VI. The Person-Centered Approach After Rogers (1987–present)

The founders of any therapeutic system exert an enormous, and often inordinate, influence on the way the therapy is conceived and practiced, often far beyond its inception. Freud (psychoanalysis), Adler (individual psychology), Perls (gestalt therapy), Ellis (rational emotive behavior therapy), and Rogers were creative and charismatic founders who drew many adherents to them who then extended outward the influence of their systems. Adherents tend to practice the therapy in a manner very similar to the founder and defend the originator’s views as unshakeable truths to be preserved. Ironically, this is so despite the founders’ often-stated expectation and hope that their model would continue to develop.

Rogers believed and hoped the person-centered approach would continue to evolve. In fact, he often expressed concern that client-centered therapy would become dogmatic and stifled in its development. Although Rogers’ thinking did evolve, it is also true that the way he practiced therapy remained fairly constant until he died. Many client-centered therapists, especially the more traditional practitioners, continue to practice much as Rogers did or in even more conservative ways. However, Rogers was always receptive to and encouraging of innovative ideas that would advance theory and practice. In 1986, a year before his death, Rogers commented: “I hope . . . we’re always on the move, to a new theory . . . to new areas of dealing with situations, new ways of being with persons. I hope that we’re always a part of the ‘growing edge’” (Cornelius-White & Cornelius-White, 2005, p. 396). Others, too, believed that client-centered therapy could be modified for the better and proposed newer ideas and varied forms of practice.

Varieties of person-centered therapy

As will be noted in the forthcoming sections, many advances in the theory and practice were articulated during Rogers’s lifetime. While Rogers encouraged such advances, he rarely supported them overtly, nor did he change his own theory or model of practice based on the alternatives proposed by others. The history of the development of various therapeutic models also shows that changes in the founder’s model tend to occur slowly and gradually and take at least a few decades before being accepted as legitimate alternatives. This is the case with person-centered therapy. At this point, one can no longer say that there is only one form of person-centered therapy. Rather, myriad person-centered therapies now incorporate some of Rogers’s basis premises while rejecting or modifying others. In 2000 Margaret Warner wrote a paper entitled “Person-Centered Psychotherapy: One Nation, Many Tribes,” a designation that seems apropos. The major journal of person-centered therapy, founded in 2002 under the title Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies, reflects the current reality that a variety of person-centered therapeutic approaches with diverse conceptualizations in theory and practice now exist. Many of the more recent versions have resulted in more creative and sophisticated styles of practice designed to be more effective with a broader range of clients and problems. If one thing is certain, it is that person-centered therapies will continue to evolve in future years as more is learned about how therapists and clients might engage more optimally with each other.