This type of therapy has been around since the 50's. Many T's saw it as an alternative to behaviorism (predecessor to CBT) and certainly to psychoanalysis. Many T's consider themselves to be psychodynamic in nature, meaning that they pay attention to many of the core concepts in psychoanalysis (e.g. defense mechanisms), but they have a person-centered approach. At its core, this just means that you reflect back to people what they say to you and make sure you have understood them and that they hear you. My friends in clinical psychology school learned this first, and they got super annoying practicing it on the rest of us, as to me at least, someone repeating, "what I hear you saying is . . . . " makes me want to smack them, after about 3 iterations of this. I have interviewed T's who seemed to only have this trick up their sleeve, and they couldn't even restate what I'd said properly. Fail and fail.

Like any T approach, it's not the be-all-end-all of therapy. I wouldn't strive, if I were in T school, to make this my one trick pony.