Importance of Empathy in Counseling (03:38)

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Carl Rogers discusses listening to clients attentively, picking up on their feelings and emotions, and reflecting those feelings back to them. Recording interviews helped him improve his therapeutic skills.

Non-Directive Therapy (02:41)

For years, Rogers focused on the content of therapist responses, rather than empathic listening quality. This was misinterpreted as a technique of reflecting client feelings. Positive regard and therapist congruence promote growth in the client-counselor relationship.

Trends toward Self-Directed Therapy (02:26)

Research shows a high degree of empathy helps bring about client change and learning. Rogers lists different therapy approaches where therapists are considered experts manipulating situations. There has been a pushback to empower clients to create change.

Using Empathic Listening (02:32)

Rogers outlines Gene Gendlin's approach to therapy of using appropriate words and phrases to reveal internal client experience and provides an encounter group example.

Applying Empathy in a Counseling Setting (02:44)

Rogers discusses entering the client's private perceptual world, being sensitive to changing felt meanings flowing in them, temporarily living in their lives, and acting as a confident companion. The counselor must lay aside their own values and prejudices.

Research Findings on Empathy (05:16)

Empathy is a key variable in the success of a counseling course; is associated with therapeutic process and movement; can be measured early on in a client-counselor relationship; and experienced and psychologically mature therapists offer higher degrees of empathy.

Counselor Empathy Study (02:34)

Six experienced therapists submitted interviews typical of their work to Raskin, who elicited reviews from 83 therapists. The degree of empathic quality varies in those relationships; only two correlated positively with the therapeutic ideal.

Credits: Carl Rogers on Empathy: Part 1 (00:39)

Credits: Carl Rogers on Empathy: Part 1