Client-Centered Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications, and Theory
Also known as Client-Centred Therapy
Carl Rogers' 1951 statement of client-centered therapy and his theory of personality
At a glance
What it argues
Therapy, groups and teaching, Nineteen propositions
See all 2Key ideas
Your perception is your reality, The internal frame of reference, One basic tendency …
See all 5Examples from the book
On teaching
Read next
On Becoming a Person, Counseling and Psychotherapy
See all 2Connections
Carl Rogers, Person-centered therapy and Humanistic psychology
See all 3
Also on this page: Key facts · Links · Sources · Related pages
- Rogers wrote it while running the University of Chicago's counseling center.
- It sets out client-centered therapy and applies it to groups, leadership and teaching.
- Its theory chapter states 19 propositions about the self and experience.
- Behavior is best understood from the person's own frame of reference.
- Experiences that clash with the self-concept feel threatening; without threat, the self can change to include them.
Why it matters
- The book to read if you want the theory behind person-centered therapy, not only the practice: why acceptance and empathy should change people.
Key facts
- Author
- Carl R. Rogers1
- Published
- 19511
- Publisher
- Houghton Mifflin, Boston; Constable, London2
- Pages
- 5602
- ISBN
- 1-84119-840-4 (Constable & Robinson edition)1
- Written at
- University of Chicago, where Rogers taught from 1945 to 1957 and set up a counseling center1
- Influence
- Its personality chapter helped shape "third force psychology", an alternative to behaviorism and psychoanalysis3
What it argues
Key ideas
-
Your perception is your reality1
Each person reacts to the world as they experience and perceive it; that perceptual field is reality for them.
-
The internal frame of reference1
The best vantage point for understanding behavior is from inside the person's own frame of reference.
-
One basic tendency1
The organism strives to actualize, maintain and enhance itself.
-
Threat makes the self rigid1
Experiences that clash with the self-concept feel threatening, and the self structure hardens to protect itself.
-
Safety lets the self change1
With a complete absence of threat, inconsistent experiences can be examined and the self revised to include them.
Examples from the book
-
On teaching1
"A person cannot teach another person directly; a person can only facilitate another's learning" (Rogers, 1951).
Read next
-
The same ideas in personal essays, ten years later.
-
The 1942 book where the method first appeared, with a full recorded case.
Connections
Links
Sources
Last checked against its sources today
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