Cain (1990a) characterizes person-centered therapy (sometimes termed client-centered therapy) as a psychotherapeutic approach that focuses on a client's drive toward health and self-growth. Therapy is seen as having the primary goal of removing psychoemotional obstacles to self-actualization which Cain defines as a fundamental tendency to actualize, maintain, and enhance self.
According to Bozarth and Brodley (1991), the person-centered therapist frees the actualizing tendency of psychoemotional obstacles by creating a specific interpersonal climate during the therapy session. This climate is created by means of the therapist experiencing and communicating certain attitudes, including congruency, unconditional positive regard, and empathic understanding. Rather than intervening and thereby assuming therapeutic expertise about the client, the person-centered therapist trusts the client to move forward in a constructive direction. The constructive forward movement of the client is propelled by the actualizing tendency.
Boy (1990) has provided more specific definitions regarding how person-centered therapists create the therapeutic climate through their relationship with clients. He especially emphasizes the therapeutic provision of "unconditional positive regard" which is defined as the acceptance of a person in a total, unconditional way. Also, Boy reported that person-centered therapists need to be congruent or genuine which is to state that they must feel free to be themselves and to experience events in the therapeutic encounter as they occur.
Finally, Boy (1990) noted that therapists must provide empathic understanding which involves the ability to perceive experiences and feelings and their meaning to the client during the moment-to-moment events of psychotherapy. According to Boy, empathic listening along with congruence and unconditional positive regard are the therapeutic conditions necessary for therapeutic ...