Person Centered Psychotherapy
An Experiential Course
Person-Centered Psychotherapy (PCP) is a humanistic and phenomenological approach based on ideas developed by Carl Rogers, his associates, and later followers of this approach. We sincerely believe that each person has all the resources, strength, and power to promote their own changes towards healing, gaining new insights and developments. The psychotherapist’s role is to provide the client with the necessary conditions for such growth and changes to occur. Therefore, a psychotherapist strives to ensure a safe and trustworthy interpersonal relationship and environment, so that a client may discover and establish their path to self determination. In this series of courses, we ensure that: participants understand these fundamentals of PCP; gain insights of their personal strengths and weaknesses using the PCP approach; and how to create a safe and open PCP environment for their clients.
About Person Centered Psychotherapy
Person-Centered Psychotherapy is a humanistic and phenomenological approach based on the ideas developed by Carl Rogers, his associates, and later followers of this Approach. We sincerely believe that each person has within himself or herself all the resources, strength, and power to promote their changes towards healing, new insights, and development. The psychotherapist’s role is to provide the client with the necessary conditions for growth to occur. Therefore, a psychotherapist strives to ensure a safe and trustworthy interpersonal relationship so that a client may discover and establish their path to self-determination.
Carl R. Rogers developed a profound practice and understanding of psychotherapy. Rogers’ essential insight is that certain qualities of the relationship between therapist and client can be learned and practiced to create an optimal interpersonal climate for growth, development, and healing. In this course series, you will discover, using guidance and practice, and through your own experiences and reflections, how to create this climate for your own practice. Participants will learn how to enhance the possibilities for personal change and growth for their clients.
We have developed a complete series of courses that combine the philosophical, theoretical, and practical aspects of Person-Centered Psychotherapy. We aim to foster creative, responsible, and accountable learning for participants. We intend for participants’ deep understanding and security when embodying their learning in practice, as they determine what to do or not to do during therapy with clients.
Our PCP courses encourage freedom of thinking and action, and resourcefulness. We center our inquiry and practice within the framework of the six conditions proposed by Rogers for optimal psychotherapy, bound by a deep code of ethics: Do no harm.
We strive to develop psychotherapists’ resilience by offering inner work and experiences with diverse groups of fellow participants. Participants who know and attend to their wounds and delights will be less likely to allow them to interfere in their performance with their clients’ therapeutic processes. In our own experience, the PCP participant who initiates their psychotherapy and receives supervision, learns the most from our encounters in development.
Continuing Education Units are only available for Module I currently, but we are working on adding the others. Participants desiring CEUs will have to take a test at the end of each module, and must be present for the whole course. Participants who miss any hours will have an opportunity to recover those hours by writing a paper, doing supervision, or doing another appropriate activity to get certification. We ask all participants to write a reflection 5 to 20 pages about their experiences, at the end of each module, and a final paper on the subject of the participant’s choice, at the end of the full course.
This is a hands-on course combining theory and practicum. There will be an introduction to Person-Centered Psychotherapy. We will talk about Carl Rogers – the man, his practice and ideas, and explore the self in Person-Centered Psychotherapy – its nature and application. We will introduce the concept of actualizing tendency, and the six conditions for therapeutic change; we explore deep listening; and we work with practicum, feedback, and experience of small and large group therapy.
June 3rd – 5th, 2022
In Module II we will explore the magical moments of psychotherapy; I-Thou, congruence, and confrontation; personal knowledge in psychotherapy; empathy as a way of knowing and dialoguing; and the concept of As-If. We will address assumptions of Rogerian era and humanistic psychology, as well as the phenomenal field and self – identify, “No,” and “Q-Sort”. We will work with triads and dyads and group encounter.
July 8th – 10th, 2022 & July 22nd – 24th, 2022
Module III will address the primary conditions in psychotherapy as being necessary and sufficient, and the pros and cons of PCP and PCA. We will explore encounter groups, and differentiate between large and small group encounters, and psychotherapy groups. The psychotherapist will have the opportunity to explore self-weaknesses and strengths, and explore empathy in-depth, and the different kinds of empathy.
September 9th – 11th, 2022 & September 16th – 18th, 2022
Module IV will help you write a personal portfolio – the process and content of your learning. We will explore what individual therapy is from the perspective of PCP, and the place of disclosure in PCP. The psychotherapist’s personal anamnesis and blind spots will be explored. We examine how to deal with “difficult” and highly “resistant” clients. We explore the place of spirituality in psychotherapy and the psychotherapist’s life. We address the place of diversity in Person-Centered Psychotherapy—Practicum of individuals, groups, and encounter groups.
October 21st – 23rd, 2022 & October 28th – 30th, 2022
The Supervision Module explores the functions and roles of Clinical Supervision, the principles and guidelines of clinical supervision, and different models of clinical supervision. It will address contextual factors, and burnout, connected to clinical supervision. Demonstrations and practicum.
January 13th – 15th, 2023 & January 20th – 22nd, 2023