Client-centered Therapy Assignment

Client-centered Therapy Assignment

Client-centered Therapy Assignment

Client-centered (or person-centered) Therapy

A nondirective therapy based on insights gained from conscious thoughts and feelings; emphasizes accepting one’s true self.

Unconditional positive regard An unqualified, unshakable acceptance of another person.

Empathy A capacity for taking another’s point of view; the ability to feel what another is feeling.

Authenticity In Carl Rogers’s terms, the ability of a therapist to be genuine and honest about his or her own feelings.

Reflection In client-centered therapy, the process of rephrasing or repeating thoughts and feelings expressed by clients so they can become aware of what they are saying.

Existential therapy An insight therapy that focuses on the elemental problems of existence, such as death, meaning, choice, and responsibility; emphasizes making courageous life choices.

Gestalt therapy An approach that focuses on immediate experience and awareness to help clients rebuild thinking, feeling, and acting into connected wholes; emphasizes the integration of fragmented experiences.

Cognitive therapy A therapy directed at changing the maladaptive thoughts, beliefs, and feelings that underlie emotional and behavioral problems.

life. Frankl (1904–1997) based his approach on experiences he had as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. In the camp, Frankl saw countless prisoners break down as they were stripped of all hope and human dignity (Frankl, 1955). Those who survived with their sanity did so because they managed to hang on to a sense of meaning (logos). Even in less dire circumstances, a sense of purpose in life adds greatly to psychological well-being (Prochaska & Norcross, 2010).

What does the existential therapist do? The therapist helps clients discover self-imposed limitations in personal identity. To be successful, the client must fully accept the challenge of changing his or her life (Bretherton & Orner, 2004). Interestingly, Buddhists seek a similar state that they call “radical acceptance” (Brach, 2003).

A key aspect of existential therapy is confrontation, in which clients are challenged to be mindful of their values and choices and to take responsibility for the quality of their existence (Claessens, 2009). An important part of confrontation is the unique, intense, here-and-now encounter between two human beings. When existential therapy is successful, it brings about a renewed sense of purpose and a reappraisal of what’s important in life. Some clients even experience an emotional rebirth, as if they had survived a close brush with death. As Marcel Proust wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

Gestalt Therapy Gestalt therapy is based on the idea that perception, or awareness, is disjointed and incomplete in maladjusted persons. The German word Gestalt means “whole,” or “complete.” Gestalt therapy helps people rebuild thinking, feeling, and acting into connected wholes. This is achieved by expanding personal awareness; by accepting responsibility for one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions; and by filling in gaps in experience (Masquelier, 2006).

What are “gaps in experience”? Gestalt therapists believe that we often shy away from expressing or “owning” upsetting feelings. This creates a gap in self-awareness that may become a barrier to personal growth. For example, a person who feels anger after the death of a parent might go for years without fully expressing it. This and similar threatening gaps may impair emotional health. Client-centered Therapy Assignment.

The Gestalt approach is more directive than client-centered or existential therapy, and it is less insight-oriented and instead emphasizes immediate experience. Working either one-to-one or in a group setting, the Gestalt therapist encourages clients to become more aware of their moment-to-moment thoughts, perceptions, and emotions (Staemmler, 2004). Rather than discussing why clients feel guilt, anger, fear, or boredom, the therapist encourages them to have these feelings in the “here and now” and become fully aware of them. The therapist promotes awareness by drawing attention to a client’s posture, voice, eye movements, and hand gestures. Clients may also be asked to exaggerate vague feelings until they become clear. Gestalt therapists believe that expressing such feelings allows people to “take care of unfinished business” and break through emotional impasses (O’Leary, 2006).

Gestalt therapy is often associated with the work of Fritz Perls (1969). According to Perls, emotional health comes from knowing what you want to do, not dwelling on what you should do, ought to do, or should want to do (Brownell, 2010). In other words, emotional health comes from taking full responsibility for one’s feelings and actions. For example, it means changing “I can’t” to “I won’t,” or “I must” to “I choose to.”

How does Gestalt therapy help people discover their real wants? Above all else, Gestalt therapy emphasizes present experience (Yontef, 2007). Clients are urged to stop intellectualizing and talking about feelings. Instead, they learn to live now; live here; stop imagining; experience the real; stop unnecessary thinking; taste and see; express rather than explain, justify, or judge; give in to unpleasantness and pain just as to pleasure; and surrender to being as you are. Gestalt therapists believe that, paradoxically, the best way to change is to become who you really are (Brownell, 2010).