms of Use; Privacy Policy; Contact. The Association for the Development of the Person-Centered Approach is an international network of individuals who support the development and application of the person-centered approach.

Abstract. This chapter describes the Meaningful Living Group as a community-based meaning-centered positive group intervention. This group work is informed by existential positive psychology (EPP; Wong, a) and Positive Psychology (PP; Wong, ).

Leontiev’s Life Enhancement Group Work

Person-centered therapy uses a non-authoritative approach that allows clients to take more of a lead in discussions so that, in the process, they will discover their own solutions.

The therapist. Learn more on child centered play therapy: the history, the main key elements, and a practical application of the model to child centered group therapy.

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