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Summary Exam Psychotherapy & Therapeutic Skills UvA Year 2
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Summary for the exam of Psychotherapy & Therapeutic Skills
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W1CHAPTER 4 (WEDDING & CORSINI) – CLIENT-CENTRED THERAPY (PP. 102-
112 AND PP. 116-142)
Rogers: Observed that human beings possess vast resources for self-understanding and self-
direction → Rogerian hypothesis: Posits that individuals are most able to access their own
creative resources when provided a genuine, congruent therapist who exhibits unconditional
positive regard, warm acceptance and empathy
Client-centred therapy: Humanistic approach to psychotherapy developed in the 1940s/1950s
- Personhood: An ethical claim signifying that human beings should not be used as
means to others’ ends – All human beings are irreducible ‘ends’ in themselves,
inherently deserving dignity and respect without qualification
- Unseats clinicians as experts on our lives, recognising instead self-authority
- Organismic valuing process: An innate, internal guidance system that helps
individuals determine what experiences are congruent with their self-concept and are
therefore perceived as positive or valuable
- Congruence: The state of wholeness and integration
Kluckhohn: ‘Each person is like every other person. Each person is like some other persons.
Each person is like no other person’
- Nomothetic: Universal – All human beings are deeply the same
- Ideographic: Personal uniqueness → Rogers was attuned to an ideographic level of
understanding
Non-directive attitude: The therapeutic stance where the therapist intentionally avoids
imposing own interpretations, judgments or solutions onto the client, but instead adopts a
stance of openness, acceptance and empathetic understanding – In orientations that are more
directive, clients may feel disempowered
Locus of evaluation: The place from which individuals derive their sense of worth or value
1. External locus of evaluation: Reliance on external standards, expectations or
judgments to determine self-worth
2. Internal locus of evaluation: Reliance on own standards, beliefs and principles to judge
thoughts, behaviours and feelings – Worth and value from within themselves
Rogers emphasised the importance of developing an internal locus of evaluation as part of the
process of personal growth and self-actualisation
Two approaches that overlap in some significant ways with the client-centred position:
1. Positive psychology: The desirability of focusing on clients’ strengths as the engine of
change – Emerged from the idea that that psychology had long acted on the medical
model and stressed illness, pathology and ‘treatment’ (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi)
↓
Overlap with client-centred therapy:
- Focus on strength, potential and resilience of persons
- Commitment to applying scientific methods to processes of psychotherapy
, - Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi claimed that the humanistic movement
did not attract a research base and encouraged narcissism and
unscientific self-help → Lambert & Erekson: Expressed that positive
psychologists seemed unaware of the historical research base in client-
centred therapy, including the strong support for the efficacy of the
approach + Challenged the emphasis within positive psychology on
steering clients away from negative emotions towards cultivating
positive emotions
2. Feminist therapy: Addresses ethics and advocates more than one-to-one models of
change – Posits that women’s problems are rooted not in their psyches but in the social
structures that oppress them – Critiques traditional psychological paradigms that
locate women’s issues within the individual, often pathologising their experiences as
stemming from personal deficiencies or biological determinism → Intersectionality:
The interconnected nature of social categorisations and how they overlap in people’s
lives, creating unique experiences of privilege and discrimination
↓
Overlap with client-centred therapy:
- Focus on empowerment
- Critique on traditional power dynamics within therapy
- Holistic view of clients
- Anti-diagnostic stance – Rejection of pathologising
Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT): Argues that dysfunctional cognitive schemas sustain
maladaptive behaviours – The aim is to challenge the client’s core beliefs – The client is in
the position of receiving the wisdom of the therapist
↓
Criticisms on CBT according to client-centred therapists:
- Dodo bird verdict: Asserts that all models of psychotherapy are roughly equal in their
effects – The impact of the therapeutic relationship is much more significant to
outcome compared to specific techniques
- Inherent paternalism
The therapeutic relationship is considered more important in ‘third-wave’ CBT, but is
nonetheless only a means to the end of eliciting client’s collaboration
PERSONALITY
Rogers’ theory of personality: Theory centred around the concept of self-actualisation – At
the core are 19 propositions
1. Every individual exists in a changing world of experience of which they are the centre
2. The organism reacts to the field as it is perceived; this perceptual field is ‘reality’ to
the individual
3. The organism reacts as an organised whole to this phenomenal field
4. The organism has one basic tendency and striving; to actualise, maintain, and enhance
the experiencing organism
,5. Behaviour is the goal-directed attempt of the organism to satisfy its needs as
experienced in the field as perceived
6. Emotion accompanies and in general facilitates such goal-directed behaviour, the kind
of emotion being related to the seeking versus the consummatory aspects of the
behaviour, and the intensity of the emotion being related to the perceived significance
of the behaviour for the maintenance and enhancement of the organism
7. The best vantage point for understanding behaviour is from the internal frame of
reference of the individual
8. A portion of the total perceptual field gradually becomes differentiated as the self
9. As a result of interaction with the environment, and particularly as a result of
evaluational interaction with others, the structure of self is formed; an organised, fluid,
but consistent conceptual pattern of perceptions of characteristics and relationships of
the ‘I’ or the ‘me’ together with values attached to these concepts
10. The values attached to experiences and the values that are a part of the self-structure in
some instances are values experienced directly by the organism, and in some instances
they are values introjected or taken over from others but perceived in distorted fashion
as though they had been experienced directly
11. As experiences occur in the life of the individual, they are (a) symbolised, perceived,
and organised into some relationship to the self; (b) ignored because there is no
perceived relationship to the self-structure; (c) denied symbolisation or given a
distorted symbolisation as the experience is inconsistent with the structure of the self
12. Most of the ways of behaving that are adopted by the organism are those that are
consistent with the concept of self
13. Behaviour may, in some instances, be brought about by organismic experiences and
needs that have not been symbolised; such behaviour may be inconsistent with the
structure of the self, but in such instances the behaviour is not ‘owned’ by the
individual
14. Psychological maladjustment exists when the organism denies to awareness significant
sensory and visceral experiences, which consequently are not symbolised and
organised into the gestalt of the self-structure; when this situation exists, there is a
basis for potential psychological tension
15. Psychological adjustment exists when the concept of the self is such that all the
sensory and visceral experiences of the organism are or may be assimilated on a
symbolic level into a consistent relationship with the concept of self
16. Any experience that is inconsistent with the organisation or structure of self may be
perceived as a threat → The more of these perceptions there are, the more rigidly the
self-structure is organised to maintain itself
17. Under certain conditions, involving primarily complete absence of any threat to the
self-structure, experiences that are inconsistent with it may be perceived and examined
and the structure of self revised to assimilate and include such experiences
18. When the individual perceives all his sensory and visceral experiences and accepts
them into one consistent and integrated system, then they are necessarily more
understanding of others and more accepting of others as separate individuals
19. As the individual perceives and accepts into his self-structure more of his organismic
experiences, they find that they are replacing their current value system (based so
largely on introjections that have been distortedly symbolised) with a continuing
organismic valuing process
, Conditions of worth: The process of introjection of external judgment and evaluation →
Initially, children receive love and approval unconditionally, based solely on their existence,
but eventually, children learn that certain behaviours lead to positive responses from others,
while other behaviours lead to negative responses, and to maintain a positive self-concept and
receive love and approval, children internalise these external standards
Important concepts in Rogers’ theory on personality:
- Experience: The private world of the individual
- Reality: A subjective experience that encompasses the person’s perceptions,
interpretations, beliefs and constructions of the world around them
- Actualising tendency: Asserts that people are motivated to maintain and enhance
themselves – Inherent to all living organisms; although it may be diminished by
impoverishment, trauma and violence – Posits that people do the best they can under
the circumstances they are in – Based on Goldstein’s holistic theory of personality
- Syntropy: The tendency towards order, organisation and complexity
- The actualising tendency is used an axiom and is not subject to falsification
- Criticism: The actualising tendency represents a belief in moral goodness →
Reaction: Rogers acknowledged the capacity for both constructive and
destructive tendencies, but emphasised that when individuals are provided with
a supportive environment, they tend to move in positive directions
- Internal frame of reference: The way the world appears to us from our own unique
viewpoint given our experiences and the meanings attached to them – Also termed
subjective context in Zimring’s theory
- Symbolisation: The process by which the individual becomes aware of an experience
- Psychological adjustment: The state in which an individual achieves coherence
between their internal experiences and their external realities
- Fully functioning person: The person who is in touch with their authentic self, is able
to engage with their experiences openly and honestly, and can translate these
experiences into meaningful awareness and understanding
PSYCHOTHERAPY
Six necessary and sufficient conditions – Function holistically as a gestalt of the therapist
1. Two persons are in psychological contact
2. The client is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious
Core conditions
3. The therapist is congruent or integrated in the relationship
4. The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client
5. The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client’s internal frame of
reference and endeavours to communicate this experience to the client
6. The communication to the client of the therapist’s empathic understanding and
unconditional positive regard is to a minimal degree achieved
Core conditions: Three therapist-provided essential attitudes
1. Congruence: The therapist’s genuine and authentic presence, where they openly
communicate their feelings and perceptions without hiding behind a professional
façade – Involves being true to oneself and integrating personal experiences into
interactions with clients
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