¶ … Person-Centered counseling: The culture" Ann Shanks Glauser & Jerold Bozarth explore the conditions that are necessary for successful counseling, and focus especially on the specialty of multicultural counseling. Published in the Journal of Counseling and Development, the article argues that person-centered counselling is at the very heart of success in counseling. Specifically, authors Glauser and Bazarth suggest that the relationship between the client and counselor, and the client's situational and personal resources (extratherapeutic variables), are the essential variables that determine success in counselling. Further, Glauser and Bazarth argue that the "specificity myth," or the concept that there are specific treatments for certain groups of people, can seriously damage the potential success of any counselling endeavour.

Glauser and Bazarth first thoroughly explore their thesis that the relationship of the therapist and client is absolutely essential to the success of counselling. They note that Rogers' postulates of "respect for the client (referring to unconditional positive regard), genuineness, empathic understanding, and the counselor's communication of these three therapist conditions to the client" are absolutely essential to successful counseling.

Further, the authors note that the failure of these postulates leads to reliance on the "specificity myth" in counseling.

Reliance on the "specificity" myth, or the idea that there are specific...

They provide statistical evidence for the relative unimportance of counseling technique, noting that only 15% of the success variance of the counseling relationship can be accounted for by technique, similar to the 15% accounted for by placebo. In contrast, Glauser and Bazarth note that fully 30% of the success variance comes from the client-counsellor relationship, and an impressive 40% comes from extratherapeutic variables or chance occurrences.
The authors then go on to explore the variables of the client-therapist relationship and the extratherapeutic variables of the client. They note that "most theories consider the (client-therapist) relationship as critical." A successful relationship is defined by the counselor's empathy for the client, seen in his or her genuineness with the client, and the counselor's true respect and value for the client. Glauser and Bazarth note, "Making judgments about people's humanity and its quality due to established criteria is to rely on tired but extremely powerful discourses steeped in oppression."

Glauser and Bazarth note that extratherapeutic variables include the "internal and external resources of the client as well as chance factors that influence the client." As such family support and individual abilities like optimism and problem solving skills are key extratherapeutic variables. These extratherapeutic variables should be…