The person-centred approach is a strand within humanistic psychology, developed in the mid-twentieth century by Carl Rogers. According to its assumptions, psychological difficulties arise when people live in conditions that require them to deny their own experience. In other words, what from the outside may be described as resistance, avoidance, or maladjustment is understood from Rogers’ perspective as an attempt at adaptation.

In this sense, the problem does not lie in something being “wrong” with the person, but in a disruption of the natural human capacity for inner self-regulation and growth – for example through pressure to be evaluated, fear of rejection, or the need to meet conditions of worth. Change, therefore, is associated with the emergence of self-acceptance and a sense of self-worth, which in turn reduces the need to function on the basis of meeting external conditions.

Carl Rogers described this mechanism as self-actualisation – the natural human tendency to make sense of one’s experience and to organise it into a coherent sense of self and world. This tendency develops naturally when a person can remain in living contact with what they are experiencing – their feelings, needs, and responses. Acceptance plays a key role here: it allows one’s experiences to be recognised as valid and real, rather than denied or distorted. When this happens, experiences that were previously rejected or distorted can gradually be integrated into the sense of self. Change then takes place from within – not as the fixing of something “wrong”, but as the natural development of who one already is.