For therapy to be effective, the therapist must be congruent in the relationship. This is a requirement to ‘be' and not necessarily to ‘do'

There is a great deal of misunderstanding about the third of Rogers’ necessary and sufficient conditions that the therapist be congruent in the relationship. This seems to be because there is a tendency to think about and to attempt to operationalise ‘congruence’ as action but congruence does not involve the counsellor in doing anything. It is a way of being in which outward behaviour is an accurate reflection of inner state, that is there is a matching of awareness and experience. Cornelius-White (2013: 195), drawing on the words of Rogers (1957: 97) in which Rogers refers to freely being the feelings that emerge and (1959: 214) where he writes of accurately being himself in the relationship as support, adds ‘the therapist’s expression or communication’ as an element of congruence. However, another way of understanding both these statements is that the emphasis is on ‘being’.