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The person centered approach to counseling treats the person who is the subject in question as the paramount authority in all the matters regarding the person and deems the same to be fully capable and authorized to make all important as well as unimportant decisions for their own growth and development. The person centered approach does however state that for more pronounced growth and development, favorable conditions are necessary for the subject to dwell in, and the rate of development will vary with the favorableness of the conditions.

On the other hand, the cognitive behavioral therapy which was formulated over three decades ago considers thoughts to mediate stimuli, most notably emotions and events.

As represented by the figure above, the stimulus in the subject will provoke thought which will in the end result in the desired emotion being elicited from the person, clearly putting the onus of the emotion elicited on the thought provoked, and not directly on the stimulus in question. Cognitive therapy is underlined by two important assumptions that the therapist is required to make. The first being that the person is knows and understands his thoughts and is capable of changing and altering them as and when needed. Secondly, the provision that sometimes, the thoughts fail to elicit an emotion that reflects the reality of the situation adequately.

The person-centred approach is built on the existence of three core conditions that must be present to provide a climate conducive to growth. The core conditions are:

1. Unconditional positive regard
2. Empathic understanding
3. Congruence

The first conditions refers to the counselors open mindedness and non-judgmental approach to all the issues that the subject might be facing. It also calls for a fairly balanced understanding of the subject’s emotions from the patient’s own perspective. The final condition of congruence requires the counselor to be genuine and transparent to the client and not just put up a façade. Doing the latter hardly does anything to really better the condition of the client.

The person centered approach has often been criticized in psychology for a variety of reasons, which are often a misrepresentation of the challenges that the psychologist faces. The argument put forth by many is that providing the core conditions to a subject is the duty of any good therapist anyway, and does not really lead to any betterment of the patient’s condition. The actual work on the patient’s condition begins only after this initial phase and is really the part that requires a great level of expertise on behalf of the therapist. A deeper understanding of the point leads us to believe that the emphasis laid on the self and the three core conditions is inadequate in the analysis, something that is true on the count that apart from the conditions being dwelt in, these conditions don’t really bring anything else in focus.