Carl Rogers and Jon Kabat-Zinn: approaches to mindfulness and therapy

Carl Rogers & Jon Kabat-Zinn

Carl Rogers and Jon Kabat-Zinn

This paper compares and contrasts two distinctive approaches to therapy pioneered by Carl Rogers and by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Both Rogers and Kabat-Zinn have had enormous influence in psychotherapy; they have created processes whereby clients receive valuable treatment and from the therapy they receive comes a new lease on life, if the interaction has been successful.

First, the late Carl Rogers' approach shall be discussed. A good question to ask in the sense of referencing Rogers' work in this paper is: What are the best strategies for a psychotherapist to follow in terms of integrating warmth and compassion as successful interventions into deliberately humanistic psychotherapy sessions? Renowned psychologist Rogers advocated "person-centered" (also known as "client-centered") therapy as a way to help the client solve problems and come to his or her own solutions. For example, Rogers wrote that "Rather than serving as a mirror, the therapist becomes a companion to the client as the latter searches through a tangled forest in the dead of night" (Knight 2007 p. 123).

The author of this article, Tracy A. Knight of Western Illinois University, writing in the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, expanded that metaphor in terms of explaining "person-centered" psychotherapy. A client comes to the psychologist's office for therapy in an automobile, of course. But the client's "life journey is stuck, mired in the mud," Knight explains. And what is the therapist's role -- to take the wheel and take responsibility for extracting the car from the mud? No, Knight goes on; the person-centered therapist should instead get down in the mud with the client and help him push it out, "free it so the ongoing journey can proceed in the direction the client ultimately determines" (Knight 123). This approach to helping the client push the car from the muck is "consistent" with Rogers' view that the therapist's job is not to determine what direction the client should be going, but rather the therapist should be "…completely willing that any outcome, any direction, may be chosen'" (Knight quoting Rogers 123).

After allowing the client to choose his or her own direction, Rogers says "…only then does [the client] realize the vital strength of the capacity and potentiality of the individual for constructive actions" (Knight quoting Rogers 123).

Jon Kabat-Zinn meanwhile has put forward a quite different kind of therapy called "mindfulness-based" stress reduction -- which is achieved through meditation. Quite apart from Rogers' approach, in which the therapist becomes close friends with -- and works together with the client -- the Kabat-Zinn therapy taps into the benefits of "…physiological, physical and spiritual benefits" of meditation (Sumter, et al., 2007). In other words, with the Kabat-Zinn approach, clients are schooled on how to go it alone. Kabat-Zinn developed his mindfulness strategy about thirty years ago while working at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center (Elias, 2009).

In Kabat-Zinn's book, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (1994) the author describes mindfulness as having to do with "examining who we are, and with questioning our view of the world and our place in it, and with cultivating some appreciation for the fullness of each moment we are alive" (Kabat-Zinn, p. 3). Those are very generalized descriptive phrases by Kabat-Zinn, but when he uses specifics his mindfulness strategy becomes clearer to the reader.

For example, on page 4 of his book Kabat-Zinn writes that "Fundamentally, mindfulness is a simple concept…Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally" (p. 4). By "paying attention" he of course is alluding to meditation, which nurtures "greater awareness, clarity, and acceptance of present-moment reality" (p. 4).

Kabat-Zinn readily admits that mindfulness is at the "heart" of Buddhist meditation, however his model is not "Eastern" or "mystical," he insists on page 4. He paints a picture of mindfulness as simply a way to get "ourselves unstuck, back into touch with our own wisdom and vitality" (p. 5). When life deals a blow to the spirit, meditating in the mindfulness genre can help people "to take charge of the direction and quality of our own lives, including our relationships within the family" as well as our interaction with our workplace colleagues and "the larger world and planet" (p. 5). Mostly, he asserts, mindfulness is a way to direct our relationships with ourselves.

Mindfulness is not really a new concept, according to Kabat-Zinn in his book. Indeed people like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman -- along with Native Americans -- have practiced it and it helped those individuals achieve a special appreciation "for the present moment" (p. 5).

Meanwhile empirical studies show that meditation can be effective in "pain management and in enhancing the body's immune system" as well as reducing stress and increasing "…levels of happiness, self-confidence and general effectiveness" (Sumter). An article in Corrections Today points to the fact that research has shown that those who meditate tend to use fewer "tranquilizers, antirheumatics and gastrointestinal agents," according to Sumter.

A study looking into the success of mindfulness-based meditation was conducted among female inmates at the Tidewater Detention Center (TDC) in Chesapeake, Virginia, in the summer of 2001. According to the authors, the research was conducted over a seven-week period and 17 female detainees participated in weekly two-and-a-half hour sessions. A control group of 16 female inmates did not participate in the meditation -- and went about their normal duties, which "typically consisted (at that time in the afternoon) of free time that could be used for exercise, reading or being outside in the yard" (Sumter).

What was the outcome of the meditation session project? The participants in the "structured mediation experienced fewer sleeping difficulties" than the control group of inmates who did not participate, Sumter writes. Moreover, the detainees who took part in the mindfulness experiment "were less likely to throw things or hit people" than those who were not part of the meditation program," Sumter continued. The detainees who participated had a better handle on their "anger and feelings of frustration" in the prison facility.

One detainee who participated in the meditation said: "I am not as tired as I used to be because we get up at 4:45…and go to bed at 10 at night…My body does not ache like it did when I first got here." That detainee added that she no longer has "anxiety attacks" and that she sleeps longer, following the training she received.

Another detainee reported that when she feels frustrated or angry she meditates, and "It seems to calm me down a lot…" Those who participated were less likely to "bite their nails and cuticles than detainees in the control group," Sumter continues. Further, those participants who chose to speak about their experiences noted that they were "more hopeful about their future and experienced less guilt than detainees in the comparison group" (Sumter).

Referring back to Carl Rogers' client-centered therapy, an article in the Journal of Counseling and Development (Moon, 2007) points out that the "task of the client-centered counselor is attitudinal in nature"; Rodgers "revolutionized psychotherapy by conceptualizing the individual not as an object constrained by personality traits but as a person in process, a client as a teleological agent, who…is entitled to direct his or her own therapy" (Moon).

That last description -- directing one's own therapy -- could sound to some ears a bit like what Kabat-Zinn is promoting; however, Rogers' theory does not include teaching the client to meditate on his own but rather Rogers has the therapist working along side the client. Rogers' process entails a "growth model" that eschews the medical model that many therapists had embraced (assess, diagnose, and treat). Instead, according to the article by Moon, the Rogers approach, quoting Rogers, is this: "I can't make corn grow, but I can provide the right soil and plant it in the right area and see that it gets enough water" (Moon).