Developing Counselling Skills in Health and Social Care

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             According to Carl Rogers the person-centred counsellors needs to have three core conditions:.
             1. unconditional positive regard;.
             2. empathy; and.
             3. congruence towards their client.
             However, Rogers also believed that in order for a client to get the most out of person-centred counselling that they needed to meet six "necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality changes" and that if these conditions continued over a period of time then no other conditions are necessary.
             Person-centred counselling sees the individual as a whole, as an organism that is motivated towards achieving its potential called the "actualising tendency". In an aim to move away from the doctor-patient relationship and into a more equal and relaxed relationship Rogers called his patients clients.
             Person-centred counselling is viewed as acting to fulfil two primarily needs:.
             1. the need for self-actualisation; and.
             2. a need to be loved and valued by others. .
             Rogers believed individuals to be unique and with the right experiences able to grow to their full potential and proposed a hierarchy of needs which he believed are responsible for human motivation as well as having the power to control their own growth. A client seeking person centred therapy might have incongruence caused by conditions of worth by their caregivers as a child which in adulthood makes a client anxious or depressed. In this theory if a client has some unresolved childhood problems then it could be compared to the psychodynamics theory of childhood experiences affecting the adult we become, although in person-centred therapy they do not go looking for the experience as deeply as they would in psychodynamics, they allow the client to choose what is best for themselves. .
             Unlike CBT which works on a "here and now" process with clients, the person-centred counselling is all about clients becoming their own counsellor with the counsellor leading the client to their own decisions therefore assisting the client to reach their full potential and learning to become the best they can be.