An Invitation to Consider Surprising Nuggets Beyond Common (Mis)understandings of Person-Centered Counseling

Abstract

Person-centered therapy may be a victim of its own success. It is well known and has been influential on counseling, but it is often oversimplified and mischaracterized. This position paper offers assertions, encouraging a richer understanding and consideration what Rogers and more recent person-centered colleagues said and did. Assertions of misunderstandings include the necessity but not sufficiency of the person-centered conditions, the very existence of “core” conditions, that person-centered counseling is individualistic, that its origins are only in Western thought, and that the person-centered counseling is foremost a mental health treatment. The paper ends with an invitation and hope for further consideration among scholars and practitioners who may have oversimplified person-centered counseling.

Department(s)

School of Mental Health and Behavioral Sciences

Document Type

Article

DOI

10.1002/johc.12241

Keywords

humanistic counseling, person-centered therapy, Rogers

Publication Date

10-1-2025

Journal Title

Journal of Humanistic Counseling

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