The Person-Centered Approach Views the Client as Their Own Best Authority on Their Own

The person-centered approach views the client as their own best authority on their own

experience, and it views the client as being fully capable of fulfilling their won potential for growth. It recognizes, however, that achieving potential requires favorable conditions and that under adverse conditions, individuals may well not grow and develop in the ways that they otherwise could. In particular, when individuals are denied acceptance and positive regard from others-or when that positive regard is made conditional upon the individual behaving in particular ways-they may begin to lose touch with what their own experience means for them, and their innate tendency to grow in a direction consistent with that meaning may be stifled.

One reason this may occur is that individuals often cope with the conditional acceptance offered to them by others by gradually coming to incorporate these conditions into their own views about themselves. They may form a self-concept which includes views of themselves like, "I am the sort of person who must never be late", or "I am the sort of person who always respects other". Because of a fundamental need for positive regard from others, it is easier to "be" this sort of person-and to receive positive regard. Over time, their intrinsic sense of their own identity and their won evaluations of experience and attributions of value may be replaced by creations partly or even entirely due to the pressures felt from other people. That is the individual displaces personal judgments and meaning with those of others.

Psychological disturbance occurs when the individual's self-concept begins to clash with immediate personal experience - i.e., when the evidence of the individual's own senses or the individuals own judgment clash with what the self-concept says "ought" to be the case. Unfortunately, disturbance is apt to continue as long as the individual depends on the conditionally positive judgments of others for their sense of self-worth and as long as the individual relies on the self-concept designed in part to earn those positive judgments. Experiences which challenge the self-concept are apt to be distorted or even denied altogether in order to preserve it.

The person-centered approach maintains that three core conditions provide a climate conducive to growth and therapeutic change. They contrast starkly with those conditions believed to be responsible for psychological disturbance. The core conditions are: 1) Unconditional positive regard, 2) Empathic understanding, 3) Congruence.

The first- unconditional positive regard-means that the counselor accepts the client

unconditionally and non-judgmentally. The client is free to explore all thoughts and feelings, positive or negative,