Key Concepts of Person Centred Counselling

Actualising tendency is the inherent drive in every organism and living thing to be the best it can and carry out its purpose. Actualising tendency cannot be destroyed without destroying the living thing, but it can be limited. For example, being a child carer might limit your actualising tendency to being the best carer you can be which might neglect other things like school. Therefore, your environment can seriously limit your actualising tendency. Self-actualizing is when a person is in the driving seat of their actualising tendency. They are being true to themselves and knowing what their goals are and in pursuit of those goals earnestly. Counselling is attempting to allow people to be the best version of themselves and trusting that they have an actualising tendency. Counselling provides the right environment for that person to reach their full potential, the right conditions are the core conditions offered by a person-centred counsellor. 

Carl Rogers introduced the idea of Locus of evaluation, where here locus means place. This is the place where we go to form judgments and opinions. There are two; internal and extern loci. External locus of evaluation is the judgments from others, and internal is the judgment from oneself. Someone who basis their decision on external judgments listens and values other people’s opinions over their own. This person might not trust their own judgment. On the other hand, we have people who rely on their internal locus of evaluation. This person does not seek the approval of others but makes judgments on what they want themselves. Someone who is reliant on their internal locus of evaluation, knows their own mind, trusts their own judgement and does not seek outside approval. Generally, people are not 100% either way, but they do tend to air on one side or the other. Carl Rogers believed that a more congruent person will rely more heavily on their internally loci of evaluation. 

Introjects are values ideas and beliefs that we take on from others, it is common for children to introject their parent’s beliefs on right and wrong. If they don’t question these beliefs then these beliefs become who you are, which can get in the way of you being your true self. Introjects are not values or beliefs that we discover and understand, but something that we pick up on the way. For example, if as a child you were brought up in a certain religion, you might take these beliefs as true without question, therefore those beliefs become introjected.

According to Carl Rogers the organismic valuing process depicts the evaluating subjective experience so you can determine the potential influence they will have on self-improvement. One example of this can be seen if you are at a party and you decide to stop drinking. Your friends or peers may encourage you to continue to drink alcohol in order to ‘have a good time’. However, this might have a detrimental effect on any self improvement that you are attempting such as “be healthy”. The organismic valuing process refers to your own self evaluating these options, to comply with social pressure to have fun or not, and what impact this could have on self. The organismic self is present at birth, however, this can be disturbed by the positive, or negative regard of someone else towards the babies actions. This is especially relevant for any care givers to the baby. The expression of positive regard, and avoidance of negative regard becomes more important to the baby that their own organismic valuing process. The baby wil begin to seek positive regard from others at the own expense of their self-improvement. This has been coined the conditions of worth. This will often continue unbeknown to the baby and then child, which without therapeutic intervention the child will take on into adulthood.

Finally, we have conditions of worth, these have been put on us by others. In order to gain love and acceptance from others and be held in positive regard. We might change our behaviour to seek validation from people. We live our lives in accordance with these conditions of worth. As we grow, we learn what pleases and displeases our carers, and therefore we modify our behaviour to be accepted by those around us.  Throughout life we are given many messages from parents, school, society, the law for conditions of worth.