Book review

Book Review : Hugh Gunnison: Hypnocounseling: An eclectic bridge between Milton Erickson and Carl Rogers

Iberg, J.R.

Review | From volume/issue: 3.2 | Pages:

Book review

Book Review : Richard Bryant-Jefferies, Counseling a Survivor of Child Sexual Abuse. A person-centered dialogue

Moore, J.

Review | From volume/issue: 3.2 | Pages:

Editorial

Elliott, R., Mearns, D., Schmid, P. F.

Editorial | From volume/issue: 3.2 | Pages:

How Do Clients Make Empathy Work?

Bohart, A.C. - California State University Dominguez Hills and Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center

Article | From volume/issue: 3.2 | Pages: 102-116

Keywords: empathy, client as self-healer, client perspective, interventions

Abstract: Typical views of therapy are therapist-centric. Therapists and their interventions are portrayed as operating on client processes to create change. Some writers on client-centered therapy portray empathy responses as interventions designed to focus clients on feelings, access feelings or experience, deepen processing, and so on. An alternative to therapist-centric perspectives is offered. Clients are seen as active change agents who extract patterns of meaning from the therapy interaction, deduce implications, and use therapist empathy responses for purposes of self-support, validation, exploring experience, testing self-understanding, creating new meaning, and making connection with the therapist.

Letting Go of Who I Think I am: Listening to the Unconditioned Self

Moore, J. - University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

Article | From volume/issue: 3.2 | Pages: 117–128

Keywords: self, bodily experiencing, no-self, unconditioned self, spirituality, Buddhism

Abstract: This article considers the importance to the Person-Centered Approach of awareness of an ‘unconditioned self’ that can be accessed within the body. Carl Rogers’ early view of the self is presented, as is that put forward in Eugene Gendlin’s 1964 personality theory. The significance of inner awareness to Gendlin and his view of the unconscious as located in the body are considered in the light of work by more recent colleagues. Eastern and other spiritual perspectives on therapeutic practice are considered. An example from client work demonstrates the value to both counselor and client of responding from unconditioned inner awareness. Carl Rogers’ openness in his later years to taking into account inner physiological reactions as a means of living more positively, and in tune with the evolving flow of experience, is regarded as consistent with Dogen’s ‘forgetting’ of the ‘self’, and is seen as a desirable step in human spiritual evolution.

Problem-Centered Is Not Person-Centered

Mearns, D. - University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland

Article | From volume/issue: 3.2 | Pages: 88–101

Keywords: person-centered therapy, relationship-centeredness, problem-centeredness

Abstract: In this paper I look at the relationship between person-centered therapy and a problem-centered world in which the medical model is applied to mental health. I reject the responses of either opting out of that mainstream or conforming to it. Instead, I take a principled stance that the person-centered paradigm has much to offer and that it therefore behoves us to establish it by a process of ‘articulating’ with the relevant institutions of society. In this paper I endeavor to retain the personal and provocative nature of the keynote presentation from which it derives.

Process-Differentiation and Person-Centeredness: A contradiction?

Takens, R.J., Lietaer, G. - Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Article | From volume/issue: 3.2 | Pages: 77–87

Keywords: client-centered therapy, person-centered therapy, process differentiation

Abstract: In their comment on the keynote addresses to the Egmond PCE conference, 2003, the guest editors of the previous issue of PCEP reflect on some issues being raised, such as person-centered versus problem-centered views on psychotherapy; the place of diagnosis; the relationship variables as necessary and sufficient conditions for personality change; the expertise of the therapist; PCT as ideology, sect, or empirically based therapy; and the future of PCT.

Space Differentiation in Experiential Psychotherapy

Depestele, F. - Aarschot, Belgium

Article | From volume/issue: 3.2 | Pages: 129–139

Keywords: experiential psychotherapy, therapeutic change, therapeutic spaces, focusing , language

Abstract: Upon coming into therapy, the client first creates with the therapist a relationship space. In this space the reflection space develops. When the client is reflecting on a felt sense, they are in the focusing space. When the client explicates this felt sense, they work in the symbolization space. When new ideas pop in spontaneously, experiencing symbolizes itself; this happens in the self-symbolization space. Such a cycle or sequence, going to the focusing space and the symbolization space, is passed through countless times. On this micro-level a space is part of a change step. For a long period the client may work mainly in the relationship space. There they make many cycles of a change step, by which their therapy slowly moves up into the reflection space. On this macro-level a space is a phase. The essential role language plays in each moment and each dimension of change is outlined.