Mutuality in person-centered therapy: A new agenda for research and practice

Abstract

Rogers (1957) hypothesized that, if two people are in psychological contact, and when the client is incongruent and minimally perceives the therapist's empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence, this would be necessary and sufficient for constructive personality change. In this paper we propose that this research hypothesis, while a helpful one for testing theory, has inadvertently resulted in only a partial exploration of the process of person-centered psychotherapy insofar as it conceptualizes the therapeutic relationship as the provision of empathy and unconditional positive regard from the therapist to the client. Therefore, research has tended to focus only as far as client perception of the therapist conditions and little attention has been paid to the process of and requirements for ''receiving'' the conditions. In other writings, however, Rogers (1959) described the therapeutic relationship as consisting of bi-directional, reciprocal, and mutual interaction between client and therapist. Receiving the conditions is a worthwhile area for research and study and can inform the development of practice. We suggest that for the conditions to be actively received the contribution of the client to the therapeutic relationship has to be considered. The result is a new hypothesis in which experiences of mutuality are realized as a result of the client, in addition to the therapist, experiencing increasing levels of empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard. The paper concludes that person-centered psychotherapy is inherently relational and we highlight the potential and implication for mutual relating within person-centered psychotherapy.

Mutuality of Rogers's therapeutic conditions and treatment progress in the first three psychotherapy sessions

“…That is, the extent the client perceives the therapist's empathy, unconditional positive regard, and congruence is important for good therapeutic outcome. However, contemporary theory supports a bi-directional structuring to the Rogerian conditions (Murphy, Cramer & Joseph, 2012). The bidirectional view also implies mutuality of Rogers's conditions; that is, client and therapist experience of each other will be associated with outcome and treatment progress.…”

“…The real relationship refers to the genuine and authentic client and therapist feelings towards one another that is thought to be separate from the transference relationship. Along with this, Murphy et al (2012) have theorized the process of therapy involves the mutual experiencing of the Rogerian conditions empathy, unconditional positive regard, and congruence. Support for a bi-directional view also comes from research into relational depth events (Tudor, 2010;Wiggins, Elliott & Cooper, 2012) that has considered client and therapist experiences of deep reciprocal connection, and relational connectedness (Cooper, 2012), involving the synchronous client and therapist perception of connectedness.…”

A journey to client and therapist mutuality in person-centered psychotherapy: a case study

“…Mutuality is related to client progress (Murphy, Cramer & Joseph, 2012). A recent study that focused on the presence of the mutual experience of the therapeutic conditions considered the association between mutuality and client progress (Murphy, 2010;Murphy & Cramer, 2014).…”

“…Thus the therapist relates to the client in a Thou-I stance (Schmid, 2006). Mutuality implies that in these moments the relationship is experienced the same on both sides; that is, both client and therapist experience has equal validity 1960, cited in Anderson & Cissna, 1997, and that each perceives and experiences Rogers's therapeutic conditions (Murphy, Cramer & Joseph, 2012) both in and towards the other.…”

“…The term mutuality refers to the bidirectional, reciprocal, co-created, clienttherapist experience of the therapeutic conditions of unconditional positive regard, empathic understanding and congruence (Murphy, 2010;Murphy, Cramer & Joseph, 2012). Mutuality in the person-centered therapeutic relationship involves both client and therapist encountering each other where both experience congruently, to varying degree, unconditional acceptance and empathy.…”