Rogerian Marriage Therapists Benefit Relationships in Trouble

Carl Rogers revolutionized psychotherapy by developing the person-centered (also known as humanistic) approach to treatment. Rogers believed that people are capable of solving their own problems when the right conditions for self-discovery and growth are present. Therefore, the primary task of Rogerian marriage therapists is merely to create a fertile therapeutic climate and then allow the client couple to work out their own issues. Rogers assigned much more value to the communication skills of the counselor and the quality of the counselor-client relationship than he did to the counselor’s knowledge, training, or mode of therapy. He found that once the individuals discover, possibly for the first time, that another person values them unconditionally and truly understands their feelings, their self-images will improve and growth will result. This other person would at first be the marriage therapist, but as therapy progresses, the spouses also becomes unconditionally accepting of each other.

Rogerian marriage therapists have a very positive view of people; they believe that at our core humans are trustworthy, good, and healthy beings who have a natural tendency toward mental health. Rogers conceived of an actualizing tendency which drives humans, and in fact all living organisms, to develop and grow to the fullest extent possible. This actualizing tendency is the driving force underlying all other motivations, including survival, creativity, pain avoidance, and pleasure-seeking. It can be suppressed but not destroyed. Because of the actualizing tendency, all people are capable of emotional growth and are innately driven to do their best; they tend to make the right choices.

People need acceptance, approval, and love from others (the need for positive regard) and that same approval and acceptance of themselves (the need for positive self-regard). Unfortunately, such feelings are usually not unconditional, but in fact only come after certain conditions or expectations set by society, another person, or oneself are met. Rogers used the terms conditional positive regard and conditional positive self-regard to denote the types of positive regard which must be earned. In a dysfunctional couple, the spouses have only conditional positive regard for each other. Thus, Rogerian marriage therapists will strive to make this positive regard unconditional.

In the phenomenological thinking of Rogerian marriage therapists, a person’s experiences are more important than any abstract conception of reality. For example, if your experience has led you to believe that you are ugly, it doesn’t matter if you truly are ugly or not! What you believe to be true is more important that what is objectively true. Experiences are the prime determinant of our self-concept, the sum total of the characteristics which we ascribe to ourselves. Humans also have an ideal self-concept, which is their notion of how they "should" be. Clearly, there can be a gap between the self-concept and the ideal self-concept, and Rogers termed this incongruity.

Rogers describes the mentally healthy person as fully-functioning. Fully-functioning couples have numerous positive qualities. They live in and enjoy the present moment, not feeling guilty about the past nor worrying about what the future may bring. They are free of defenses and feel able to make their own decisions and choices and when necessary can take responsibility for whatever consequences may arise from them. Fully-functioning couples can solve their own problems.
Rogers turned traditional psychotherapy on its ear by placing most of the responsibility for healing and growth on the client rather than on the therapist.

In this non-directive or person-centered approach, marriage therapists are more of an equal to the client than the superior and wise counselors who always know what is best. The therapist relies on reflecting the client’s feelings back to the client and refrains from making decisions for the client or setting treatment goals, and avoids conducting a large number of assessment tests early on in the therapy process. The clients take primary responsibility for the direction of therapy and choose their own goals.

Rogers believed that since humans are capable of solving their own problems, the therapist need only create a fertile therapeutic climate by developing positive and caring relationship with the client. Once the client believes that he or she has unconditional respect from the therapist and that the therapist truly understands the client’s feelings, the client will move back "on track" and the healing will come from within. Marriage therapists, of course, also focus on nurturing unconditional respect and understanding between the spouses.

Rogers also conceived the revolutionary notion that the therapist’s attitudes and relationship with the client are more important than the therapist’s knowledge or theoretical training. The therapy technique is secondary to the quality of the relationship between the client and the therapist. In fact, Rogers identified three key attributes of a helpful therapist; these characteristics are of course important to marriage therapists. Unconditional positive regard means that the therapist deeply cares for the client regardless of who the client is or what he or she has or has not done. Note the distinction here with the conditional positive regard mentioned earlier and which the client may have received too much of in the past. Empathic understanding implies that the therapist of capable of experiencing the client’s feelings as well as if they were the therapist’s own feelings. Finally, genuineness means the therapist is not a phony. He or she never pretends to like the client if the truth is otherwise. Rogers taught that any counselor who demonstrated these three characteristics would help his or her clients to drop their defenses, look at themselves, and become more fully-functioning.

Rogerian marriage therapists will place emphasis on communication skills and on the free and open sharing of feelings between the spouses. Couples in therapy work on improving their speaking and listening skills and showing empathetic understanding and unconditional positive regard for one another. Another goal is the enhancement of capacity for emotional honesty, or genuineness.

Jay Slupesky, MA is an experienced marriage therapist with offices in San Ramon and Livermore, CA.