Understanding the Person-Centered approach to therapy: A reply to questions and misconceptions

As a first step in introducing the approach that has been uppermost in my own professional life, I would like to briefly introduce myself: my attitudes, interests and bent..

Viewing the person in context: A systemic model of change

Most humanistic theorists subscribe to the view that individuals, at least potentially or by nature, are self-realising autonomous beings

The phases and focus of empathy

Interpersonal empathy is a subtle and multisided phenomenon which can, nevertheless, lend itself to systematic portrayal and investigation. This paper further refines the author's account of empathy as involving a sequence of distinct steps or phases. Freshly introduced here is the idea of empathic response not only to self‐experience but also towards relationships conceived as emergent living wholes with their own felt presence and individuality. Given described preconditions for empathy, three main phases in a complete empathic process are distinguished: reception and resonation by the listener; expressive communication of this responsive awareness by the empathizing person; and the phase of received empathy, or awareness of being understood. The phases are not a single closed system, thus do not occur in lock step and are semi‐autonomous in practice. Responding empathically to relationship systems (existing as ‘we’ or ‘us’ to the participants and as a joint ‘you’ to others) may be interwoven with empathic response to individual ‘I’ experience. Although differing in focus, the empathic process follows the same phasic course in both cases. An underlying view is that individual selves are only one of the forms human life takes; other forms include relationships, families and living communities

The Roosevelt years: Crucial milieu for Carl Rogers' innovation.

This study explores broad features of political culture and event of the 1930s and World War 2 years, viewed in relation to the emergence and rapid early growth of the new therapy of Carl Rogers. The paper traces Rogers' early professional life and examines distinctive emphases in sociopolitical thought and development during Franklin D. Roosevelt's leadership as President over the prolonged emergency of the Great Depression and the crisis of the War. The study includes a focus on the President's own outlook and style, pertinent New Deal innovations, and wartime needs. Twelve features of this larger context are discriminated as together having vital importance for the new therapy and its founder. The congruent courses of the macrocontext and of Rogers' innovation are followed to the ending of Roosevelt's life. Direct causation is not attributed, but the evidence adduced newly points to particular contours of a larger environment favorable for the expression of Rogers' values and rare ability. In sum, the author concludes that a synergy of highly conducive historical circumstance and individual exceptionality contributed to the philosophical underpinnings, attitudinal values and early momentum of Rogers' client-centered therapy

Origins and evolution of the person-centred innovation in Carl Rogers’ lifetime

Knowing how a major development began and unfolded creates the possibility of understanding it in depth. The fact that Carl Rogers was an American and that he grew up, lived and worked in particular historical times has great bearing on the nature and impact of his contribution. Already an adolescent when the USA entered the First World War, Rogers’ tertiary education and first professional steps occurred in the 1920s. He then worked full time as a practitioner psychologist through the Great Depression and 1930s, and launched into his academic career and groundbreaking contribution during the Second World War. His innovative trajectory continued to the end of his life in February 1987

Experiential learning groups

This article provides descriptive guidelines to experiential groups for prospective participants. The statement may also be useful to leaders and of interest to other readers seeking a concrete view of working principles. The guidelines reflect value choices among possible goals in human living. One overarching value principle is that individuals should have the opportunity to be a principal architect of their own being and becoming. (1) Once a group begins, all persons belong because they are there. (2) A first purpose is to gain a sense of one another as inwardly active, feeling, thinking persons. (3) Each group member endeavors to be personal, direct and specific in communications. (4) Each of us listens to the other, not always with patience or sensitivity but generally with a concern to know what the other is experiencing. (5) We let our inner feelings of relatedness show as these feelings arise in us. (6) The group is a place for honesty and realism. (7) Group members are not seeking to sit in judgment on each other. (8) People in the group are responsible for themselves and to others. (9) We often provide each other with personal feedback. (10) What we express can be expected to call forth varied responses in different others. (11) Decisions involving some new or altered plan for the whole group are shared in by all members. (12) The group leader is a member of the group, with purposes and needs and "uniqueness," like everyone else

The client-centered system unfolding

Child was published by an unusually talented but, as then, largely unknown working clinician in Rochester, New York. Based on over a decade of field experience working with children, parents and families in difficulty—spanning a period that included the Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal—the book was an original and substantial resource to other workers in this field. While he was formally trained in psychology, it was evi-dent that the author's professional activity and principal influences (at that time) were equally associated with the field of social work. His book was a major factor in Carl R. Rogers' appointment the next year to a full professorship at Ohio State University..

Future directions of experiential psychotherapy

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Perceptual variables of the helping relationship: A measuring system and its fruits

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The relationship paradigm: Human being beyond individualism

In this important new book, Godfrey Barrett-Lennard challenges the individualist focus of traditionalist psychology by proposing that the human condition is basically relational and interdependent. Rich in depth and scope, The Relationship Paradigm explores relationship systems over an absorbing vista of multiple connections. This includes relations within the self, interpersonal relationships, relationships between and within communities, organizations and nations, and relationships with animals. There is a chapter on relations in war. The result is a sophisticated account of the complex weave of human relationships, providing counselors and other professionals who work with people with a foundation of thought that will offer fresh insights both for practice and the search for new knowledge.Combining new ideas with practice principles and illustrations, this is a book of rare value for students, practitioners and research enquirers