How therapists experience the “core conditions” of therapeutic personality change: a qualitative pilot study

Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies. 2016. Vol. 15. No. 4. P. 300–317.

Kryuchkov K.

While many studies have been conducted to test the efficacy and reliability of the Rogerian “Necessary and sufficient conditions” in different settings, the majority of such studies were done from the client or counselor-client perspective. Very few studies have tested the counselor’s subjective perception and experiencing of those conditions. The present pilot qualitative inquiry was conducted to obtain an image of how counselors experience three of these conditions that are often referred to as “core conditions”: empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard. The study was performed on a sample of six novice client-centered counselors who had just graduated from a continuous education group in Client-Centered Therapy (CCT). Some of them had previous experience of counseling, some did not, but none of them had previous experience of Client-Centered Therapy. Qualitative methodology was used in the study, including an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Specifically – the semi-structured interview method was used in order to collect data, and the Meaning Condensation method was used to analyze the data. As a result, the qualitative descriptions of the counselors subjective perception and experiencing of the Rogerian conditions were obtained. They allowed us to draw some conclusions regarding the inner structure of the client-centered conditions themselves.

Keywords: phenomenology, Client-Centered Psychotherapy(CCT), necessary and sufficient conditions, psychotherapy skills