The humanistic theory put a human being in the centre. Is anticipated that we humans possess all of the resources necessary to live and have a satisfactory life. The humanistic theory explains that all functional problems in life occur because of a lack of problem-solving tools or resources.
The most common approach in counselling is person-centred therapy. Carl Rogers coin the term person-centred to show distinction from traditionally recognised forms of counselling. Person-centred therapy is based on assumption that every individual has a desire to grow and fulfil their own potential. Rogers explain it as an actualising tendency. With time ticking away Rogers believed that individual identity can be blurred or displaced by other individual influences. The theory seems to be reasonable although every single person expects other people to play conditioned by the environment role. Basically, it leads to distortion of individual identity and leads to changes based on external stimulus. For simplification, we can say that other people can be positively regarded by others. But this influence changes individuals in the way others want them to see.
The person-centred approach emphasises that counsellors trust clients and encourage patient judgement to conduct appropriate actions and behaviours. The Person-center approach does believe in inter-individual powers and knowledge to apply them in certain situations. This process has coined the name organismic valuing process. Where organismic self may be referred to as actual real individual self. Organismic valuing is the process where individuals pick goals and implement decisions aligned with their true seld goals and desire to self actualise.
The role of the counsellor in the person-centred counselling approach is mentoring individuals in process of exploring their own cases, feelings and beliefs. We treat individuals like an expert in the field of self-healing and we trust in individual ability to manage and construct desirable outcomes. The role of the counsellor is to facilitate this process.
In addition Rogers (1978) distinguish three core conditions needed to support the process of growing a counselling relationship. With a person-centred approach the paramount ingredients of therapy success are:
1. empathy
2. unconditional positive regard
3. congruence
