IntroductionThe person-centered app

Introduction
The person-centered approach to group counseling was developed by the late
Carl Rogers. Of all the pioneers of various approaches to group work, Rogers
stands out as the one who most changed the direction of counseling theory and
practice. In the early 1940s Rogers developed nondirective counseling, a powerful
and revolutionary alternative to the directive and interpretative approaches
to therapy then being practiced. He caused a furor by challenging the basic
assumption that the counselor was the expert and the client had a passive role.
Rogers questioned the validity of such widely used therapeutic procedures as
diagnosis, interpretation, giving advice, suggestions, and teaching.
In nondirective counseling the therapist’s realness and empathy are emphasized,
and the therapeutic relationship rather than the therapist’s techniques
are viewed as the central factors in facilitating change. Rogers’s approach was
grounded on the assumption that human beings tend to move toward wholeness
and self-actualization. He believed that individual members, as well as
the group as a whole, could fi nd their own direction with a minimal degree of
direction from the group facilitator. Rogers was a quiet revolutionary; his ideas
challenged the medical model of traditional therapeutic approaches and continue
to infl uence counseling practice today (see Cain, 2010; Kirschenbaum,
2009; Rogers & Russell, 2002).
A common theme in Rogers’s early writings, which permeated all of his later
works, was a basic trust in the client’s ability to move forward if conditions fostering
growth are present. According to Rogers, there is a formative tendency
in nature that both maintains and enhances the organism. This central source
of energy seeks fulfi llment and actualization. A faith in the emergent nature of
reality and his belief that therapy is an emergent relational process differentiates
person-centered therapy from almost all other psychological theories. It
leads naturally to a faith in subjective experience and a belief in the basic trustworthiness
of human nature. This actualization tendency suggests an intrinsic
source of growth and healing that can be counted on. Clients have capacities
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