T.O.P.

• Person-Centered Theory


  Also known as "nondirective", "client-centered", "person centered", "student centered", "group-centered", and "person to person"
• Person-Centered Theory comes closest to meeting the standard of being stated in an if-then framework
• Basic Assumptions: Formative Tendency

  • There is a tendency for all matter, both organic and inorganic, to evolve from simpler to more complex forms
  • For the entire universe, a creative process, rather than a disintegrative one, is in operation
• Basic Assumptions: Actualizing Tendency

  • The tendency within all humans (and other animals and plants) to move toward completion or fulfillment of potentials
  • The single motive of actualization
  • Actualization involves the whole person—physiological and intellectual, rational and emotional, conscious and unconscious
• Basic Assumptions: Actualizing Tendency

  • Tendencies to maintain and to enhance the organism are subsumed within the actualizing tendency
  • The need for maintenance includes basic needs like food, air, and safety, and the tendency to resist change and seek the status quo
  • The need for enhancement is the desire to become more, to develop, and to achieve growth
• Basic Assumptions: Actualizing Tendency

  • Actualization tendency is realized only under certain conditions: a relationship with a partner who is congruent, empathetic, and demonstrates unconditional positive regard
• Organismic Valuing Process


  A subconscious guide that evaluates experience for its growth potential, drawing the person toward experiences that produce growth and away from those that inhibit growth
• Self-Concept


  All those aspects of one's being and one's experiences that are perceived in awareness (though not always accurately) by the individual
• Ideal Self


  One's view of self as one wishes to be, containing all those attributes, usually positive, that people aspire to possess
• Awareness


  The symbolic representation (not necessarily in verbal symbols) of some portion of our experience
• Levels of Awareness


  • Some events are experienced below the threshold of awareness and are either ignored or denied
  • Some experiences are accurately symbolized and freely admitted to the self-structure
  • Experiences that are perceived in a distorted form
• Becoming a Person


  1. Make contact with another person

  2. Develop a need to be loved, liked, or accepted by another person (positive regard)

  3. Develop positive self-regard, the experience of prizing or valuing one's self
• Conditions of Worth


  Perceptions that one's parents, peers, or partners love and accept them only if they meet those people's expectations and approval
• Incongruence


  The discrepancy between one's organismic experience and one's self-concept, leading to psychological disorders and vulnerability
• Defensiveness


  The protection of the self-concept against anxiety and threat by the denial or distortion of experiences inconsistent with it
• Disorganization


  A state where people sometimes behave consistently with their organismic experience and sometimes in accordance with their shattered self-concept
• Psychotherapy: Conditions


  • Congruence: the therapist is real, genuine, and integrated
  • Unconditional positive regard: the therapist accepts and prizes the client without any restrictions or reservations
  • Empathic listening: the therapist accurately senses and communicates the client's feelings without prejudice, projection, or evaluation
• Psychotherapy: Process


  Continuum from most defensive to most integrated, with 7 stages of increasing openness and growth
• The Person of Tomorrow

  • More adaptable, open to experiences, trusting in their organismic self, living fully in the moment, having harmonious relations with others, more integrated, having a basic trust of human nature, and enjoying a greater richness in life