Carl Rogers' Therapeutic Alliance Carl Essay

Unconditional positive regard is another element that Rogers believed was necessary in the relationship between therapist and patient. This part of the relationship would involve the therapist being able to experience a warm acceptance of each element of the client's experience as being a part of whom the client is. There are no conditions put on the client being who they are. It is important for the therapist to care about the patient as an individual and they must focus on treating the individual as opposed to treating some label or diagnosis that he or she has come up with. Diagnoses are not real unto themselves; it is the patient who is real and thus the patient must be treated as opposed to the diagnosis.

Empathy is another one of Rogers's elements that must be understood when treating patients in a therapeutic setting. It is absolutely necessary that a therapist has some sort of empathic awareness of the client; this is crucial to helping the client.The therapist must be able to enter or become a part of the patient's private world and be able to understand what is going on with their thoughts and feelings -- without holding any judgment about that world.

Finally, Rogers believed that the therapist and the patient must have goals in therapy and they must be known between the two of them. The therapist has the job of stating the goals that the client would like to work on. This is not imposing goals, but rather, it is vocalizing the goals that the patient has made clear are important to his or her treatment.

Reference:

Overholser, James. (2007). The central role of the therapeutic alliance: A simulated interview with Carl Rogers. Journal of….....