In counseling psychology, the relationship between therapist and client is very important. Carl Rogers (1961) is the one who acquainted himself with analyzing, treating, and controlling the relationship between him and clients. Throughout his own counseling experiences, Rogers concluded that entrusting the clients with a direction of counseling would be effective. This is called ‘client-centered therapy’ (p.26). Rogers noticed that listening to the client is more productive than just trying to ‘cure’ them. Even though the clients sound stupid or weird, the clients become able to realize their problems themselves. And when this process is repeated several times, the problem is automatically cured. In the book On Becoming a Person, Rogers (1961)
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Not only solving the client’s problem, but also focusing on the possibility of the client made Rogers to be ahead of the new field which is humanism therapy. Rogers (1961) was strongly influenced by Martin Buber, who was an existentialist philosopher of the University of Jerusalem (p.55). Buber (1961) proposed, “If I accept the other person as a process of becoming, then I am doing what I can to confirm or make real his potentialities” (p.55). This is reflected in the following advertisements: “Be yourself and make it a Bud light”, “Audi Q5 is yourself, everyone else is already taken”. These advertisement quotes show us Rogers’ opinion that we should live passionately through expressing our true characters. He said, “It means that a person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity” (Rogers, 1961, p.122). This idea brought about a resistance culture in 1960s, and still repeated in many self-help books today. One of the best seller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (1989) contains a part ‘Seek to understand, then to be understood’ (p.235-260). Covey’s idea that people should be able to open themselves to each other and communicate in sincere relationships, parallels to Rogers’ …show more content…
Rogers’ client-centered therapy is a new approach that came into being against the existing psychodynamic therapy and behavioral theory of those days. The era when Rogers came out with this logic was strongly focused on the behaviors of the rats in the laboratory experiments, so Carl Rogers’ belief that entrusting the whole procedure of counseling to the ‘mad’ clients was regarded as a great challenge to the other psychological academic world. Indeed, many psychologists looked down on Rogers’ theory during that period. However, Carl Rogers further emphasized that the therapist also has a right to express his or her own emotions and expose the therapist’s own character. Rogers tells us to build a sincere relationship between therapist and client, and the therapist’s emotion and feeling definitely should be integral to this relationship. This following phrase shows the core concept of Rogers’ (1961) theory clearly. As Rogers says “Life, at its best, is a flowing, changing process in which nothing is fixed” (p.27), the people who self-actualized themselves accept the fact that they are imperfect and still on the way to being existence. Nevertheless, people commit mistakes trying to control every experience and as a result, they create their own characteristic which has a big gap with the reality. In client-centered therapy, it acknowledges the client as the one who make a
Not only solving the client’s problem, but also focusing on the possibility of the client made Rogers to be ahead of the new field which is humanism therapy. Rogers (1961) was strongly influenced by Martin Buber, who was an existentialist philosopher of the University of Jerusalem (p.55). Buber (1961) proposed, “If I accept the other person as a process of becoming, then I am doing what I can to confirm or make real his potentialities” (p.55). This is reflected in the following advertisements: “Be yourself and make it a Bud light”, “Audi Q5 is yourself, everyone else is already taken”. These advertisement quotes show us Rogers’ opinion that we should live passionately through expressing our true characters. He said, “It means that a person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity” (Rogers, 1961, p.122). This idea brought about a resistance culture in 1960s, and still repeated in many self-help books today. One of the best seller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (1989) contains a part ‘Seek to understand, then to be understood’ (p.235-260). Covey’s idea that people should be able to open themselves to each other and communicate in sincere relationships, parallels to Rogers’ …show more content…
Rogers’ client-centered therapy is a new approach that came into being against the existing psychodynamic therapy and behavioral theory of those days. The era when Rogers came out with this logic was strongly focused on the behaviors of the rats in the laboratory experiments, so Carl Rogers’ belief that entrusting the whole procedure of counseling to the ‘mad’ clients was regarded as a great challenge to the other psychological academic world. Indeed, many psychologists looked down on Rogers’ theory during that period. However, Carl Rogers further emphasized that the therapist also has a right to express his or her own emotions and expose the therapist’s own character. Rogers tells us to build a sincere relationship between therapist and client, and the therapist’s emotion and feeling definitely should be integral to this relationship. This following phrase shows the core concept of Rogers’ (1961) theory clearly. As Rogers says “Life, at its best, is a flowing, changing process in which nothing is fixed” (p.27), the people who self-actualized themselves accept the fact that they are imperfect and still on the way to being existence. Nevertheless, people commit mistakes trying to control every experience and as a result, they create their own characteristic which has a big gap with the reality. In client-centered therapy, it acknowledges the client as the one who make a