What is it about?
This article explores the relevance of Carl Rogers’ person-centered approach (PCA) to rehabilitation counseling. His major theoretical exposition concerning the primacy of the client’s actualizing tendency and the six ‘core conditions’ of the counselor-client relationship deserves greater recognition in vocational rehabilitation. The most widely known and researched ‘core conditions’ focus upon the proverbial triad: congruence (genuineness), unconditional positive regard (acceptance) and empathy. How rehabilitation counselors may profitably utilize all six ‘core conditions’ will be discussed with emphasis placed on recent person-centered perspectives that have refined Rogers’ original theory, and that are important to rehabilitation counseling. Evidenced-based research concerning the impact of PCA oriented rehabilitation counseling is lacking. It is argued that the efficacy of PCA can be extrapolated from meta-analyses in other fields of psychotherapy and education. Therefore, it is recommended that rehabilitation counselors apply, and researchers evaluate, PCA in rehabilitation service delivery.
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Why is it important?
Shows that person-centered approach is relevant to rehabilitation services often dominated medical and directive therapies.
Perspectives
Person-centered approach (PCA) promotes clients as co-managers in the planning, implementation and evaluation of their rehabilitation program. The client’s capacity for self-healing and self-righting generates constructive change: clients are active agents, and counselors often act as support systems rather than expert guides or interventionists. While evidence-based rehabilitation research has not always identified the counselor-client relationship as a key variable, PCA has received strong support from evidence-based research in other fields of counseling and education.
Dr Ross Crisp
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Person-Centred Rehabilitation Counselling: Revisiting the Legacy of Carl Rogers, Australian Journal of Rehabilitation Counselling, June 2011, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1375/jrc.17.1.26.
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