Person-centered Counseling

Carl Rogers' fundamental pioneering work affected all major schools of psychotherapy. As a result, today, it is widely accepted that certain qualities of the therapist-client relationship comprise necessary conditions for therapeutic success. Without congruence, unconditional positive regard, and accurate empathy on the part of the therapist/counselor and trust and willingness to look inside one's self on the part of the client, all therapeutic methods, interventions, and techniques are more or less ineffective. Rogers' core conditions are described as follows:

• congruence: the therapist acts and behaves openly and naturally, without hiding behind a facade or being defensive or hypocritical in any other way;
• unconditional positive regard: full acceptance without judgment of the client as a unique person, possibly having attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors which are quite different from those of the therapist;
• accurate empathy: an honest commitment to understanding, feeling, and co-experiencing the client's world at the deepest possible level.

Mindfulness in the person-centered approach

Mindfulness plays a central role in person-centered counseling and therapy.

Mindfulness on the part of the counselor/therapist

Rogers gradually discovered that, in order to develop and maintain congruence, unconditional positive regard, and accurate empathy, he needs to be continually mindful of his own thoughts, feelings, and reactions regarding the client. For instance, if a therapist deep inside perceives the client as inferior and harbors some kind of disdain, he/she needs to realize that while it is happening, in order to prevent such unconscious feeling from poisoning the relationship and jeopardizing the success of the therapy. The same holds for the opposite situation when, for example, a counselor admires (or envies) a client too much for some positive qualities that the counselor (thinks he/she) does not possess.

Mindfulness on the part of the client

Rogers and his colleagues investigated not only the necessary conditions for the effectiveness of the therapy, but also the processes that lead to change. The results of this research showed that a nurturing relationship in which the clients feel "fully received" allows them to direct their attention to their own experiences at the deepest physiological, emotional, and cognitive levels. When this happens, clients start to discover aspects of their personality that have been unknown to them. Some of these unconscious features have caused conflicts, possibly dramatic, which have motivated them to seek professional help. Mindfulness leads to insight and self-knowledge which, even if painful, is necessary for resolving the inner conflicts and overcoming the suffering caused by not knowing and not understanding your own true self. To express this in Rogers' words: the client becomes the person that he/she really is, starts being that person, and is thus liberated.