‘Client-centred’ approaches

Abstract

A wide variety of people talk of counselling and describe themselves as counsellors, with insufficient clarity about what is meant. As we shall see, they often have little in common beyond superficial statements about ‘empowerment’. The skills employed can vary widely. A consensus about counselling, then, is lacking. However, many counsellors claim partial, or substantial, allegiance to one or more of the schools described in these chapters. If there is one authority above all others within counselling it is probably, still, Carl Rogers.

Good friends are hard to come by, and cannot simplybe purchased by the hour. But Rogers seemed to feel that a therapist, merely by announcing himself to be one, is automatically a better friend than even a real friend. Rogers assumed that friends will behave in a normal fashion, sometimes they like you and sometimes they don’t, but that the therapist always likes you and is always genuine and nondefensive. What is impossible to achieve in real life is assumed to be automatically part of the good therapist’s equipment.

(Masson, 1989)¹