Person-Centered Approach, Positive Psychology, and Relational Helping

Abstract

It is more than 20 years since the death of one of the most influential American clinical psychologists of the 20th century, Carl Rogers, who founded the client-centered school more than 50 years ago. Client-centered psychology remains a distinctive and alternative approach because of its assertion that the organismic valuing process is the engine of therapeutic change and the attendant implications for nondirective practice. Many of its ideas are also firmly integrated into other newer forms of therapy that acknowledge the person-centered approach as the foundation stone on which they were built. But less well understood is that many of the core ideas associated with person-centered psychology—such as its focus on therapeutic relationships, intrinsic motivation, and human potential—are topics that are alive and well in contemporary mainstream psychology. The aim is to promote bridge building among the person-centered community to these other areas of psychology.