PERSON-CENTERED AND COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL APPROACHES

The person-centred and cognitive behavioural approaches to understanding and working with fear and sadness—Comparison and Contrast

The person-centred and cognitive behavioural approaches to understanding and working with fear and sadness—Comparison and Contrast

Introduction

The person-centered approach views the client as their own best authority on their own experience, and it views the client as being fully capable of fulfilling their own potential for growth. It recognises, however, that achieving potential requires favorable conditions and that under adverse conditions, individuals may well not grow and develop in the ways that they otherwise could. In particular, when individuals are denied acceptance and positive regard from others — or when that positive regard is made conditional upon the individual behaving in particular ways — they may begin to lose touch with what their own experience means for them, and their innate tendency to grow in a direction consistent with that meaning may be stifled.

Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) was initially developed to treat depression and has been shown to be effective for a wide range of difficulties. Treatment manuals, clinical research, as well as clinical texts on cognitive behavior therapy, refer to the importance of a collaborative relationship.

Person Centered Approach

Person-centered therapy, developed by Carl Rogers (Rogers, 1957, 97-103; 1961), offers a specific framework for developing the therapeutic alliance. Rogers focused on the therapeutic relationship and identified three 'necessary and sufficient' conditions for effective therapy, including acceptance or unconditional positive regard for the client, empathy, and therapeutic genuineness.

Rogers identified three necessary and sufficient conditions for effective therapy. The first condition is “acceptance”, which is often referred to as respect for the patient and, sometimes, as “unconditional positive regard”. Martin (1989, 12) defines this concept as: “respect is reflected in the dependable acceptance the therapist gives the client - a non-judgmental openness to let the client think, feel, and say whatever he is experiencing, without losing the sense that the therapist accepts him as a person with worth”.

Rogers' second condition, empathy, has received a great deal of attention in the psychological literature, though there is a lack of agreement regarding a definition. At the core of empathy, however, is the therapist's ability to understand the client's world and to communicate this understanding to the client by his or her verbal and non-verbal expression. Empathetic communication involves accurate reflection of the client's content and affect, as well as the ability to hear a client's intended meaning or the therapist's 'felt sense' of the client's communication.

The third condition, which is the therapist's genuineness or congruence, refers to the therapist relating to the client in a manner that is real and present.

Together, these three core conditions are believed to enable the client to develop and grow in their own way — to strengthen and expand their own identity and to become the person that they 'really' are independently of the pressures of others to act or think in particular ways.

As a result, person-centered theory takes these core conditions as both necessary and sufficient for therapeutic movement to occur — ...