PCA training 1989

My first essay on Carl Rogers - Person (Client) Centred Counselling. 

The purpose of this essay is for me to examine my thoughts towards the person centred approach (PCA) to group work, counselling and practice, to state why I have chosen this approach for my particular client group, and how and why I would specifically use this approach in my work. I will explain the way that core principles of congruency (authenticity) empathy, and unconditional positive regard conflict (even experienced therapists can be challenged in these three areas). I would like the reader to be aware that my attitudes are still in the process of development, and many of my ideas have not been formulated from books but for my own experience and therefore my position may vary at times from traditional theory. 

My reasons for choosing to use this counselling style (PCA) are that I believe it is the most gentle of therapeutic approaches and causes, potentially, the least damage. Often a client arrives to see a counsellor in a distressed or damaged state, and the object is to help this person in the gentlest, calmest and quickest way. I think PCA is the best first-aid particularly for delicate problems and events. I also think that there is less resistance than in psychoanalysis, so therapy can proceed at the clients pace without pushing, and this is both reassuring and empowering. Carl Rogers says the client “Can become more aware of their personal strengths, and can become increasingly autonomous and creative as the architect of his or her own life. Because of the total focus on empowering the individual, we have come to think of this method as a ‘person centred’ approach“ Carl Rogers. A Way of Being page 182

When speaking of the person centred approach, it is important to say something about the three necessary core conditions or qualities that need to be vocationally present in the counsellor. These are empathy, unconditional positive regard, and congruence, which should always be used together. “The qualities of positive regard and congruence, together with empathy, I hypothesised as promoting the therapeutic process”. Carl Rogers A way of Being page 139

Carl Rogers studied varying methods, techniques and approaches to psychotherapy, and he discovered that all could be useful to the client, but only if the 3 core principles were adhered to. These three aspects of behaviour need to be present as character traits within the counsellor in order for the therapy to be most effective. Providing the counsellor is congruent, his or her strengths are more likely to be apparent. (A client is not likely to stay with a judgemental therapist.) I’m not very sure to what degree I have these qualities already, but where they are not present within my nature, my own training, therapy and supervision will help me to develop them.

Empathy. It is important to be able to show transparent compassion and understanding to the client. It is not sufficient that the counsellor has understood the clients feelings and meanings, but it is necessary that this understanding is related back to the client. The client may never have had someone in their life so attentive, and care for them so deeply, and this prizing provides the basis for the therapeutic relationship to flourish. The client is helped by the counsellor to experience their feelings in safety and to learn that these feelings can be accepted and worked through. “Over years the research, evidence has piled up that strongly leads to the conclusion that a high degree of empathy in a relationship is possibly the most potent factor in bringing about change and learning”. Carl Rogers A Way of Being page 139

Unconditional positive regard and congruence. Genuine caring needs to be in evidence in the counsellor. If the counsellor is only pretending to have unconditional positive regard, and true caring is missing,  hopefully, the client would seek help elsewhere.  On this particular subject I had a conversation with my counselling trainer, Tony Merry, on the counselling course he teaches at SIS. He was telling the group a story of a particular client, he said, who had no friends because he was so boring. In the course of therapy, the counsellor had felt so bored for six consecutive therapy sessions, that on the seventh occasion, the counsellor stated that he was bored. The client grow very angry which was not considered boring by the counsellor. I think this was a wrong intervention for two reasons: Firstly, the client was not working through his own material at his own pace, and secondly, the client felt the need subsequently to be in therapy to interest his counsellor. I think it’s important that when a counsellor is congruent that they do so in a way which is not damaging. 

I think it’s important to state that the client is in psychotherapy to examine the way that they think and feel and what the counsellor is thinking and feeling should not intrude into the clients time and shouldn’t affect the course of the clients therapy. The reason why unconditional positive regard is necessary is exactly for the eventuality of the client saying something, or being something, that is not entirely supported by the counsellor and a judgemental attitude on the part of the counsellor would limit the clients responses and acceptance of self. It is said that we can only accompany a client into the inner and deepest wounded places within the psyche that we know and are comfortable with ourselves, otherwise we skirt around these areas that the client might need to explore. For this reason, counsellors and therapists must be in therapy themselves, how else will they know what their client is going through?

“It is surprising how frequently the client uses the word ‘impersonal’ when describing the therapeutic relationship, after the conclusion of therapy. This is obviously not intended to mean that the relationship was cold or uninterested. This is the description of this unique experience in which the counsellor, as an evaluating, reacting person is not present in themselves but only for the client’s process. “My relationship with you is fascinating and illustrates very deeply, that the relationship is experienced as a one-way fare in a very unique sense. The counsellor puts their own self needs temporarily aside in order to enter into the experience of the client, which makes the relationship unlike anything in the clients previous experience. The second aspect of the relationship is the security which the client feels. This, very obviously, does not come from approval by the counsellor, but is a thoroughly consistent acceptance. It is this absolute assurance that there will be no evaluation, no interpretation, no probing, no personal reaction by the counsellor, that gradually permits the client to experience their relationship as one in which all defences can be dispensed with. This is a relationship in which the client feels “I can be the real me, with no pretences.”  Carl Rogers Client Centred Therapy Constable 1951

From this extract above, we can see that the counsellor’s congruency does not mean that the counsellor would not let the client know how they are thinking, feeling, judging, relating, experiencing, etcetera, but that congruency should be placed alongside empathy and unconditional positive regard, so the client is aware that the counsellor is real and authentic and has genuine care and full acceptance of them.

Encounter groups have always been linked to PCA as a way of working in groups for participants to find their own empowerment and increase their knowledge of themselves and self in relation to others. These groups have never impressed me. I see them as places of conflict, confusion and competition, and where one person with painful introjects dumps theirs on someone more vulnerable and who is likely to take on board another’s projections, introjects, etc., who needs to work out their angry feelings with a captive audience. Often I’ve found these damaging individuals are accepted and forgiven by those more generous than themselves! I realise conflict as part of life and a large part of all honest relationships. I experience the present PTA group I’m in as being very oppressed and disempowered, and one which does not give much permission around feelings and opinions. I think there are faster ways into material with leadership of the group process, such as one gets in analytic groups. Analytic groups make clients aware of painful and problem areas of life which need to be worked through and these can be avoided in a PCA group.

My own conflict with PCA is that I am undecided over whether to believe in the ultimate good and sociability of people. The belief that if one uncovers enough onion skins in therapy that the person will be fine underneath is questionable. Carl Rogers sites an example of a lion who raises its young to be fully functioning lions and kills no more than it needs. My domestic cat kills for sport and intimidates his neighbours with constant threats of physical violence. He also cites an example of a potato where the young shoots grows towards the light, but I would still argue that some potatoes are of inferior quality to others. I think these examples are gratuitous and ridiculous. My beliefs have repercussions for my own therapy and my own professional work as a therapist. Freud said he could only make depression turn to ordinary unhappiness. Can we make our clients into kinder, more caring people who make the world a better place? I would love to believe that people are sound organismically, and though I often doubt this premise I try to hold onto it. 

I also think that unconscious motives and imaginations cannot be reached through nondirective counselling. The analytic process makes what is unconscious, conscious. I believe that some people learn best through one approach to therapy and that the type of therapy chosen by the therapist says more about the therapist. I think the human mind is infinitely modifiable under the direction of an expert and when a person’s life is desperately in tatters, it is very consoling to put one’s psyche in the hands of a dependable expert to be put back together again.

In conclusion, I have stated my opinion for areas I have preference for and the areas where I’m unsure. I don’t present my case as one that is all wrapped up, but one that’s in the process of becoming. I don’t think that therapy is ever complete or is the ultimate answer to life’s problems. I do believe however, that most therapies are useful and that PCA is the most useful at a time of crisis when a person needs to relate their distress to a trusting and caring counsellor who will provide support and acceptance. There are now student centred colleges, child centred schools, and many disciplines where the usual power dynamic is reversed. There is a general issue of whether individual change can meaningfully occur without social change and that narcissism and psychopathy requires a deep desire for any change in thinking, feeling and behaviour to occur. 

By Wendy Stokes https://wendystokes.co.uk