Relationships play an important role in everyday life. You or I may define a relationship with a person in many different ways depending on the context with whom the relationship is with, whether this be peers, colleagues or loved ones. So is it possible to have a relationship with someone who you don’t know, someone such as a therapist? It may be possible; however this is not the type of relationship that is being described within counselling therapy. The client-counsellor relationship is unlike these day to day relationships that you may form with peers or loved ones, it is highly specialised; depending on the approach, it is usually informal in a structured manner, with boundaries and rules to dictate where the relationship may or may …show more content…

Rogers believed these three conditions were both necessary and sufficient for therapeutic progress to occur, and that there is nothing essentially unique about the relationship, and that a healthy relationship with others may manifest the core conditions in them.
However a frequent criticism is that delivering the core conditions is what all good therapists do anyway before applying their individual therapeutic approaches. Bowers and Clum (1988) reviewed studies which compared therapies with a technique focus, therapies with a relationship focus (placebo therapy), and therapies with both. They found that both contribute to the effectiveness of psychotherapy, and that the therapeutic relationship contributes a unique piece of variance to the effectiveness of therapy. In addition, Bolstad (1992) found that using closed questions or too many questions at all was found to be an inhibitory factor in the relationship, so the use of minimal prompts (such as “umm”, “yes” and even body movements like nodding [as seen in Rogerian person-centred counselling]) should be present in all counselling sessions.
The existential approach views humans as continually changing and transforming, living essentially finite lives. The focus of this approach being on the client’s life and exploring the meaning and