In the early 1990s, someone conducted a survey of 800 clinical and counseling psychologists. It was found that among the psychologists who are considered to be the most influential in contemporary psychological counseling and treatment, Carl Rogers ranked first. Indeed, Rogers and his pioneering "patient-centered therapy" enjoy a special reputation in the history of contemporary psychological counseling and development. Although in recent years, patient-centered therapy as a separate school is no longer as famous and has as many followers as it was a few years ago, some of its important ideas, such as humanistic tendencies, emphasis on the counseling-visitor relationship, self-concept, etc., have been absorbed by most new counseling systems and have become the common wealth of the entire psychology discipline.
The origin and development process of patient-centered therapy
The basic system of patient-centered therapy was developed by Rogers. Carl Rogers was born in a hard-working Puritan family in the suburbs of Chicago, USA. The education he received at an early age emphasized virtue, hard work, and faith in Christianity. In 1922, Rogers went to Beijing to participate in the World Federation of Christian Students. His foreign experiences greatly impacted his original set of beliefs and enabled him to "be able to think about my own thoughts, draw my own conclusions, and adopt a position that I trust." This experience and the feelings gained from it convinced Rogers that people must ultimately trust and rely on their own experience in order to be their true selves. This idea deeply affected his future personality research.
The development of patient-centered therapy can be roughly divided into four stages.
The first stage was marked by the publication of Rogers's book "Counseling and Psychotherapy" in 1942. The subtitle of this book is "Recent Concepts in Clinical Practice". As this subtitle indicates, Rogers proposed some major therapeutic concepts in the book that were very different from the dominant psychoanalytic therapy at the time. One of the key ideas is that only the person involved can fully and deeply understand themselves. To achieve better results, it is necessary to rely on the client to guide the treatment process. In response to the tendency in psychoanalysis for counselors to dominate everything, Rogers' system during this period was called "non-directive therapy."
The second phase was marked by the publication of Client-Centered Therapy (1951). For a long time thereafter, Rogers' system was called "client-centered therapy." In this book, Rogers systematically explains the theory and practice of this therapy. Among them, theoretical issues such as people's "self-concept" and "the relationship between self-concept and body experience" are discussed and analyzed more deeply and clearly. In terms of practice, the focus has also shifted from emphasizing reflecting the factual content of the client's words to emphasizing reflecting the hidden emotions at the same time, so as to truly "enter" the client's "phenomenal world" deeply and accurately.
The third stage is called the "experience stage". In 1957, Rogers came to the University of Wisconsin-Madison from the University of Chicago as a professor of psychology and psychiatry. As a result of this transformation, Rogers' client went from being primarily a normal person to being primarily a psychopath. At this time, Rogers began to consciously explore what conditions were needed to make clients change in therapy, and tried to subject his theories to rigorous empirical testing. This effort led him to emphasize the "partnership" between the counselor and the client, the impact of the counselor's attitude on the client, and the exchange of emotions and experiences between both parties.
The fourth stage, now called "person-centered therapy," began around the early 1970s. The change of the name appropriately reflects the shift in the focus of Rogers' interests: Rogers strongly hoped to expand his system beyond the traditional field of psychotherapy, so that most people in the contemporary era can live a humanistic, existential personal life, that is, a life that goes beyond the individual's social role, fully develops its functions, and has a high degree of integration.In this kind of helping activity, "person-centered therapy" emphasizes a "person-person" relationship rather than a "helper-helped person" relationship.
Over the years, Rogers' ideas have continued to evolve, but some of the basic components of his system have not changed much. New ideas are often the deepening and enrichment of previous ideas, rather than the negation of original ideas.
21 Since the 121st century, patient-centered therapy has become one of the relatively stable and influential schools of counseling therapy in the world today. It is also one of the main sources of inspiration for new counseling therapy models.
Next, let’s talk about the features of patient-centered therapy.
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