Organismic Valuing Process

This process suggests that persons have a built-in, trustworthy, evaluative mechanism that enables them to experience “satisfaction in those . . . behaviors which maintain and enhance the organism and the self” (Rogers, 1959, p. 209). As an ongoing process, experiences are viewed freshly and valued in terms of how well they serve the person’s sense of well-being and potential growth. Person-centered therapists’ belief in the organismic valuing process enables them to trust that clients will act in their best interests when guided by this bodily felt source of wisdom. Consequently, person-centered therapists facilitate the client’s attending to all experiences, external and internal, to guide them. For persons to benefit from the guidance and wisdom of their organismic valuing processes, they must pay attention to their inner voices, feelings, and intuitions and discriminate which of these is likely to enhance their choices for healthy living. Clients, of course, may choose to ignore the inherent wisdom of their organismic valuing processes and make life decisions based on other factors that they perceive to serve them at a given time. For example, a wife’s allegiance to her abusing spouse may be harmful to her well-being and growth but chosen nevertheless because the spouse provides for her basic needs (e.g., food and dwelling) and even some of her emotional needs (e.g., periodic love and affection).

Internal and External Frame of Reference

The client’s internal frame of reference refers to “all of the realm of experience which is available to the awareness of the individual at a given moment” (Rogers, 1959, p. 209). It is the subjective experience of the person and can only be known fully by the person. This frame of reference includes thoughts, feelings, perceptions, sensations, meanings, memories, and fantasies. Therapist empathy enables the therapist to grasp the client’s inner world through inference, though the accuracy of the therapist’s understanding is confirmed or disconfirmed by the client. To view another person from an external frame of reference means to “perceive solely from one’s own subjective internal frame of reference without empathizing with the observed person” (1959, p. 211). For example, a man who spends long hours at work each day may perceive himself as dedicated to his family (internal frame of reference), while his wife may view him as neglecting his family (external frame of reference).

Empathy

Empathy exists when one person accurately perceives “the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy, and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto, as if one were the other person, but without ever losing the ‘as if’ condition” (1959, p. 210). In person-centered therapy, empathy is considered to be a capacity for understanding another, a desirable attitude and a response that communicates understanding that enables clients to clarify, process, and learn from their experiences. Empathy is one of the primary means by which we bridge over to other persons and grasp their worldviews and realities. Empathy involves the use our imagination and powers of inference to grasp what it is like to be that other person in that person’s current life space and context. When person-centered therapists attempt to grasp and communicate their clients’ subjective realities, both therapist and client engage in a mutual process of refinement of the client’s experience that typically proceeds until the client senses and confirms the truthfulness of the understanding. In this sense, the process is one of collaborative empathy in which the client’s truth is cocreated.

THEORY OF PERSONALITY

Rogers developed a rudimentary theory of psychological development and personality that was derived primarily from his observations of the therapeutic process. Summarized and paraphrased below in a condensed form are the main concepts of his theory.