Routledge Handbook of Applied Sport Psychology

Abstract

Service delivery models must address three areas if they are to guide practitioners. They need to help practitioners: understand athletes’ experiences, determine ways of assisting clients, and assess consultancy effectiveness. Against these criteria, person-centered approaches are well-suited to guiding practitioners. This chapter surveys literature on person-centered approach in sport psychology, discusses how it may apply to the domain, and suggests ways practitioners can develop their knowledge, skills, and use of the framework. Person-Centered Therapy explains personhood, the causes of distress, and how and why practitioners can help athletes. Incongruence is the basis of psychological distress and maladaptive behavior. People strive to integrate their organismic experiences with their self-structures. Person-centered practitioners aim to provide the psychological conditions allowing athletes to self-explore and self-heal. The approach involves non-directive counseling based on the hypotheses that people have the attributes to enhance their self-understanding and to alter their self-concepts, attitudes, and behavior; and will achieve these outcomes if practitioners provide a suitable psychological climate.

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