Talk:Person-centered therapy

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2019 and 16 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): G galavizchavez.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 06:26, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Improvement Suggestions
Under the Core conditions section no reference has been added and could use more information on the subject. Has anyone else found a source that would help back up the information already provided and expand on it some. Hoveyk (talk) 03:14, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

The first reference leads to a University of Maryland Login page, this link needs fixing or or the citation needs changing Its not helpful as it is,

whether or not rogers used the term PCT or Person Centered Psychotherapy is neither here nor there, if you search for them, they will lead to this page. as a whole, the page is adequate, main issue is with citations and references, could be improved, as could we all...

Yinmaru (talk) 13:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I have an interest in slightly restructuring the person centered pyschotherapy page.

Rogers never used the term person centered pyschotherapy. He used the terms client centered therapy and then switched to the person centered approach.

My thought was to change the name of the page to the person centered approach, include a sentence that indicates that other people call it person centered psychotherapy

Any thoughts, anyone?

peace, Seth Sethie 04:19, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


 * If he indeed called it Client centered therapy, we can move and amend the article accordingly. --DanielCD 02:55, 8 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Is the "self-concept" what my teacher calls the "phenomenal self"? Can someone research that and edit the article accordingly? I'll head over to google to finish brushing up for my test, just pointing out a term I don't see in the article. Kuronue 15:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)


 * There hasn't been a lot of movement on this for sometime and I have some spare time to devote to this project, I am just completing a Diploma in Person Centred (Rogerian) Psychotherapy at The University of Warwick and I would like to invite all editors to make suggestions about what needs to be worked on and give that a priority. Cheers. Movellon 21:58, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Rogers' book on the subject is called Client-Centered Therapy. Most of the article discusses it that way. Most WP links that reflect the free will of editors without agendas are via Client-Centered Therapy. What is the rationale for calling it something else? What does the APsychA Dictionary say? Other similarly authoritative sources? DCDuring 20:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite
I believe that this article needs a rewrite still. In my view it is unclear, lacking in references, incomplete, and fails to identify the position that Rogers has in the history of modern psychology.

The key to Rogers approach was that it started that the client was the the only possible expert on themselves. It is an absolutely holistic approach (as opposed to the differential diagnostic, pathological approach of the medical model that has been the orthodoxy since the beginnings of modern psychology). While it is true that his focus is on growth, this an attribute not a key constituent. The actual term used is "self-actualisation" and this word forms the cornerstone of his philosophy, now fully vindicated with over 50 years of research and practice. It is not growth but development that Rogers believed was possible though the "self-actualisation" drive inherent in all organisms. The concept was to place the person/(client) at the centre of their own healing/development process. He believed that the key was to provide a totally supportive environment and to be led by the person concerned in therapeutic intervention rarher than the therapist as expert.

Carl Rogers is a giant in modern psychology, and his position in it is not publicly recognised. He formulated the opposing pole to psychiatric, medical based psychologies.

While I believe that I can readily correct the overall structure and understanding of the subject I would ask for others to fill in detail on practice, evolution etc. LookingGlass (talk) 14:32, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Gosh this is bad.. I will attempt this after finishing with the existential one --The.Filsouf (talk) 20:07, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Rogers is so important! Why such a useless page? I say blank it.--John Bessa (talk) 01:37, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Suggested Listening
If you want to write about Rogers, I think it helps to get the "flavor" of his approach. Here are some talks that have been recently released. I have been reading Rogers for years, but I think I finally got the complete picture with the talk labeled Kirkegaard. He based his theory on philosophy (like so many others) but applied it with the familiarity of the farmer down the road.--John Bessa (talk) 01:42, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Please add redirect
please add a redirect so that a search for Rogerian Therapy brings people to this article. I don't know how to create redirects.--96.18.241.190 (talk) 22:50, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 02:40, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Note to others
Please let me know if there’s any feedback on this - This first contribution is to gently dip my toe into the water, before undertaking a more complete update of the article in the near future - something that is desperately needed (e.g. a decent coverage of person-centred theory inc the self, psychopathology, evidence, and common criticisms).

It is great that there is an article about PCT, and perhaps the original author had no time to complete it - thanks though, whoever you are. But it is high time someone built on the original contribution. As already noted in this forum, the current article reads a like a brief, passing, description in a book that is mainly about other stuff, and was written by a non-specialist. There is some good stuff in it but also a number of common misunderstandings are recycled, the coverage is extremely shallow, and there are large gaps in the picture. It just does not paint the picture (yet). There is a lot more that needs to be said if the reader is to get a decent (minimal) understanding of the subtleties, radical nature, and wide impact of the person-centred theory and therapy. It really is a story worth telling. The other major schools of therapy (CBT and psychodynamic) each have much better, more comprehensive, more useful articles, so let’s bring the PCT article into line with them.

I have described more clearly the key defining features of PCT, and expanded the coverage of its philosophical origins and influences.

We need a proper coverage of CR’s 19 propositions. I would like to merge the section on the 3 Core Conditions into the overall coverage of the 6 n and s conditions, because they are mostly of significance beyond PCT, which requires all 6. They were revolutionary to other modalities, but are not the most radical aspects / implications of the theory, and certainly don’t describe it. I’m not even sure if Rogers ever used the term ‘core conditions’ - can anyone help answer that Q?

I can’t see why there is a section called ‘processes’ as this is not a term of much validity to a an approach based on attitudes instead of treatments. I would like to go into sufficient detail on how PCT works - CR’s ‘process conception of therapy’, stages of Process and the fully functioning P.

Another Q I would like help with is the origin of the term ‘counselling’. Rogers apparently chose this term because in the early days psychologists were not permitted to practice psycotherapy(!) - only psychiatrists were - so as a mere scientist he was not allowed to use the term psychotherapy. Can anyone provide a source / reference for this?.

I’m keen to crack on with this, so please let me know soon if you have any suggestions or concerns.

MothyHarvard (talk) 16:26, 23 May 2017 (UTC)


 * , you didn't dip your toe in. You took a gigantic cannonball into the pool and splashed water everywhere. I have reverted your contributions because they are simply too detailed, overly verbose, and incredibly undersourced. One five-paragraph section had only a single reference! For example, you took the six-sentence list of conditions and turned it into a 2000+ word research paper. Wikipedia is about summarizing things. Yes, this article could be expanded. No, it does not need a total rewrite. I asked you this before when I lifted your block, but please discuss your changes before you go bloating the article with unnecessary levels of detail. Primefac (talk) 20:51, 27 May 2017 (UTC)


 * after having looked at, ill agree w/ Primefac(and every point raised above)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:53, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Cursory review of recent contributions
I came here to review this article's recent history after I noticed User:Primefac's requesting more feedback on this article. I looked at User:MothyHarvard's recent contributions to this article (contributions which were reverted) as well as the article on actualizing tendency that User:MothyHarvard recently created.

I don't have time now to engage in a detailed critique, but to begin I will note that I sense a definite point of view (POV) in these contributions: They seem to me to be written from the POV of a person-centered therapy insider or enthusiast. There's nothing wrong with being an insider or enthusiast—indeed, I agree that there's a lot to like about person-centered therapy—but per Wikipedia guidelines, articles should not be written with such an enthusiastic POV.

The article on actualizing tendency includes no criticisms of its subject, although important criticisms exist. I am aware of at least two important publications criticizing aspects of Rogers' theory of the actualizing tendency:



Meanwhile, User:MothyHarvard's recent contributions to this article (contributions which were reverted) includes criticisms of person-centered therapy, but deflects the criticisms by portraying them as mere "misunderstandings" by therapists of other orientations who, it is claimed, find "the radical nature of the approach" to be "threatening". Here, again, I sense the POV of an insider or enthusiast. The critical conversation about person-centered therapy needs to be presented without trying to deflect it as a "misunderstanding", and a wider range of critical sources should be cited, for example:


 * This book is free on Google Books and contains some important criticisms from around 1990.
 * This book is free on Google Books and contains some important criticisms from around 1990.
 * This book is free on Google Books and contains some important criticisms from around 1990.
 * This book is free on Google Books and contains some important criticisms from around 1990.
 * This book is free on Google Books and contains some important criticisms from around 1990.
 * This book is free on Google Books and contains some important criticisms from around 1990.
 * This book is free on Google Books and contains some important criticisms from around 1990.
 * This book is free on Google Books and contains some important criticisms from around 1990.
 * This book is free on Google Books and contains some important criticisms from around 1990.
 * This book is free on Google Books and contains some important criticisms from around 1990.
 * This book is free on Google Books and contains some important criticisms from around 1990.
 * This book is free on Google Books and contains some important criticisms from around 1990.

I see that you are a new Wikipedian, so welcome to Wikipedia! I appreciate the effort that you have put into your contributions, and some elements of them may have a place in future versions of the article. This is all that I have time to say for now. If you have not already read them, I recommend that you read WP:Core content policies (especially on neutral point of view) and WP:Writing better articles, and that you take a look at WP:Featured articles for examples of the style and tone that we are trying to achieve when writing for Wikipedia. Biogeographist (talk) 05:09, 28 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Firstly, I'm grateful for the feedback, thanks! But I can't make the helpful changes you suggest because the whole article has just been removed, as if by magic.   If it is resurrected soon I will be able to improve it.  If not I will just have to take this sad tale to the world.  I can include references for the 5 paras that currently lack them.  It is important to give the Criticisms a decent coverage because they are in truth normally based on misunderstandings (is that unsurprising?).  I can review the additional references you suggest when the article is restored.  I won't rebuild the whole thing from scratch, as there is a horrible sense of 'you can't join our gang' with this venture.  Anyway, there are alternatives to WP.
 * MothyHarvard (talk) 08:40, 28 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Your claim that "there is a horrible sense of 'you can't join our gang' with this venture" is clearly contradicted by the article you created on actualizing tendency, which stands largely as you wrote it. So the issue here is not that "you can't join our gang"; the issue is that when another editor objects to your edits on Wikipedia, you have to go to the article's talk page and discuss the rationale for your edits, as explained in WP:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle and WP:Consensus, and reach consensus.


 * All edits to Wikipedia are permanently accessible in the article's history (see the "View history" tab). One way to continue working on your proposed changes is to go to your recent contributions to this article, click on the "Edit" tab, select all and copy the content, then paste the content into your sandbox (or into some other subpage of your user page) and invite others to review and edit the version in your sandbox until consensus has been reached that it is acceptable to replace the current article in main space. Alternatively, you could abandon your proposed rewrite and make less radical changes to the existing article, only the changes that you consider to be the highest priority.


 * I disagree with your claim that criticisms of person-centered therapy are "normally based on misunderstandings"; there are many criticisms that are not based on misunderstandings (see, e.g., the references that I provided here in my last comment), so the word "normally" is not appropriate, or at best requires much more evidence than you have provided. Biogeographist (talk) 13:23, 28 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I would also like to comment on your concluding remark: "Anyway, there are alternatives to WP." This sentence could be interpreted in various ways, but the impression that it gives me is of someone who would like to use Wikipedia to push a point of view (and who will go elsewhere to push that point of view if his or her effort on Wikipedia proves unsuccessful). In contrast, some of us edit Wikipedia not because we want to push our own point of view but because we admire Wikipedia and we want to improve Wikipedia based on Wikipedia's evolving principles, policies, and guidelines. Our attitude is not "Accept this article as I wrote it or I will publish it elsewhere!" but "How can we work together to improve this article based on the principles of Wikipedia?" As scholar Christian Vandendorpe wrote in the journal Scholarly and Research Communication:
 * "These "epistemic communities" (Conein & Delsalle, 2005) are glued together by the common goal of making the best possible product. As noted by various observers, "the community is sustained not necessarily through strong ties among the members but rather by the ties between members and the community" (Jemielniak, 2014, p. 85). The reward for developing the encyclopedia is the conviction of contributing to a valuable and frequently consulted project, as well as the status or reputation a good contributor will gain in the Wikipedia community through their actions. [...] Wikipedia encourages contributors to edit articles, and to reach consensus by engaging in discussion on the "talk page" in case of a disagreement. The process is typically Hegelian in nature: make an edit, then wait for the next change, and if there is opposition, seek a compromise. A variant of this policy is the BOLD, revert, discuss cycle: bold editing is openly encouraged in the policies, as it leads to discussion, which helps make articles better. This collaborative culture, which is unique to Wikipedia, makes the community a living organism, growing continuously, adapting to its environment and answering its critics."


 * Biogeographist (talk) 15:02, 28 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I love the Vandendorpe quote! Thank you for sharing that Biogeographist.  - Mark D Worthen PsyD   (talk)  04:54, 29 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, one sometimes encounters Wikipedians who convey a 'you can't join our gang (unless you bow down and kiss our feet)' mentality toward newcomers. On one occasion I stopped editing for three months in retaliation for being treated in a condescending manner. I really showed 'em! ... Not really. I realized that they, well, really just one guy, were happily editing away while I was sulking. During my prolonged pout, I went to the excellent Wikipedia help article, Please do not bite the newcomers, looking for ammunition to use in my planned assault on the fellow who wounded my pride, and I stumbled across this section: What to do if you feel you have "bitten" or have been bitten. I am glad I did because these suggestions helped me a lot:


 * Choose to learn from the incident.
 * Find something of value in the experience. Extract the wisdom that may have been unintentionally veiled.
 * Be reasonable. Explain why you were offended, but learn to recognize when the message cannot be received. The recipient may be unable or unwilling to accept fault, and it may be better to move on to other things than to dwell on the bite.
 * Move on from it!


 * When I first read Primefac's feedback to you, e.g., "you didn't dip your toe in. You took a gigantic cannonball into the pool and splashed water everywhere", I thought it was a little harsh (although a humorous metaphor). However, I went back and looked at your talk page and it seems to me that Primefac and others did try to reach out to you, offer suggestions such as helpful articles for you to read, and gave you specific feedback about the problems with your recent edits. Thus, I can understand why Primefac used more direct language in his feedback to you here.


 * You mentioned having ADHD. Obviously I don't know this for sure (because I do not know you personally), but having a bit of the malady myself I know that I have to really, really, really watch out for being impulsive. It feels so right at the time! ... But looking back I realize that I often forge ahead without full awareness of what I'm doing, and without 'doing my homework first'. What I'm sharing about myself here might not be relevant for you, or it might be. "Take what you can use and leave the rest behind" as they say in the 12-Step programs. ;o)  - Mark D Worthen PsyD   (talk)  05:23, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

I might be happy to build on where I left off, based on the feedback received so far, but will not make any further contributions if they are to be wiped away en masse. It is not something that can be summarised in a few paragraphs. (See the original article!). It is important to note that I am writing the article as a specialist in PCT, so I actually have a sufficient level of knowledge to be able to provide a reasonably effective description and to properly address many of the common criticisms of the approach. Such criticisms have typically arisen from the ignorance of those that never actually properly understood the theory, or those who have studied it in passing, along with many other types of therapy. If the term 'Misundertandings' is not normally used in a Criticisms section I am happy to remove it, but I should still try to address the misunderstandings, either in that section, or in those above. I will do nothing more until I feel free to move forward. MothyHarvard (talk) 09:12, 9 June 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what would would cause you to "feel free to move forward", but regardless of what you may feel, you are currently free to move forward. You can copy your last version of the article to a page in your user space, as I described above, and edit it to address the issues mentioned above by User:Primefac, User:Ozzie10aaaa, me, and User:Markworthen, and then request that other editors review the copy in your user space. You can request a review on this talk page, and at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Psychology, and at WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests, and probably other places too. This is what it says at : "So, make a personal copy as a subpage of your user page. Just start a new page at Special:MyPage/Article name (it can be renamed in the URL address to start a page with a different article name), and copy and paste the wiki-source in there. Then you can carry on improving the article at your own pace! If you like, drop a note on the appropriate talk page to let people know what you are doing." Biogeographist (talk) 13:42, 9 June 2017 (UTC)


 * I have one other response to your statement that you are "writing the article as a specialist in PCT". In the brand-name therapies there is a fine line (or a slippery slope?) between being an impartial specialist (who is concerned with discovering and doing what works, regardless of what it is called) and a sectarian (who is concerned with attachment to a doctrine). I would advise any editor of articles on the brand-name therapies to be careful to be the former and not the latter. Here are some relevant quotes that come to mind:
 * "Psychotherapy research is conducted and evaluated within a club, a mutual admiration society in which members are careful not to disparage others' results or enforce standards that they themselves might want relaxed when it comes to publishing their own research. There are rivalries between tribes like psychodynamic therapy and cognitive behavior therapy, but suppression of criticism within the tribes and in strenuous efforts to create the appearance that members of the tribes only do what works."


 * "If you practice CCT [client-centered therapy] today, you can choose whether to advocate a scientifically supported, psychology-based and empirically founded, developing concept or a classic, unchangeable, highly ideological system that persistently ignores empirical evidence and is developing into a sect. [...] From a scientific point of view, you should give up numerous Rogerian concepts, such as: actualizing tendency, non-directivity, CCT as a relationship offer, homogeneity myth, rejection of diagnosis, rejection of therapist expert status, rejection of client model forming, the assumption that basic attitudes of therapists alone can bring about constructive changes in clients. But if you stick to all these concepts, you must be prepared to hear from others that: you are disregarding empirical evidence; you are ignoring theory-forming in psychology; you can no longer claim to represent a psychological, scientific form of therapy. If you hold fast to theoretically obsolete, empirically falsified assumptions, you are clearly outside the scope of science, because doubting, searching for empirical evidence and further development are the core elements of scientific research. If you no longer allow change to happen, you are building a Chinese Wall against progress. And then you will find yourself in the realm of religion, trapped in a sect. What a sect tries to do is: to preserve a system to the largest possible extent, to shut it off from all change; to keep the teachings as pure as possible and to defend them; to brand any deviation as "false", "impure" and "inadequate"; to cherish the founder's writings; to subject the founder's writings to an exegesis and debate about what he may have meant by certain statements; to persistently ignore all alternatives and confuting data; to define the system as optimal, perfect and not in need of revision, thus ignoring substantial counter-evidence. In my opinion, some concepts of CCT meet fully this definition of a "sect". Of course, you can form a sect and believe all that; but then, I think, you can no longer claim with impunity that what you are doing is based on science, because that is sheer nonsense. And a systematic deception. And: Then the focus is no longer on helping the clients as effectively as possible; the client has degenerated into a marginal figure. Thus the system is by no means client-centered; it is highly ideology-centered. You no longer reflect on how you can help the client or what the client wants (certainly not ideology!), but you reflect on what Rogers thought."


 * The importance of avoiding sectarianism (per WP:NPOV) should be kept in mind when editing this article or any other article on a brand-name therapy. Biogeographist (talk) 14:39, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Can anyone advise how I can copy and paste the article into my user page? Obviously I'm not going to want to redo 50+ references. I am glad that the cult/sect/quasi-religion thing has come up, because that is the motivation behind preparing this article. For some reason too many in the PCT crowd have forgotten to maintain links to the rest of science, which is certainly not what Rogers wanted. Too many non-pscyhologists have entered the field, and some of these have chosen to take a mystical, non-biological take on life's blindingly obvious tendency to actualize itself (i.e. grow, heal, adapt, seek to flourish). This has only marginalized PCT, and this problem is amply illustrated by the continued ignorance, misinformation, fear and loathing that are directed at it. The ideas in your quote above illustrate very well why it is not enough to just list the Criticisms, because there is so much misunderstanding even from people who regard themselves as knowledgeable about therapy. People write about PCT without understanding anything about it! Such authors should really be trying to address why such a radical approach is equally effective as the other main ones! For example the delicate state of dynamic balance between chaos and rigidity that arises from effective neural integration arising due to the ongoing processes of emergent self-organization, as described so well by Dan Siegel, looks an awful lot like Rogers' concept of self-actualization. And non-directivity has been shown many times to be valued by clients. Its just that the dialogues of the scientists and the PCT crowd have parted ways. Rogerian terms have fallen from use in science, but his concepts have not, and arguably are being vindicated more and more as time passes. So the irony is that the cult reputation gains ground whilst PCT is finally rediscovering science, and mainstream science rediscovers Rogerian concepts. This prejudice is now so entrenched that it even appears to be difficult to produce a wikipedia article on the topic! There are thousands of totally inadequate WP articles, yet if I try to publish a pretty decent one one PCT it becomes a crime against the wiki-way. So obviously the sooner that we can actually educate people (both within and beyond PCT) the better. I am trying to issue an article that the WP community can take forward, not shy away from, as is currently the case with the original. We will get there much more quickly if people can work from a decent article, so we must get past this rather pitiful one that keeps reappearing. Basically the longer my article is rejected, the longer PCT will retain its cult status. MothyHarvard (talk) 09:41, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. Here are some instructions on how to copy and paste the article into a new page in your user space. Read all the instructions through once before following them. Good luck. Biogeographist (talk) 23:07, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
 * 1) Click on this link: Special:Permalink/782567593, which is the last article version that you edited. If there is an earlier article version that you would like to use instead, click on this link instead:, then click on the date of the version that you would like to use.
 * 2) In the page that appears, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the page.
 * 3) In the page that appears, right-click (or control-click on a Mac) in the field with the article content and choose "Select All" from the contextual menu.
 * 4) Right-click (or control-click) again and choose "Copy" from the contextual menu.
 * 5) Come back here and click on this link: Special:MyPage/Person-centered therapy.
 * 6) In the page that appears, click on "Start the User:MothyHarvard/Person-centered therapy page".
 * 7) In the page that appears, right-click (or control-click on a Mac) in the large blank field and choose "Paste" from the contextual menu.
 * 8) Continue editing and when you are done, click on "Save changes".


 * I should also note that, while overall I am glad that you are motivated to edit this article, there are a few statements in your previous comment that I consider to be incorrect or incomplete, but I will skip over them in silence for now since the relevant issues are quite complex, and we can address those issues during the editing of the article if necessary. Biogeographist (talk) 02:06, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Biogeographist - the article is now safely copied across. Please don't be too silent for too long about any reservations you might have. Obviously the sooner aired the sooner addressed. What did you have in mind? Another Q, do you know if there is a central listing of WP Categories? I note that the article has become categorized under psychology, which is fine, although it should perhaps be categorised in other ways too. This is especially pertinent given our discussion about just how little direct connection (sadly) there currently is between psychology and therapy. I'm also not entirely sure what you meant by 'brand-name' therapies. Are we talking about orientations? I can't speak for other orientations but the PCET world is arguably about as non-branded as you could imagine. I would suggest that there are as many PCETs as there are PCET practitioners, not just because of the general lack of manualized approaches and techniques as such, but because the relational qualities of the individual therapist are so central.

Hi Primefac, the last time I updated the article it was in a series of partial edits over a week or so. As we now have a much fuller draft article we are well past the point of building incrementally on the original article. If I incorporate the feedback suggested above will you allow the article to be issued so that we can see what the wider world thinks? In particular I would want feedback from other specialists, and later from non-specialists. (I had just announced the presence of an updated article for review when it was pulled. Luckily I had also sent them a copy of the original, to demonstrate how much progress had been made.  If I had not done that, they would have seen the original article and thought it was my work.  Clearly that could have made me look a bit foolish.  Lucky escape, I think.) MothyHarvard (talk) 12:43, 13 June 2017 (UTC)


 * If you would like people outside of Wikipedia to review your draft, you can send them the URL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MothyHarvard/Person-centered_therapy which is the URL for User:MothyHarvard/Person-centered therapy. The next step would be to ask people to review and edit User:MothyHarvard/Person-centered therapy, and to discuss the article at the talk page User talk:MothyHarvard/Person-centered therapy. Apart from any content changes, I can see by skimming the text that there are some stylistic changes that need to be made to conform with the Wikipedia Manual of Style: for example, headings are currently in title case but should be in sentence case. I could do some of the stylistic changes very soon if nobody else does them first, but I will not be able to review the content in depth until next week.


 * To alert individual editors, you should link their names, either like  (which gives User:Primefac) or like   (which gives ).


 * To see what I mean by brand-name therapy, you can search on Google Scholar for the query, which gives very comprehensive results but many irrelevant references, or for the query  , which gives limited results but a lower ratio of irrelevant references. Here's a quotation from an article that has perhaps become something of a classic, discussing some problems with RCTs (randomized controlled trials) of brand-name therapies: "Furthermore, the current system makes psychology vulnerable to any treatment innovator or savvy charlatan who puts a novel method through a single randomized controlled trial with a no-treatment comparison. Hypothetically, a doctor could ask clients with driving phobias to wear a large purple hat while applying relaxation and cognitive coping skills to in vivo practice. The practitioner places a band of magnets in the purple hats, claiming that particular algorithms for positioning the magnets are determined by age, sex, and personality structure of the client. When properly placed, so the practitioner claims, the magnets reorient energy fields, accelerate information processing, improve interhemispheric coherence, and eliminate phobic avoidance. The inventor might call his method "purple hat therapy" (PHT) or "electro Magnetic Desensitization and Remobilization" (eMDR), conduct a single RCT against no treatment, and apply for listing as an EST. [...] The solution to this troublesome situation is, of course, for psychology to get out of the business of listing proprietary, trademarked therapies. Instead, psychology needs to return to the core issues facing those concerned with the development of effective therapies—the identification of ESPs. Others have provided similar direction. G. C. Davison and Lazarus (1995) addressed the need for psychologists "to apply general principles (a goal of science) to individual cases," (p. 95). D. A. Shapiro (1995) suggested, "The central goal of psychotherapy research is to achieve an understanding of the change mechanisms giving rise to clients' clinical improvement" (p. 1). G. C. Davison (1998) noted that "rather than focus on brand-name treatments, it is important... to underscore the psychological principles assumed to underlie their effectiveness" (p. 165). In a detailed analysis of these concerns, Borkovec and Castonguay (1998) observed, "The criteria for empirically supported treatments merely allow conclusions about whether treatments cause any change... Creating increasingly effective therapies through between-group designs is best done by controlled trials specifically aimed at basic questions about the nature of psychological problems and the nature of therapeutic change mechanisms" (p. 136)."


 * Above you referred to "life's blindingly obvious tendency to actualize itself" but Rogers' conception of the actualizing tendency has been criticized by notable psychologists, as I mentioned above, and the fact that you consider "blindingly obvious" what notable psychologists consider debatable suggests that it may be you who is "blinded" on this point! Above you said that "non-directivity has been shown many times to be valued by clients"; this should say "valued by some clients", since how valuable non-directivity will be depends on the client's needs and other factors, a point that is considered in the systematic treatment selection model of Larry E. Beutler and colleagues, not to mention other models. Michael Basseches and Michael Mascolo would say that the appropriateness (or not) of non-directivity depends on the client's general developmental goals; see [//books.google.com/books?id=tS9MLQU0c14C&pg=PA24 Figure 2.4: A continuum of developmental outcomes], in their book: Biogeographist (talk) 16:24, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi Biogeographist, thanks for letting me know your thoughts. I think your latest note illustrates my concerns well. When it finally gets written the Criticisms section will need to describe the main criticisms in detail. It is not enough to say 'and someone said something bad about it' - I will try set out who said what in the first place. It is important to acknowledge that PCET is infamously misunderstood. The concept of the actualizing tendency is pretty clear cut, but the idea that the patient is a passive, clueless and helpless participant, needing to be fixed by someone else, like a broken machine, is of course pretty much universal. Anything else must surely be belief in magic! (better not mention spontaneous remission and placebo effects then...). Read your Rogers and it is very clear what he is talking about (I used quotes from his descriptions), although it might have been better if he had simply talked about life's capacity for growth and recovery etc. And of course if the critic is from another school of thought much care is needed: there are non-climatologists who 'criticize' global warming... To invent a term, even for something so obvious, can often precipitate irrational unquestioning acceptance of it, or equally an irrational unquestioning denial of it. As I pointed out above, my aim is to address both these ills. We must also be very wary of judging a discipline through the eyes (frame of reference) of another discipline. To do so would surely only imply an unhelpful combination of ignorance and arrogance. Who on earth would choose to learn the guitar from a pianist? There's no doubt that there is a solid scientific common ground somewhere, which of course was another of Rogers' great themes: 'the facts are always friendly' and, as pointed out earlier, the post-Rogers science is something I'm very interested in. In fact I chose to study PCET largely because of how well it reflected my understanding of how people work, gained in rich and varied ways over 5 decades. It seemed to me that if disagreement over the importance in therapy of organismic development and non-judgmental acceptance are the main problems with PCET, it clearly has far fewer big issues than the other main orientations! I really don't come across much science that seems at odds with his model, which he clearly stated was speculative, incomplete and awaiting much further research. Someone just needs to reunite the theory with the latest research. Then we can ditch the new-age angle AND ditch the prejudice. I will not be using the term 'brand-name' treatment because I haven't come across it, but also because 'treatment' is not what PCET does, as I'm sure you've heard. The word can only really be applied within the medical model, to diagnosed 'illnesses', which imply a measurable deficit in health. It has very little relevance in a growth model in which in most client cases have no need for a diagnosis, which would anyway be more likely to be wrong than helpful- another of Rogers' ideas that Dan Siegel and others have picked up on. Anyway, I'll be very happy to work with you on 'actualizing' this article, and many thanks for your active interest! MothyHarvard (talk) 16:31, 19 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the response. I don't agree with your statement that "the idea that the patient is a passive, clueless and helpless participant, needing to be fixed by someone else, like a broken machine, is of course pretty much universal". It is not universal at all. Carl Rogers played an important role in the past in helping to reduce the popularity of this idea, but the idea was already under attack long before Rogers thanks to thinkers such as John Dewey (e.g., Dewey's Democracy and Education, 1916). Here's Godfrey Barrett-Lennard's assessment of the situation in 1998 (and I would guess it has only improved in the intervening 20 years): "Medical thought and practice includes an increasingly vigorous 'holistic' wing that emphasizes that working of the bodymind whole, and the close-knit interrelation and recursive influence of the many levels of activity and subsystems within this whole. Such change is accompanied by a broader emphasis on relationship and communication in medical practice, and a shift in attitude toward patient-consumers taking increasing responsibility for their own health care. Authoritarian styles are 'out'; even the idea of benevolent authority does not sit well. The patient–doctor encounter is more often a genuine 'consultation', in which the physician is expert advisor and resource person and the 'patient' a vital informant desiring to comprehend what is wrong and directly contribute to treatment decisions. These and related shifts have a variety of causes but their stronger expressions have links with Rogerian thought and contributions, and some innovations reflect direct influence."


 * It may be true, as you said, that Rogers' "concept of the actualizing tendency is pretty clear cut", but that does not mean that it is a flawless concept. (By the way, even the most radical of radical behaviorists assume, based on behavioral research, that people can learn. They do not need the idea of an actualizing tendency to assume that people are able to learn.)


 * Like you, I don't have much use for the word "treatment"; the phrase that I used was "brand-name therapies", not "brand-name treatments" (the latter phrase was in a quotation of Gerald Davison). I can't determine from your response whether or not you looked up the phrase on Google Scholar as I suggested—I would guess not, since you say you "haven't come across" the term. If you had looked it up, you would see that the many researchers who use the phrase are talking about an important issue in psychotherapy research that should not be ignored, whatever one chooses to call it: the need to understand at a very fine-grained level what works and why, and not to hide behind a "brand-name" therapy label, even one that is classified as "evidence-based" thanks to some RCTs; as Arnold Lazarus said in 1989: "Continued use of nebulous labels seriously hinders our efforts to achieve open enquiry, informed pluralism and intellectual relativism. In the final analysis, unless therapists stop hiding behind labels, and are able and willing to state precisely what they do, and don't do, to and with their clients at specific choice points... psychotherapy will continue to be guided by faith rather than fact."


 * Even if most clients "have no need for a diagnosis" as you say, most will need some kind of evolving case formulation, and how therapists use formulations is, in my view, one of the most interesting questions in psychotherapy research.


 * You said: "Someone just needs to reunite the theory with the latest research." In fact, this has already been done: I have cited some examples above. Of course, those who have reunited the theory with more recent research have simultaneously changed the theory. This is called psychotherapy integration (as in, e.g., the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration). Biogeographist (talk) 13:12, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Recent edit, 3 January 2019
I reverted this edit by because there are too many errors of English grammar and orthography, and the cited page numbers don't match the source. Here are some examples of such errors: The method of client-centered therapy is up to changes is an incomprehensible grammatical construction. The phrase Rogers electrically recorded sessions is strangely ambiguous: I know what this is trying to say because I know what Rogers did, but those who don't know what Rogers did would have no idea whether Rogers was using an electroencephalograph, seismometer, accelerometer, fluoroscope, video camera, or something else. Furthermore, there are problems with the content: This is not the place to explain Thomas Gordon's ideas on leadership. And the first sentence—The term "Client" was chosen by Rogers and his peers, to emphasize that they want him (the client) to take responsibility [etc.]—but (leaving aside the strange capitalization of the word "Client") "taking responsibility" is only one aspect of the term "client-centered" or "person-centered"; as Rogers said in On Becoming a Person (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961, p. 87): "In various writings and researches that have been published regarding client-centered therapy there has been a stress upon the acceptance of self as one of the directions and outcomes of therapy. ... The client not only accepts himself—a phrase which may carry the connotation of a grudging and reluctant acceptance of the inevitable—he actually comes to like himself." There are also other aspects of the term; the point is that "taking responsibility" is not the only aspect of the term, and not the only reason why the term was chosen. Biogeographist (talk) 15:27, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Simplicity certainly; a bit too simple, perhaps?
It's great to see such an extensive discussion of this article. I feel it is far too simplistic to be of the standard that I expect of Wikipedia. Sadly, of course, it takes many years for some articles to be updated. My particular concern is over the definition of the core conditions. They are the kind that you might find in the work of a 15/16yr old school pupil rather than a more informed practitioner writing for the lay-person. For example, the definition of congruence - "Congruence: the willingness to transparently relate to clients without hiding behind a professional or personal facade." is confusing congruence, as a condition of human development, with a characteristic of the therapist's presence. It says nothing about the alignment of ideal and real self, which is key to achieving it. Ursus-deningeri2 (talk) 11:29, 18 December 2020 (UTC)