Phenomenology in Counselling
Carl Rogers, the 'founding father' of humanistic counselling, embraced Phenomenology in the Person Centred counselling model.
- Individual perception
- Conscious experience
- Developing meanings from our perceptions
- Frame of reference
Phenomenology is an approach in philosophy which concentrates on the study of consciousness and how we experience the world. It focuses on:
Phenomenological Theory of Personality
Rogers moved away from the pessimistic views of human nature put forward by Sigmund Freud to a more experiential or phenomenological view.
Freud believed that the human condition was involved in a constant battle between the Id Ego and Super-ego.
Rogers' Person-Centred theory, on the other hand, is based on what he described as the Phenomenal Field. Hence perceptions of taste, sound and how we experience the world are as individual as ourselves.
A brief description of phenomenological movement will make it clear why Rogers' theory and practice has been linked in this way.
Developed at the beginning of the 19th Century by German philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, the phenomenological movement believed that reality consisted of objects and events, which they called 'phenomena' ,which represents our conscious perception of reality.
Phenomenology in Person Centred Counselling
In his 1951 book Client Centred Therapy, Rogers acknowledged the connection between the Person-Centred approach and phenomenology.
Rogers stated: 'his theory of personality and behaviour was 'basically phenomenological in character' (Rogers cited in Douglas, P190). This clearly demonstrates that Phenomenology and Person Centred Counselling overlap.
Rogers further expanded on his phenomenological theory of personality in his 1961 book On Becoming a Person. He clearly stated his theoretical ideas of personality in this observation:
"Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me. Neither the Bible nor the prophets -- neither Freud nor research -- neither the revelations of God nor man -- can take precedence over my own direct experience.
My experience is not authoritative because it is infallible. It is the basis of authority because it can always be checked in new primary ways. In this way its frequent error or fallibility is always open to correction." (Rogers Cited in Kirschenbaum P 25)
As we can see from the quote above, Rogers clearly linked Phenomenology and Person Centred Counselling together.
How Phenomenology Links to Person-Centred theory
Rogers developed his psychological ideas which included the 'internal locus of evaluation' and 'organismic valuing'. In 1953 he published his theory of personality known as the 19 Propositions.
The first of the 19 observations makes a very clear link to phenomenology and its ideas of how we perceive the world:
- All individuals (organisms) exist in a continually changing world of experience (phenomenal field) of which they are the center.
In other words, our own experience is our reality, in any given moment of time.
When used effectively, the client feels that someone else can experience how they feel and be validated by the experience, which is how Phenomenology Person Centred Counselling is experienced.
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Phenomenology Experiment
Why is an Understanding of Phenomenology Important?
The reason is because it informs how a person-centred therapist works with clients:
- View of themselves and others
- Experience of feeling
- Moment by moment experiencing
- Edge of awareness material
It also worth remembering that Person Centred therapy relies on the counsellors ability to be empathic, congruent and non-judgmental, sometimes referred to as the Core Conditions.
When used effectively, the client feels that someone else can experience how they feel and be validated by the experience, which is how Phenomenology Person Centred Counselling is experienced.
References
Douglas, B. Et al (2016) The Handbook of Counselling Psychology, Fourth edn., London: Sage.
Rogers, C. (1995) Client Centered Therapy , London: Constable & Robinson.
Cooper, M. Et al (2007) The Handbook of Person-Centred Psychotherapy and Counselling, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kirschenbaum, H. Lands Henderson, V. (1989) The Carl Rogers Reader, New York: Haughton Mifflin.