history
The core principles of Person Centered Therapy like non-interference, natural healing, self-awareness and being true to oneself are valued in many cultures through history.
Carl Rogers
Carl Rogers published a few propositions about human nature that were a bit like the beginnings of a theory of personality. He put these into a wider context with observations on the nature of life and living beings. Later he described the well functioning person and suggested some principles of therapy to achieve that.
He developed the ideas behind Client Centered Therapy during the 1940's. They became ground breaking in the 50's and early 60's under the revised name Person Centered Therapy.
As an educator he used the principles in student centered learning and later went further to apply them to social and political relationships.
The term Non Directive Psychotherapy has been used interchangeably as an alternative description but the very presence of a therapist provides direction so this terminology can be confusing or controversial.
origins
So where did this come from? My experience of the trance-like person centered session is of a free association that begins with a preoccupation or feeling of discomfort about something.
Free association was the first core method of psychoanalysis. The critical mind does not intervene to censor spontaneous thoughts. Intellectual censorship is temporarily suspended and one freely follows any train of thought.
Freud abandoned hypnosis and adopted free association in 1892 as a clinical technique to recover and understand important memories while conscious.
6 years later from 1898 Freud left free association aside to focus more closely on the analysis of the internal mental conflicts which kept these memories inaccessible (hypnosis didn't really work and neither did free association – the memories remained stubbornly buried)
Rogers therapeutic principles facilitate this simple strategy of free association.
current practice
Although Person Centered Therapy is no longer widely practised in its pure form – or at least there are few who of us who call ourselves Person Centered Therapists, Rogers is currently the most recognised therapist by professional psychotherapists.
The principles he found words for have become widely accepted and have found their way into many theories and practices.
Most of the terminology and ideas of Person Centered Therapy have entered our language and are taken for granted to the point of being almost invisible.
Many therapies including some body work, emotional, play, art and music therapies now specify a person centered approach.
copyright (C) John Brasted 2008
updated 6. Feb. 2012
