The Role and Modeling of Context in a Cognitive Model of Rogers’ Person-Centred Approach

Abstract

Since the American psychologist Carl R. Rogers founded the person-centred approach to counseling, his way of approaching the individual by creating a facilitating relationship has helped thousands of clients, as proved by numerous empirical studies. While Carl Rogers himself described all aspects of the process of improvement in scientific, precise detail, a model to explain the functioning of the approach has not yet been formulated. The purpose of this paper is to propose an abstract, cognitive model to serve two purposes. First, to provide insight into some aspects of the way Rogers’ approach works and second to argue, that one distinguishing criterion underlying Rogers’ theory can be traced to the notion of context. This is in so far, as the person-centred approach is unique in having an individual solve problems within his personal context, as opposed to other approaches, where the counselor searches for problems to provide advice from his/her context and perspective. It will be argued that problem solving within an individual’s context is particularly effective, since it most closely matches the living, sensing, and experience of this individual and has the highest potential for disposition and reuse of the individual’s experience.