Counselling Training Essay

Unconditional positive regard and congruence in Client Centred Therapy

The counsellor’s genuine caring and responsibility needs to be in evidence. If the counsellor is only pretending to have unconditional positive regard, it would be obvious, and a client with healthy discernment would seek help elsewhere. On this particular subject, I had a conversation with my counselling trainer, Tony Merry, who told a story of when he was a counsellor. This particular client had no friends because he was so boring! In the course of therapy, the counsellor had felt so bored for seven consecutive therapy sessions that on the seventh occasion, the counsellor stated that he too was bored.The client grew very angry (which was not boring for the counsellor), and from that point onwards the counsellor was not bored by the client. 

I think this was wrong for two reasons. Firstly, the client was not working through his material at his own pace, and secondly he felt the need subsequently to be in therapy to interest his counsellor. I think it is important that a counsellor is congruent, but in a non critical way. 

 

“Because the therapeutic relationship is ideally both intense and disinterested, the therapist can allow a troubled person to let go of feelings that get bottled up in every day life, without fear of reprisal. This is bound to have a helpful, balancing effect. The very least that can be demanded of therapy is that it provide a person with someone who pays attention to and accepts without responding in ways others close to him have always responded. In fact it has been argued that this is the base of all therapy, the rest the particulars of each school, the infinite variations in stance, technique, goals et cetera being but a superstructure resting on this base. A Complete a Guide to Therapy. J Kovel Harvester Press 1977

I think it is important that the client is in therapy to examine the way that they think and feel, and what the counsellor thinks and feels should not intrude into the clients time, and should in no way 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 supported by the counsellor, and a judgemental attitude on the part of a counsellor would limit the clients responses and acceptance of self.

“It is surprising how frequently the client uses the word ‘impersonal’ in describing the therapeutic relationship, after the conclusion of therapy. This is obviously not intended to mean that the relationship was cold or disinterested. It appears to be a description of this unique experience in which the person of the counsellor as an evaluating, reacting person with needs of his own which are so clearly absent. The relationship is experienced as a one-way way affair in a very unique sense. The whole relationship is composed of the self of the client. The counsellor is depersonalise for the purposes of therapy into being the clients other self. In this warm willingness on the part of the counsellor to lay his own self temporarily aside, in order to enter into the experience of the client, which makes the relationship a completely unique one, unlike anything in the clients previous experience. The second aspect of the relationship is the security which the client feels. This does not come from approval by the counsellor, but from something far deeper, 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 the relationship as one in which all defences can be dispensed with, a relationship in which the client feels “I can be that be the real me with no pretences”. C Rogers Client Centred Therapy 1951

From this extract above, we can see that the counsellor’s congruency does not mean that the counsellor should not consider it important in the course of therapy to let the client know how the counsellor is thinking, feeling, judging, relating, experiencing, et cetera, but that congruency should be placed alongside the empathy and unconditional positive regard so the client is aware that the counsellor is real and authentic and his care and acceptance. It is not an act but genuine caring and truth. To get to this place of authenticity, the counsellor will need to experience being a client in therapy. The counsellor can only reach the level of depth if they have gone deeply within themselves, a counsellor can only comfortably support a client to the level they have attained in their own therapy. 

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 others. Carl Rogers writes in glowing terms of these groups which have never impressed me. I see them often as places of conflict, confusion and competition, where one person’s painful introjects are dumped on someone more vulnerable who is willing to take on board another’s projections. I see them as dumping grounds for someone who needs to work out their angry feelings with a captive audience of weaker mortals until the person considers themselves accepted and forgiven by those more generous than themselves, though I realise conflict as a part of life and a large part of most honest relationships. If we victimise others, this is a valid pattern to recognise in therapy and learn another way to express ourselves without damaging other people. 

My own conflict with Rogerian Person/Centred Approach is that I am undecided whether to believe in ultimate good and sociability of people. The PCA holds that if enough onion skins in therapy are uncovered that the person beneath its wholesome. Carl Rogers sites the example of a lion who raises his young to be fully functioning lions that kill and eat no more than it needs to. My domestic cat kills for sport and intimidates his neighbours with constant threats of physical violence. The example of the potato is also given, that the young shoot grows towards the light, but I would still argue that some potatoes are inferior quality to others. My beliefs have repercussions for my therapy, as though I would love to believe people are sound organismically and I try to hold onto this premise, however I do find myself questioning this. 

I also think that there are unconscious motives and machinations that cannot be reached through non-directive counselling and that need the analytic process to make what is unconscious - and by its definition out of awareness - conscious. Like Carl Jung, I believe that some people lend themselves more to one sort of therapy than another, and that the type of therapy chosen by the therapist says more about the therapist, very often, than the client. The human mind is infinitely modifiable under the direction of an expert. When one’s life is desperately in tatters, I think it is very consoling to dependently put one psyche into the hands of an expert to be put back together again.

My knowledge of therapies and PCA is growing and is far from complete. I don’t think any therapy is complete and I use a combination, an eclectic approach as some techniques/approaches are more suited to particular persons or circumstances. PCA is very useful for someone in a crisis, who is too distressed to hear their own voice or register their own thoughts, some never have been heard. To relate their distress to a trusted and caring counsellor who will provide support and acceptance for them to understand what is happening is very consoling. 

From 1995 School for Independent Study Diploma programme by Wendy Stokes 1985 https://wendystokes.co.uk