Client-centered psychotherapy as brief psychotherapy or dient-centered/person-centered brief psychotherapy

Abstract

Client-centered or person-centered therapy and brief therapy share same common features. The question is, therefore, whether client-centered therapy is one approach to brief or short-time therapy. Carl Rogers and German client-centered therapists described this kind of therapy as a type of brief psychotherapy. The term “brief psychotherapy“ is often associated with the psychodynamic approach to psychotherapy and contrasted to the long-term standard form. Thus identifying client-centered psychotherapy with brief psychotherapy can be misleading. Therefore client-centered therapy must develop its own conceptions of brief therapy. An elaborated conception of brief psychotherapy, however, has not yet been formulated in this tradition of psychotherapy. The main part of the paper is thus concerned with this aim: Firstly, characteristic features of the practice of brief client-centered therapy are discussed. Then same systematic aspects of a conception of brief client-centered or person-centered psychotherapy are presented. These aspects are in accordance with the actual directions and developments of client-centered or person-centered therapy.

Keywords:
Client-centered (person-centered) brief psychotherapy, client-centered (person-centered) psychotherapy, indication, formulating the therapeutic focus, therapeutic relationship, therapeutic goals, time-limitation.