Client Centred Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory

Product Information

His Client Centered theory was not a top-down theory of the mind, rather a bottom-up set of ideas abstracted out of countless experiences in the therapy office. Therefore, experience should dictate and precede theory as words will always fall short of the full experience.

My own visual interpretation of this point is the following: at birth we start with a blank slate, a cube of granite. The commonly known technique of active listening is better viewed this way: echoing back to the person his perception of his inner world. He made that claim against all common wisdom that the therapist ought to be emotionally detached from the process.

While I had liked his Freedom to Learn, I found CCT to be very boring after the first sections on at least two accounts. These guidelines for personal and social conduct can make it easier for a person to determine where they fit in to everything without much thought or effort. It's this part of truly understanding the self that is necessary to understand what is going on in front of us or in our own heads. My appreciation for Rogers is deeply magnified by the fact that he was a ruthless seeker of truth, wherever it may lead.

Self-actualization, from the best I could glean, is the organism's move toward a more positive and consistent wholeness of self-concept and experience. A wealth of information from past to present with all the underpinnings that are of course still used today within this psychotherapy form. He received many honors, including the first Distinguished Professsional Contributor Award and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association. Presenting the non-directive and related points of view in counselling and therapy, this book defines the progress recently made in the development of the techniques and basic philosophy of counselling. Carl Rogers theorized that this level of disintegration and reintegration of the self can only occur in the total absence of judgment, in an environment of positive acceptance.

One side note that I loved: through the exploration of his unconscious experiences and resolving his conflicts, the client comes to develop a more accurate symbolization of reality, a better representation. The former seems to be a structure of experiential and perceived experiential exposure of the "organism.

This book challenges the ideas of many contemporary therapeutic endeavours and really hammers home the message that the basics are the most important.Many times I've had to put the book down to work through a chain of thought, to reflect upon my own values and ways of being (forgive the in-reference).