PCT, PCA and Rogerian talk therapies

Person Centered Therapy (PCT) is a humanistic approach to life, people, self and therapy that can be applied universally. It was developed by Carl Rogers an American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach (or client-centered approach).

They key figure in the development of Person Centered Therapy was Carl Rogers (1902-1987). PCT is also often called “Rogerian Therapy” as synonym. It was further developed by contemporary PCA therapists and researchers like Mearns, Thorne, Tudor and Worrall.

Person Centered Therapy: Overview

The development of humanistic therapies was borne out of an anti-psychiatry movement: A move away from the “deficiency model of mental illness”, diagnosed and treated by the psychiatrist in their role of medical expert. Person Centered Therapy is in this way a clear departure from the hierarchical relation that structures older frameworks (psycho analysis, Freudian / Jungian psycho dynamics, etc.)

Instead, the wellness or potentiality model is preferred, leading to the associated idea of the individual in charge of their own life, with the therapist as helper.

Person-centered therapy is fundamentally close, and equal. You talk to your therapist sat in a chair, chatting for most of the time as you would with a friend or a confidante. There is no promethean genius of the human mind sitting silently behind you as you lay on a couch, as you would in psychoanalytical therapy.

The actualising tendency.

Most therapeutic models describe and define their view, on the defining traits and powers that guide the human mind and behaviour. Person Centered Therapy asks of us to examine: What do we really want? What is really good for us universally? What do we chase innately? How grounded and coherent are we in our words and behaviours in contrast to our aspirations and principles?

Rogers saw this innate drive as a core engine in someone’s life: The tendency for the human psyche to want to “self actualise”. Depending on who you talk to, this could be the “will to power” in Nietzschian terms, or simply in layman terms, a big red hot muscle car. What do we drive to, following what principles?

A key element of Rogers’ humanistic approach is to posit that everyone aims to be creative, well adapted and highly performing, to reach their potential. This is an inherent trait of human nature to Rogers, eternal and motivational. As individuals we may never reach that perfect “blue sky” state but this aspiration directs a lot of our lives. The process of pursuing one’s full potential is what he called the actualizing tendency.

The “Fully functioning” person:

In Rogerian thought, a “fully functioning” person can, once again, be almost any kind of person. They will have very different tastes and examplify their individualiaty following an infinite variety of temperaments, values and deeds. But crucially, to Rogers any “fully-functioning” persons would share the universal and timeless following skills and attributes:

1. Open to experience:

Person Centered Therapy posits that openness to experience is a central skill, that will both help therapy and/or will be boosted by it. Accepts both positive and negative emotions. Can somewhat handle and process hurtful or unhelpful and generally negative feelings. These are not denied, but dealt with and processed (rather than relying on ego defense mechanisms).

2. Existential living:

Connected with experiences as they occur in life, grounded emotionally, avoiding prejudging, appreciating the present. Living for the moment, not overly concerned with the past or the future.

3. Trusting of feelings:

The fully functioning person recognises that “frontal lobes” intelligence is only a part of the equation. That a high IQ only ever explains one plan of reality and that feelings also matter. They trust feeling and gut-reactions are paid attention to and trusted. People’s own decisions are the right ones, and we should trust ourselves to make the right choices.

4. Creativity:

An ability to dynamically evolve and in so choose one’s own true path to a higher degree. A person defines themselves, tries on new personas and solutions, and evolves through existential creation. Fully functioning people do not play safe all the time, they can adjust to change and seek new experiences.

5. Fulfilled life:

We are not talking of constant joy and meaning here, it is always understood that even the best of lives do follow peaks and troughs in a natural cycle. But to be fully functioning a person must be (to a point at least) fundamentally happy and satisfied with life, looking forward to new challenges and experiences.

Personal development

Rogers define the self as “the organized, consistent set of perceptions and beliefs about oneself.”

In Rogerian terms the self is simply the humanistic term to express who we really are as a person, our temperament and inner personality. Person Centered Therapy asserts that our self evolves with time, events, and our interpretation of these events. Two particularly rich influences for our self-concept are childhood experiences and evaluation by others.

Rogers say we want to experience, feel and behave consistently with our self-image reflecting what we would like to be like, our ideal-self.  The closer our self-image and ideal-self are the more consistent (congruent) we are and the higher our sense of self-worth. 

A person is said to be in a state of incongruence if some of their experience is unacceptable to them and is denied or distorted in the self-image.

The humanistic approach states that the self is composed of concepts unique to ourselves. The self-concept includes three components:

Self-worth

Self-worth is what we think about ourselves. Self-worth is more fundamental and nearly innate than self-image (below). It is the initial energy and drive imparted in early love, socialising and validation.

Rogers believed feelings of self-worth developed in early childhood and were formed from the interaction of the child with the mother and father.

Self-image

People do not behave the same depending on whether they see themselves as dashing and brilliant, or overweight and slow-witted. Self-image, and aligning our life, choices, actions and behaviours to it is an important emotional grounding.

How we see ourselves is important to good psychological health and influences many real life outcomes (attracting a partner, finding meaningful work etc.) Self-image includes the influence of our body image on inner personality. Our actions and remorse (or lack thereof) influence our self-image as well as our self-worth. How ascribe meaning and handle guilt influences our self-image and general ability to grow.

At a simple level, we might perceive ourselves as a good or bad person, beautiful or ugly. Self-image affects how a person thinks, feels and behaves in the world. Person Centered Therapy calls us to take a more dispassionate and balanced look at ourselves as a great start for growth and self appreciation.

Ideal-self

Psychology nerds will recognise here the “superego” part of Freudian psychology, a fair comparison between the two, even though they are not exactly alike. The ideal self for Roger is perfect person we would like to be, inside and out. 

This is the person who we would like to be. It consists of our goals and ambitions in life, and is dynamic – i.e., forever changing. Person Centered Therapy also aims at examining that ideal self. Is it realistic? Is it hiding something? Is it a real passion we should dedicate more time and resources to? 

The ideal self in childhood is not the ideal self in our teens or late twenties etc.

Positive Regard and Self Worth

Much of Rogerian therapy seems to have been influenced by Rogers early professional experience.

Rogers started studying children and their development. He identified two key aspects as crucial needs:

1- The need for positive regard from others.

2- The need for positive regard of self (self-worth).

Without (sufficient) self-worth individuals mental health suffers, and so do real-life likelihood of self-actualisation.

People deprived of sufficient early unconditional love may grow to be adults obsessively acting to gather positive regard from others. Acquiring many (but shallow) relations, acquiring fame or status, material possessions may provide them with short-term relief but condemn them to long term exhaustion and instability.

Similarly they may also grow into adults who lead a toxic life (unethical trades, crime, etc.) that they spend large amounts of energy, and mental health, trying to justify or excuse. Cognitive dissonance, depression, drugs.

Rogers sees self-worth as a continuum from high to low. A person with high self-worth, confidence and positive feelings about him or herself, faces challenges in life, accepts failure and sadness at times. A person with high self-worth is open with people.

A person with low self-worth is less able to accept and handle challenges, or that life can occasionally be sad, and will be avoiding and intolerant of other people.

Self-worth is developed in childhood and early life interaction with parents particularly and later with lovers and friends, each bringing a source of influence towards the feeling of self-worth.

Rogers believed that human psychology requires for each of us to be regarded positively by others; to actually feel and experience of feeling of being valued, and loved. But he did distinguish between unconditional positive regard and conditional positive regard. One leads to feelings of true self-worth, the other to feelings of conditional (and/or transactional) self-worth.

Unconditional Positive Regard

Unconditional positive regard is about accepting and loving someone for who they are. That positive view is not cancelled or voided if the person does wrong. 

Person Centered Therapy is essentially a humanistic framework and aims to build that humanistic / loving emotional stability the individual in question feels capable, and allowed, to experience and trial. To make mistakes.

It will not come as a surprise that people who have received unconditional love at early stages of development and socialisation (parents, friends, later on lovers) are more likely to become “fully functioning” and to self-actualise.

Conditional Positive Regard

Conditional positive regard is tied to a condition, a state or action: Approval and acceptance of the child depends on behaving in ways that the parents think correct. The child is not loved for who he/she is but rather on his/her ability to meet the condition expressed by the parents.

Conditional positive engenders less self-worth and pushed to the extreme leads to a variety of psychological issues, such as for example compulsively seeking approval, conformity, inability to form true knowledge of self, etc.

Congruence

All of the concepts outlined above combine ultimately into this meta-factor for Rogers: Congruence.

People experience psychological congruence are individuals whose ideal self is relatively consistent with what happens in their life, and how they perceive themselves in that life.

Incongruence happens when a person’s ideal self is not consistent enough with the lives they lead, and/or when their self-image as they go through life, is too removed from their “true” self as it goes through these experiences.

Obviously we are all on a spectrum here in terms of congruence. No one is ever perfectly congruent or incongruent. By the same token, congruence is logically tied to positive regard (as a cause / source of congruence) and to an individual’s chances of leading a “fully functioning” life (as a consequence of congruence).

Prime among hurdles to congruence are “defence mechanisms” such as denial or repression of events, memories and/or unenjoyable feelings. Simply put, when someone is experiencing incongruence between their ideal self and true sense of self or self-image, they may lash out or avoid because truth hurts. By doing so though they will miss a chance to examine events, poor decisions and a variety of real-life feedback that would have:

a) Neutralised much more healthily and durably the feelings of mental hurt: Something owned and processed brings a lot less mental pain in the long term.

b) Taught the individual more vividly and compelling how to adapt and behave next time a similar situation arises, therefore arming them gradually with truer resilience.

Ideal self true self self image congruence