Person-centred Rogerian methods are highly suited to Aboriginal peoples, but because they focus on being more than doing, clinicians have a greater responsibility to attain solid skills of “beingness”.
Related articles: Therapies for First Nations Australians: Post-modern; Therapies for First Nations Australians: Expressive, Somatic, and Trauma-sensitive; Therapies for First Nations Australians: Positive Psychology.
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Introduction
Following on from interview research to examine how dominant-culture clinicians could better serve Aboriginal clients in counselling, we suggested which types of therapies may be more effective with Aboriginal populations and which employ concepts or assumptions that are incompatible with Aboriginal customs, beliefs, or ways of being (See the Mental Health Academy course, Sitting with Aboriginal Clients: Appropriate Modalities). In previous articles in this series, we have drawn from that research to examine broad groups of therapies: so far, post-modern therapies (narrative and solution-focused) , and then expressive therapies, somatic experiencing, and trauma-sensitive therapy. In this article, we review Rogerian person-centred approaches.
Rogerian counselling has in common with positive psychology (our next article in the series) a strong belief in the capacity of the individual to become fully functioning, especially if their environment is not overly restrictive. We look at one of the earliest humanistic therapies to develop – that of Rogerian counselling – in the context of working with Aboriginal clients.
Carl Rogers’ person-centred approach
For Carl Rogers, effective counselling was not about excellence of techniques, and he developed few of them. Rather, it was always about the counsellor attaining a level of beingness that would allow him or her to lend unconditional positive regard, acceptance, and respect to a client while maintaining basic congruence. We discuss here how his key notions (sourced from the Mental Health Academy course, Person-centred Therapy: The Basics) may work when utilised in therapy with Aboriginal clients.
Humanistic: Client frame of reference and personal meaning
Rogers’s ideas emanate from the humanistic perspective, which has been defined as “a style of thought or attitude which makes the human central, important, valuable, crucial, pivotal, wonderful, powerful – even miraculous” (Barton, 1992). Humanism, unlike behaviourism or psychoanalysis, is phenomenological, centring on individuals’ own frames of reference and the personal meaning that they attach to experiences. It is optimistic, encouraging wellness, achievement of potential, and development toward the fully functioning person. It emphasises higher values, such as choice, freedom, and goals that distinguish human beings from other species. In the first assumption particularly, Rogerian philosophy is highly compatible with the Aboriginal cultures which may benefit from it. And there is more.
Self-actualising tendency
There is, claim person-centred practitioners, an inherent tendency in people to develop in positive ways that enhance and maintain themselves as well as humanity. Thus, it is important to acknowledge individuals’ natural inclination toward self-actualisation, growth, and health. The actualising process occurs, believed Rogers, as people develop in holistic, unified ways. The MHA courses Counselling from an Indigenous Worldview and Sitting with Aboriginal Clients: Appropriate Modalities note that Aboriginal worldview which “provides for the unity and coherence of people, nature, land and time” (Pattell, 2007, in Bond, 2010). Bond (2010) explains that for Aboriginal cultures, concepts of connectedness and relatedness are primary. Aboriginals see all of nature – from lands, trees, seas, and mountains to stars, rocks, and people – as connected. In fact, connectedness, and the corollary sense of belonging to what one is connected to, is so central that relationships – to other people, to their lands or “country”, and to ancestors and spirits – are the basis of wellbeing for Aboriginal people.
The importance of community
The compatibility of Rogerian principles with Aboriginal ways of being is further shown in Rogers’ assertion about the importance of community; it came with a warning:
“Community – that is, interaction with ‘Other’ – is crucial to our wellbeing, as we are hard-wired to be social, but while healthy families are a source of nurturance and support, Rogers saw how dysfunctional families could inflict grave psychological wounds on children” (Archer & McCarthy, 2007).
Similarly at a level of community or culture: healthy cultural and societal institutions could inspire their citizens, maintain order, and provide for wellbeing, but maladaptive regimes could degrade and repress them. Thus, we see how past government efforts which inflicted unjust, racist practices on Aboriginal communities – such as that of the Stolen Generations removal of children from their homes – were bound to “degrade” or “repress” the people affected. Rogers explains how such treatment would develop in people incongruence between how they genuinely were and how they thought that they should be in order to gain approvals from dominating others.
Conditions of worth
The key reason that clients get stuck in a state of incongruence is that important people in their lives have given them judgmental and critical messages that they are only worthwhile and lovable if they think, feel, and act in ways that meet the needs of others. The incongruence that arises from this allows the development of conditions of worth, in which a discrepancy develops between the real self and the ideal self. Children in such negative environments tend to internalise the criticisms they receive, perceiving aspects of themselves as unworthy, shutting down or inhibiting those parts. This creates inner conflict, which curtails a natural tendency toward growth. Messages of conditional worth restrict authenticity, making it difficult for people to respond with honesty in their emotions, thoughts, or behaviours.
This phenomenon, which can also occur at a societal level, is noted by psychologist Damien Howard of the Northern Territory. He writes:
“Internalised oppression occurs when an individual who is a member of an oppressed minority believes that the mainstream society’s negative views about the minority that he or she is part of are true. . . . Internalised oppression can result from the personal and transgenerational discrimination experienced by Aboriginal people in Australia”. (Howard, 2006, p 20)
Howard observes that such oppression, which creates Rogerian conditions of worth in people, can manifest in many ways in a society. Writing about health management issues, he contends that, in one manifestation, Aboriginal patients might express a preference to be treated by non-Aboriginal health professionals. In another, non-Aboriginal health professionals may fail to support, respect, or show confidence in Aboriginal health workers’ competence – with the whole community tending to follow suit (Howard, 2006).
Reversing subtle negative influence
Thus, a therapist working according to Rogerian principles with an Aboriginal client may be able to reverse some of the subtle negative influence causing conditions of worth that the client has been subject to outside the therapy room. This was noted by the psychiatrist with whom we spoke. In speaking about effective ways of working with Aboriginal people, the psychiatrist – who has long-term outreach experience in rural and remote Aboriginal communities – said that no matter what treatment a patient was receiving, “Rogerian principles of being respectful and non-judgmental apply”. These were, he observed, “doubly important when you’re dealing with cultural transference and colonisation issues” (from Sitting with Aboriginal clients: Context and Strategies).
The fully functioning person
The fully functioning person (Rogers’s ideal person of emotional health) would, Rogers said, characteristically possess three chief personality dimensions: openness to experience, living with a sense of meaning and purpose, and trust in themselves and others. With those traits, people could move in positive directions, have a sense of their place in the world, feel connected to themselves and others, and possess an internal source of evaluation, channelling their lives in productive ways. Motivated by their own high standards rather than being driven by needs for approval, such individuals have high self-esteem, manage their lives well, and are proud self-actualisers.
Consistent with the concept of a phenomenological perspective and the client’s internal frame of reference, Rogers wanted only the clients’ own experience to inform their treatment. He believed that no authority, including that of the therapist, should take priority over the client’s direct experience (Seligman, 2006; Raskin & Rogers, 1995). In this and all of the aforementioned ways, Rogers’ view of how a human being could develop to a high level is compatible with the Aboriginal cultural ideals of unity, coherence, relationship, and concern for the collective. We could expect, then, that a therapist trained in Rogerian principles would have much to offer an Aboriginal client. Are there any potential pitfalls to using Rogerian principles to guide counselling with Aboriginal people?
What to beware of in using a Rogerian/person-centred approach
We cannot name any particular aspects of Rogerian counselling that, in themselves, send up a red flag to the prospective practitioner working with an Aboriginal client. That does not mean, however, that there is nothing to beware of. We note several points in regard to both the developmental level of the practitioner and also the cross-cultural nature of the therapy.
The psychospiritual capacity for beingness
First, Rogers’ style of counselling is all about being, not doing. The capacity to be with a client in a non-judgmental, respectful manner, offering unconditional positive regard and acceptance, denotes a certain level of psychospiritual development in the practitioner. Many would-be Rogerian practitioners fall afoul of the requirement to just be with a client, instead getting busy “doing” something (e.g., making interventions or trying to control the structure and/or outcome of sessions). This may arise due to strong conditioning or training that the practitioner has had, generating in them a sense of being somehow inadequate or incompetent if not exerting some control in session. Attaining a high level of beingness is not necessarily easy!
Western “fully functioning” ideals differ from Aboriginal ones
Second, Rogers talked about fully functioning people as being open to experience, living with meaning and purpose, and having trust in themselves and others. The therapy encourages achievement of potential. We strongly advise any practitioners wanting to work in this way with this client population to note that these qualities may look very different in an Aboriginal context to how they look in a western one! “Achievement”, for start, will generally be seen through the prism of collective goals and desires rather than individual ones. The experiences that Aboriginal clients may be open to are likely to look quite different than those that would define openness in a western context. And meaning and purpose may be defined in a much more experiential “being” way for Aboriginal clients; recall, for example, that one of the strongest Aboriginal cultural thrusts is towards harmonious relationship with the land and all of nature. How does one measure that if it would be a client’s declared purpose? In their profoundly developed intuitiveness, many Aboriginal individuals are likely to have a sense of how that feels and thus be able to recognise it when they meet another person who has achieved that purpose. But a western-reared counsellor may be unable do so, nor would that professional be likely to value such a purpose in the same way that it is valued in Aboriginal cultures.
Thus, the bottom line on utilising Rogerian principles to work with Aboriginal clients is that the therapy itself is theoretically a highly congruent way of working, but individual practitioners must be able to employ Rogerian ideals in practice rather than having them as mere aspirational goals for their own professional and psychospiritual attainment.
Key takeaways
- Person-centred Rogerian styles of counselling have much to offer Aboriginal clients in terms of their humanistic, phenomenological perspective, in which the client’s frame of reference and personal meaning are central.
- Rogerian counselling assumes that people are naturally inclined toward self-actualisation, which occurs in holistic ways to help people become fully functioning, but when individuals experience restrictive conditions of worth (at an individual level) or negative society-wide influences (such as with colonisation), their development may be impaired.
- Clinicians working with Aboriginal clients must ensure that they are able to engage “beingness”, not getting too “busy” with interventions, and that they do not impose mainstream cultural views of what “fully functioning” is on members of Aboriginal cultures, whose ideals of full human functioning may look quite different.
References
From Mental Health Academy courses
- Counselling from an Indigenous Worldview
- Person-centred Therapy: The Basics
- Sitting with Aboriginal Clients: Context and Strategies
- Sitting with Aboriginal Clients: Appropriate Modalities
Other references
- Archer, J., & McCarthy, C.J. (2007). Theories of counselling & psychotherapy: Contemporary applications. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education, Inc.
- Barton, A. (1992). Humanistic contributions to the field of psychotherapy: Appreciating the human and liberating the therapist. Humanist Psychologist, 20, 332-348.
- Bond, H. (2010). Counselling from an Indigenous Worldview. Mental Health Academy.
- Howard, D. et al. (2006). Mixed messages: Cross-cultural management in Aboriginal community-controlled health services. Darwin: Phoenix Consulting.
- Raskin, N.J., & Rogers, C.R. (1995). Person-centred therapy. In Corsini, R.J. & Wedding, D., Eds. Current Psychotherapies, 5th Ed. Itasca, Illinois: F.E. Peacock Publishers, Inc.
- Seligman, L. (2006). Theories of counseling and psychotherapy: Systems, strategies, and skills, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.