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. This is a widespread misunderstanding of Rogers’ approach, but when seen like this, it is understandable that those critics think it is unreasonable to expect clients to know what is best for themselves. In this blog post, I want to correct that misunderstanding by showing what it really means to think that the client knows best.

Saying that people can be trusted to find their own direction is not to say that when they come to therapy, they are not feeling confused, lost, or disoriented. It is a more complex notion than that. As organisms, we have a felt sense of what is right for us, colloquially expressed as “knowing in one’s gut.” Within Rogers' approach is the assumption that people have it within themselves to know what their own best directions in life are, and that this becomes clearer for people when they are in types of relationships that facilitate their ability to listen to their own inner wisdom. For the client-centered therapist or coach, it is understandable that in the initial sessions, people may say what they want to achieve if asked, but over time, as they go deeper in their learning about themselves, new ideas and directions will emerge, ones that may even be contrary to those initially expressed. Therapy is about going on this journey of change and discovery with the client.

The type of relationship that facilitates people in this way was hypothesized by Rogers as providing a positive and unconditional regard, as well as an empathic and genuine social environment. These relationship conditions provide a safe, non-threatening, non-judgmental social environment that allows a person to function freely, be self-accepting, drop their defensive strategies, and be self-determining. This is more complicated than it sounds because respect for someone’s right to self-determination means the therapist must be non-directive, that is to say, not try to achieve another desired goal.

Non-directivity is a much-misunderstood concept. It does not mean “no direction”; rather, it means the practitioner is not imposing their own direction but helping the client to find theirs. It is as though the client is in a darkened room where there is a thread leading to the door, and they must first find that thread and then, slowly, little by little, learn to follow it until they reach their destination. The therapist knows that if the client is in touch with that thread, that inner wisdom, they will get to where they need to be. But this is not to say that either the client or the therapist knows where or what that destination is in advance. To be our own best expert is to look within ourselves, and to follow the thread, knowing that it will take us where we need to go.

For the client, reaching out in the darkness, stumbling to find the thread, is not an easy process: It requires inward reflection and self-awareness as they struggle to listen to their inner wisdom. This is very different from the clumsier interpretation of Rogers’ approach, which would entail asking the client what they want out of therapy at the outset and expecting them to know.

A therapist’s behavior in the session is based on their moment-to-moment empathy for the client’s experience, as well as their own experiencing in that moment. Person-centered therapy does not mean doing nothing, as some critics seem to suggest. It also does not mean doing anything, as other critics suggest. Doing anything that the client wants is equally not person-centered. It is a much more organized and deliberate approach involving close attention to the client’s moment-to-moment process with a deep trust in their ability to find their own direction.

Rogers described how people move from having what he described as an “external locus of evaluation” to an “internal locus of evaluation” as they become more able to evaluate experiences for themselves. To use another metaphor, it is following a trail left in the forest: The client sees a broken stick and follows that direction for a while, then a half-hidden footprint appears, pointing in a new direction, as they search within themselves. In short, therapy is a process of working alongside clients, at their pace, as they find out what is important to them and what direction is best for them in life, not asking them to decide what they want or telling them how to make sense of their experiences. The client in therapy is learning to trust in their own decision-making and judgement rather than that of others.