Person-Centred Practice, Parrots, Picasso’s Pidgeon, Paradoxes and Tee-Shirt Prints… or… On Being an Expert

Person-Centred Practice, Parrots, Picasso’s Pidgeon, Paradoxes and Tee-Shirt Prints… or… On Being an Expert

Carl Rogers, the founding father of the Person-Centred Approach to Psychotherapy, propounded that the client is the expert in their own experience. Person-Centred theory explains that the therapist cannot be the expert in the direction nor content of the client’s life. I believe this makes it very difficult for people to believe that the approach can possibly work. How can it be enough not to guide the client? And what is the point of the therapist if the client does all the work? Let me quote Ruby Wax to you, who describes Person-Centred Therapy in this way:

I also loved personal-centred therapy. Rogers just reflected whatever you said back to you like a parrot but with love. You would say something and then he’d say, ‘Do you mean?’ followed by exactly what you said back to you. Simple.

Ruby seems to praise the approach whilst diminishing its profundity. I feel angry that, in a sort of way, her description is true, as well as a common perception. I repeatedly hear students I teach say how much they value the Person-Centred Approach but that they don’t believe it is enough. They love it and disparage it in one breath. I’m wondering what is behind my quietly suppressed rage on behalf of my beloved Theoretical Framework.

A plant knows how to grow, it just needs light, water and minerals. Person-Centred theory is based on the premise that all people have a tendency to actualise, and that we can grow toward our fullest potential if the conditions facilitate tuning into our ‘organismic valuing process’. I know from my own experience that I hate it when other people tell me what is best for me or how to live my life. I don’t want people to hold expertise over me, however I am careful to talk to people who are considered, knowledgeable and know when to help me see things that I can’t see. I want someone who connects with and prizes me, someone who is expert in relating sensitively, warmly and truthfully.

Person-Centred practitioners often declare themselves to be non-expert, however this broad brush-stroke paints over the expertise that they do have. Good Person-Centred therapists are skilled listeners, are self-aware to evolved levels, they can remain true to themselves in their voiced (or not voiced) responses to their clients, they hold the kind of practice wisdom that can genuinely prize and accept all clients (without having to like them socially) and are experts at relating.

The elegance and simplicity of Carl Rogers’ Person-Centred Theory belies its profound power to offer a crucible within which people can change. I have been likening the theory to Picasso’s simple line drawings, where Picasso foregoes colour, shade and anything else in the background to focus on the relationship between artist and subject.

Rogers researched the relationship between therapist and client, arriving at a theory that looks simple, yet like Picasso’s line drawings catches the pure form of a subject, or expresses the essence of a healing relationship and gives us the beauty of a truth. Picasso is regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th Century, and one of the greatest draftsmen. Rogers too is regarded as hugely influential in the field of psychotherapy and instigated the powerful shift where the agency of change moved from therapist to client. It is the client’s painting – not the Therapist’s. The therapist must not paint the colour, the composition and the variations of tone. The Therapist offers the conditions where the client can see his own ‘painting’ or ‘organismic valuing process’. There are only six of these conditions – just the most ‘necessary and sufficient’ ones – so simple.

Here’s a screenshot of them from his 1959 paper (and a picture of Rogers too): -

My own love for the grounding that Rogers’ theory gives me is why I call myself a Person-Centred Therapist. I suppose I might be called an integrative practitioner, as I know I am able to incorporate and integrate all sorts of things I have learnt about therapy and what can help people. There is deeply insightful psychodynamic theory that interprets and explains ‘why’. There’s practical and useful CBT, which gives people something to hold onto whilst navigating negative thoughts. There’s pithy Transactional Analysis, ready to help us learn how unhelpful our psychological games can be, to step out of the drama and to side-step old family roles. There are Gestalt experiments, ready to help us see all the other things that are in the more complete ‘painting’.

I know I draw from all the above when working with clients, and I know too that I am not offering Psychodynamic Therapy, CBT, TA nor Gestalt therapy. I am offering Person-Centred Therapy. My focus is on the six necessary and sufficient conditions.

Rogers’ revolutionary research into the significant factors that contribute to successful outcomes in therapy and personal constructive change was cutting edge at the time, being one of the first researches to record and transcribe therapy sessions. He wrote realms of engaging and insightful reflection about … well… ‘On Becoming a Person’ (the name of his most well-known book). In the second half of the 20th Century, Rogers wrote books, articles and papers, creating a picture full of shades, tones, composition and background. He also wrote 19 propositions that give a complete picture of personality, how it is that we suffer, why it is that we do what we do, and what helps people function more fully. He really was an expert on therapy. Picasso can also paint this: -

I might paint like Picasso sometimes in a Therapy Session (not really – I’m hoping that you understand that I might draw on all of myself to show colour and background, offering suggestions of what might help a client change and grow). Like Worsley (2012, p. 161) I seek to integrate into my PC practice ‘as much as my life experience as possible’ and incessantly reflect on how to hold and offer expertise, whilst not compromising the essential principle of non-directivity.  However, nothing I offer is not grounded in Person-Centred theory. I focus on empathy, and, as Art Bohart says, I ‘listen in order to listen’. I do not listen in order to interpret, or in order to discover what is the best technique to offer. If the connection of the relationship is through the channels of empathy, genuine and real connection, and I see something that could be helpful to a client, I might offer this if I don’t feel it gets in the way of a client’s ability to paint their own picture. I respect that the client’s actualising tendency is their engine that drives change and do not get in the way of it. Sticking to the painting analogy, I might point out a helpful drawing technique or a colour combination. A person can’t always know what they don’t know. I feel free to be spontaneous and instinctive as the six conditions give me focus and grounding. Like a huge weight allowing a helium balloon to rise to the skies without getting lost.

I think Person-Centred Practitioners work expertly with working with theory, knowledge and skills. We don’t hold expertise on the client, we are experts in relating and paying attention to non-directivity.

Person-Centred Therapy works, and there is a realm of evidence from years of research, including very recent years, to show so. The findings consistently show that Person-Centred Therapy (indeed, all therapies) do as well as other therapies. What makes the most difference is the warm and accepting relationship within all therapies. And what makes the most difference of all is the client’s readiness for change – it is the client that makes therapy work, not the therapist. So of course, we need to be careful not to get in their way.

But still – people don’t believe that the therapist should not be the one with the solutions. It doesn’t fit with what we are used to from the medical modal – the idea that we need someone else to fix our suffering. A couple of weeks ago I was with a supervisee who exclaimed that Person-Centred Counselling wasn’t enough. My heart sank. And then, she continued to move me… by saying “nothing is ever going to be enough!”. What she had meant was that people suffer. Deprivation, fear, trauma, mortality, loss… it is part of our lives. The Buddha came up with this as the first noble truth.  No therapy fixes it. The best we can do is find our way of accepting it and being with it. I think what happens in Person-Centred therapy is that we offer the therapeutic conditions in which a client can hear themselves, understand better what they need and better manage and navigate their suffering. This means that counsellors need to sit with uncertainty whilst we watch our clients untangle their messes. This uncertain terrain is maybe what makes it so hard for people to accept when they see that the concept of Person-Centred Counselling is non-directive. Perhaps the concept of certainty is an illusion in any therapy?

Teaching this to counsellors-in-training is hard. The first job is to ask them not to jump in with questions, solutions and techniques. I also have to encourage students to stay with a client’s pain, and not try to cheer them up. This way of being is so very new for most people, and absolutely counter to what society teaches us. I’ve been thinking that I invest in teaching students in what not to do rather than what to do, which might explain the student’s resulting sense of deficit in the Person-Centred Approach. I often say to counsellors-in-training when they are practicing their Person-Centred skills “No matter how little you are doing, you can always do less.”  They need to pare down their relating to the necessary and sufficient conditions. Going back to the simple line drawing analogy, they need to concentrate on the essential nature of the relationship. Here’s another one of Picasso’s drawings, which showcase his talent at focussing on form and essence with almost one single, well moved line. Picasso didn’t just draw his lines, he skilfully selected the possible line of movement.

It’s like needing to play only scales before playing a complete piece of music. I ask students to adopt the mantra… “Empathise Empathise Empathise” And from this empathy, when they are truly staying within the focus of the simple line, or the six necessary and sufficient conditions, their advanced empathy might help them see colours in the client’s picture or some other shapes that they might share. Like me, when doing so, they might constantly ask themselves “Am I being Person-Centred?” as they measure their practice up to the theory. Bohart (2012) argues that the approach is a philosophy of life, and therefore it is how you practice rather than what you do in your practice that defines your approach. Brazier’s asserts that “Once one has tuned in … therapist and client are together occupying a privileged space in which new possibilities may spontaneously occur to either of them. What is crucial then is whether they ring true to the client rather than whether the client actually spoke them first.” (1995, p.102).

Whilst on a camping holiday this year with a group of friends, I asked one of them to talk about his t-shirt. You might have shared my curiosity, as it stated “Don’t Stop Oil”. We gathered in a group, and the t-shirt bearer happily held forth about his beliefs. Unsurprisingly, there were rebuttals to what was viewed as a provocation. His audience couldn’t hear him as they were set counter to him, and he didn’t hear his audience’s protestations either.

After the ‘debate’ he approached me and wandered what he could have done differently. “What I should have done was to have asked questions” he said.  I explained that asking questions does not always show empathy and can override the agency of people wanting to be heard. It can turn listeners into talkers and talkers into listeners. I explained that listening to his audience might have helped them feel undefended, therefore more open to hearing his passions. As I talked, I experienced his curiosity and interest, and I felt heard.

I then listened to him. I heard his anguish at feeling that his passion was so inadequately conveyed by the media. I felt no need to agree nor disagree but was as open to his viewpoints as he had been to mine. As we listened to each other, we connected, and at some level both of us changed our understanding.

I wandered what my t-shirt would say if I could put one thing on it that I care about deeply. I’d like to have invented “Don’t just do something, sit there!” but I’ve heard this before. E.M. Forster has already coined the phrase “Only Connect”. I’d have to use fewer words than Rogers’ powerful statement “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” …. Maybe I could combine the three...?

Bohart, A. (2012). Can you be integrative and a person-centered therapist at the same time? Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 11(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/14779757.2011.639461

Brazier, D. (2001). Zen therapy Robinson.

Rogers, C. R. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships: As developed in the client-centered framework. In S. Koch (Ed.),Psychology: A study of a science. Formulations of the person and the social context (Vol. 3, pp. 184-256). McGraw Hill.

Wax, R. (2014) Sane new world. Hodder Paperbacks

Worsley, R. (2012). Integrating with integrity. In P. Sanders (Ed), The tribes of the person-centred nation: An introduction to the schools of therapy related to the person-centred approach (pp. 161-186). PCCS Books.