* They are comparatively unimpaired in their abilities to form relationships.
* They are able to tolerate the frustration, and endure the pain, of re-experiencing disturbing feelings and memories.
* They are willing to be patient through a potentially long period in treatment and can sustain a commitment to that process.
10
PSYCHOTHERAPY, PART I
Client-Centered Therapy, Gestalt
Therapy, Transactional Analysis,
Rational-Emotive Therapy, and
Existential-Humanistic Therapy
The approaches to therapy we will look at in this chapter are called humanistic therapies. They include client-centered therapy, Gestalt therapy, transactional analysis (or TA), cognitive therapy, and existential (or existential-humanistic) psychotherapy. These approaches share the view that an effective therapist must be able to become conscious of the world as it is for the client. Doing this requires the therapist to have a heightened sensitivity to others, feel a fundamental measure of respect for them, and ideally be able to adjust to their very individual needs and concerns. All of the therapies we will examine in this chapter place priority on the client's subjective feelings and experiences.
CLIENT-CENTERED THERAPY
For people who have not developed a sense of
personal worth; who are in need of
acceptance, human warmth, and gentle
encouragement; and who have the
initiative to proceed both in therapy
and outside of therapy without
explicit direction from the therapist.
The development of client-centered, or nondirective, therapy has largely been the work of Carl Rogers (1902-1987). His clinical experience as a child psychologist and his later work in training students in therapy led him to believe that people frequently come to have personal problems as a result of the conditional love of their parents. To receive love and approval from their parents, children must satisfy certain conditions of worth the parents lay down. If the children do not live up to the parents' demands, they are punished by the withdrawal of the parents' affection—a far more serious and emotionally scarring punishment than a physical spanking. Raised in this way, people later in life will tend to link their self-worth to internalized parental standards. Rogers observed that the more the love expressed by parents is conditional in this sense, the more it is likely that a person will experience emotional difficulties later on.