Towards a person-centred cognitive behaviour therapy*

*A version of this paper was presented at the Third Multicultural Counselling Conference, OISE/UT, Toronto, June 2005.

Abstract

Person-centred therapy was developed by Carl Rogers [ Journal of Consulting Psychology 21, 97–103 (1957); On becoming a person, Boston: Houghton Mifflin (1961)] and focuses on the importance of the therapeutic relationship for effective therapy. Rogers identified three necessary and sufficient conditions that are related to a positive outcome in therapy. These are: acceptance of the client, accurate empathy and congruence on the therapist's part. The present paper considers the definitions of the three core conditions and examines ways in which interventions, developed by cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), can be informed by these conditions, as identified by Rogers and his followers. We argue that CBT, while using different interventions than those traditionally used by person-centred therapists, can be practiced as a highly empathic, person-centred form of therapy.

*A version of this paper was presented at the Third Multicultural Counselling Conference, OISE/UT, Toronto, June 2005.

Keywords:

• Carl Rogers
• client-centred therapy
• cognitive behaviour therapy

Notes

*A version of this paper was presented at the Third Multicultural Counselling Conference, OISE/UT, Toronto, June 2005.

Notes

¹ For ease of reading clients will be referred to as ‘he’ throughout the article.