What Carl Rogers Meant When He Said the Client Knows Best

"Carl Rogers is known for developing client-centered therapy, the essence of which can be summed up in the idea that it is the client and not the therapist who knows best and what directions to go in. But the idea that the client can be trusted to find their own direction is at odds with most psychology and psychiatry interventions, and is what made Rogers' approach to therapy so radical, not only at the time of his writing in the 1950s, but even today."

"The statement that the client knows best is commonly said to convey Rogers' approach in a simple way. But as a popular way of communicating a more complex idea, it fails because critics take it to mean that you simply need to ask someone what they think is best for them and that they can tell you there and then."

Client-centered therapy holds that individuals inherently know their best directions in life and can be trusted to follow an authentic path. Non-directivity in therapy means not imposing direction, rather than providing no direction. Therapy aims to shift people from an external locus of evaluation toward an internal locus of evaluation. People often arrive at therapy feeling confused, lost, or disoriented, yet they retain a felt, gut sense of what is right for them. That felt sense becomes clearer within relationships that facilitate listening to inner experience. Rogers' approach contrasts with many conventional psychological and psychiatric interventions by privileging client autonomy.

Read at Psychology Today