Person Centred Therapy Quotes

What is shared in common is infinitely more significant than what apparently divides.

Behavior is basically the goal-directed attempt of the organism to satisfy its needs as experienced, in the field as perceived.

Part of the discipline of the person-centred approach is not to make assumptions about the client's appropriate process, but to follow the process laid out by the client.

In our hearts we know that with a different fate, we, too, could be in the ranks of the dispossessed, stripped of our identities and belonging nowhere. The refugee becomes a sinister symbol of what can quickly happen once personhood is denied and people are transformed into disposable units of contemptible impediments to the greed or power-mongering of others.

An openness to being changed by the client is required of the person-centred therapist. A person-centred therapist who is closed off from being changed implicitly denies the full humanity of the client.

In a world where we seem to be beset by a trend towards 'manualising treatment modalities' the person-centred approach stands and says NO, that is not the way forward.

Rogers believed that we have within ourselves enormous potential for self-understanding and for altering our self-concept and for our behaviour. He believed that this potential can be tapped if a climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided, which person-centred therapy aims to do

Over the years I have come to realize we just can't know how or when resolution will come ... As a dedicated follower, I have been privleged to witness and support the wisdom that emerges ... I expect to be surprised by what the next people will teach me as they pursue their unique path towards resolution and open to inhabiting their inherent health.

To be fully human is to be able to acknowledge both strengths and weaknesses and to be unafraid of being vulnerable in the meeting with another person.

In a counselling context, theory should be held lightly. It is always inadequate in that it reduces complexity to a series of simple statements.

We need to enter into the counselling relationship not as curious and objective observers, but as involved and active participants.

The commitment within the person-centred approach [is] to dismantling the structural distribution of power within society.

At moments of deep uncertainty, I find that I sometimes jump the tracks into taking control, and in those moments, if I can move back toward following, the process often finds its own feet again. All of this has gradually led me to believe that letting go of expectations about the outcome of therapy as much as possible gives the process the most room to show itself.

On reflection now, it seems to me she was already telling me what she needed most--a place to settle in proximity, safety, warmth and quiet because she had none of that as a child.

This was the unexpected ... unforeseeable resolution of the paradox ... her personal goodness was no longer the issue because it had been replaced by the sweetness of relationship.

The majority of research-related articles I read move automatically towards suggestions for doing something to the brain - finding new medications, applying techniques to train the brain, and other ways of treating the brain like an object that is separate from ourselves. In addition to this objectification, there is perhaps the greater danger that when we are viewing ourselves or another that way, we have already stepped away from being truly present, so the person being so scrutinized will not feel safe or have a felt sense of being heard, seen, or held. This includes our relationship with ourselves.

Psychotherapy is not a method of repairing problems or fostering personal happiness. That is psychotechnique. On the contrary ... it is fundamentally an ethical and a political task.

Dialogue is the non-indifference of the I towards the Thou ... dialogue is a primary, underlying condition of being human, of being a person, as is love.

The therapist seeking to offer a relationship at depth does not use the relationship as a means to treat, cure or change the client's problem. The clients problem is accepted and respected as a expression of their self-experience, but it does not define the person: the therapist remains oriented towards the whole person - not towards the client's specific symptoms or difficulties.

For me the very essence of the Person-Centred Approach is about individuality, which leads to a community of acceptance characterised by difference.

The challenge - which is also at the centre - is that what illuminates the process of letting go of certainty, control, planning, clear-cut goals, and so much more may feel settling even as it separates us from those we want to help. This letting go requires cultivation in the trust of the innate processes that support the movement towards healing, something that grows with time and experience, especially when compassion for this depth of challenge to our need for security is present.