Evaluate the Claim That Person-Centred Therapy Offers the Therapist All That He/She Will Need to Treat Clients Essay

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For this essay I have been asked to Evaluate the claim that Person-Centred therapy offers the therapist all that he/she will need to treat clients.
In order to do this, I plan to firstly look at the theory of person-centred therapy, examining its roots and fundamental principles. Secondly, I will look at key criticisms of the model and evaluate the “weight” of such criticisms.
Underlying Theory of Person-Centred Counselling
The Person-Centred approach to counselling was pioneered by Carl Rogers in the 1940’s and 50’s. Rogers worked as a psychotherapist for most of his life and through years of working with clients developed the belief that people continually strive “to become a person”, and that this activity never ceases. His methods …show more content…
The focus is always on the client’s own feelings and thoughts, not on those of the therapist and certainly not on diagnosis or categorisation. The person-centred therapist should make every effort to foster an environment in which clients can encounter themselves and become more intimate with their own thoughts, feelings and meanings. Often the act of trying to explain things to another person is enough to un-muddle one’s self.
There are no strict guidelines regarding the length or frequency of person-centred therapy. Generally, therapists adhere to a one-hour session once per week. True to the spirit of person-centred therapy, however, scheduling may be adjusted according to the client's expressed needs. The client also decides when to terminate therapy. Termination usually occurs when he or she feels able to better cope with life's difficulties.
The expected results of person-centred therapy include improved self-esteem; trust in one's inner feelings and experiences as valuable sources of information for making decisions; increased ability to learn from (rather than repeating) mistakes; decreased defensiveness, guilt, and insecurity; more positive and comfortable relationships with others; an increased capacity to experience and express feelings at the moment they occur; and openness to new experiences and new ways of thinking about life. But is this always the
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Evaluate the claim that Person-Centred Therapy offers the therapist all that he/she will need to treat clients Essays

In order to evaluate the above claim it is first necessary to look at the historical context from which it emerged, and the basic premise on which its theories rest, before looking at how this model effects change in the client, and then considering whether this approach is enough to achieve results in all types of client problems. Person-Centred Therapy (PCT) is one of the humanistic models of therapeutic practice that emerged from the 1940’s to the 1960’s, developed as a ‘third force’: an alternative…

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