From: Participants at a Person-Centered Meeting at Bad Hall, Austria, July 1996

Dear colleagues,

We are writing to you following discussions held at a meeting of person-centered therapists which took place in Bad Hall, Austria, immediately after the First Congress of the World Council of Psychotherapy in Vienna.

The meeting in Bad Hall took the form of intensive exploration over a three day period of those issues facing the client-centered and experiential traditions in the immediate years ahead. Participants were drawn from many countries and three continents. There was some disappointment at the lack of significant key-note contributions from the person-centered perspective at the World Congress and a recognition that much needs to be done if we are not only to take our rightful position on the international stage but also to make readily accessible to our colleagues from other orientations those aspects of our theory and practice which are only now beginning to be recognized and valued, without acknowledgement of their origin, as a result of developments and advances in other approaches to psychotherapy.

It is clear to us that the time is now ripe for the creation of an identifiable, international organization which can serve as a world-wide forum for those professionals who have

• A commitment to the primary importance of the relationship between the therapist and the client,

• an essential trust in the experiential world of the client and its centrality for the therapeutic endeavour,

• a belief in the efficacy of the conditions and attitude conducive to therapeutic movement first postulated by Carl Rogers and a commitment to their active implementation within the therapeutic relationship,

• a commitment to the understanding of both clients and therapists as persons who are at one and the same time individuals and in relationship with others and with their environment,

• an openness to the elaboration and development of person-centered and experiential theory in the light of current and future practice and research.

We believe that the creation of an international organisation is vital for the future survival and enhancement of our approach and we therefore strongly propose the establishing of the

International Association For Person-Centered Therapy (IAPCT)

An Association for the Science and Practice of Client-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies and Counselling

The Association, as we envisage it, would be open to both organisational and individual members and would invite to its membership existing national organisations, major agencies, and training institutes within the university system and outside of it. Among its functions would be the general oversight of future international conferences and the production of a high-quality journal which would be fully cognisant of the major contributions currently made by those from non-English speaking countries.

We encourage all recipients of this letter to disseminate information about the proposed International Association to those within their own sphere. We would also ask that reactions to the proposal and further suggestions about the formation and functioning of an international association be submitted to one of the six persons whose addresses appear below by April 1, 1997 at the latest.

It is our hope that final decision could be taken and concrete plans for the foundations of the Association made during the Fourth International Conference on Client-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy to be held in Portugal in 1997. This will be the tenth year since Carl Rogers' death and an appropriate time to take a major step to ensure the continuing vitality and influence of the distinctive approach to psychotherapy to which we are committed in our various ways.

Signed by:
Anna Auckenthaler, D • Eva-Maria Biermann-Ratjen, D • Ute Binder, D • Rainer Bürki, CH • Christian Fehringer, A • Peter Frenzel, A • Ned Gaylin, USA • Christiane Geiser, CH • Martin van Kalmthout, NL • Sylvia & Wolfgang Keil, A • Lore Korbei, A • Colin Lago, GB • Mia Leijssen, B • Germain Lietaer, B • Robert Lucas, USA • Mhairi MacMillan, GB • Wolfgang Neumann, D • Bernie Neville, AUS • Maureen O'Hara, USA • Wolfgang Pfeiffer, D • Marlis Pörtner, CH • Uli Schlunder, D • Peter F. Schmid, A • Hermann Spielhofer, A • Brian Thorne, GB • Margaret Warner, USA • Marietta Winkler, A • Andreas Wittrahm, D • Elisabeth Zinschitz, A.

Participants of the Bad Hall meeting