Developing the Foundations for a Learning-Based Humanistic Therapy

Abstract

This study addressed the possibility of integrating learning theory into humanistic counseling. We consider that such an approach may enable client self-counseling either between sessions or after therapy has finished. Carl Rogers was a keen advocate of person-centered learning facilitation in the classroom and his principles of learning provide a natural start-point for a humanistic therapy based on learning theory. A variety of other learning processes also lend themselves to a learning based therapy such as establishing client learning goals based on self-efficacy, enabling the client to understand their own learning processes and blocks to learning, encouraging the client to access their own learning resources, and then enabling long-term learning. A case study was therefore designed to test some of these processes in a therapeutic setting. A White, British, middle-aged female was recruited for the case study. During the course of six sessions, the content of which was analyzed using thematic analysis, a selection of learning processes were applied to the humanistic therapeutic process. In summary, it was established that facilitated learning processes could provide a practically acceptable basis for humanistic counseling, and these processes are offered here as the foundation to a model of “therapeutic learning.”