Person-centred Therapy

Previous scholarly studies have discussed the use of Zen Buddhism
within the person-centred approach of Carl Rogers, demonstrating the feasible influence of Buddhism over Rogers’s theories. The present research delves into the convergence and divergence of person-centred therapy and the Mahāyāna (one of the current mainstreams of Buddhism) philosophy explicated within the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra (a significant Mahāyāna canon); in particular, the bodhisattva spirit and four immeasurables, including loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. Findings indicate that Carl Rogers’s counselling principles and practices comply with the Buddhist teachings of phenomenal vision, actualising tendency, and innate eagerness to alleviate suffering. This discussion also analyses ideas that have
seldom been examined in person-centred principles, such as bodhisattva
altruism, mind purity in nature and impurity caused by bewilderment,
compassion fatigue, causes of suffering, and counselling techniques.
Mahāyāna wisdom potentially offers references to the Rogerian family of
theories, which also sheds light on the use of Buddhist-influenced non-medical interventions.

Meaninglessness is one of the biggest threats of our era. Meaninglessness is not only one of the possible symptoms of depression; meaninglessness as such is a complex experience which can be identified at a micro-dimensional felt sensed level, as a meaning gap at a meso-dimensional  narrative level, and as groundlessness at a macro-dimensional existential level. Person-centered therapies have explicitly focused on the micro- and meso-dimension of meaning; existential therapies have emphasized the macro-dimensions by helping their clients to face the existential givens such as meaninglessness and meaning. In this article we explore how experiential-existential psychotherapy could help clients in dealing with meaninglessness by addressing this experience with micro-, meso-, and macro-dimensional interventions. A case study reveals how all meaning-dimensions are important, but not at any moment. The client concludes the therapy with discovering what is most essential to him in life. From this experience he finds the courage to engage with life at the fullest, whether it is ultimately meaningful or not.

Evidence-based practice has become an important approach to social work practice. This paper highlights some of the ethical dilemmas which may be implicated by this approach, and encourages social workers and social work researchers to carefully consider these potential quandaries.

Shared decision-making and person centred care (PCC/SDM) are increasingly embraced framework conceptions on how to organise health care's interaction with patients. Although underlying ethical motivation may vary, PCC/SDM holds ideals of a greater adaption of health care to individual circumstances, and of recognising patients as collaborators in clinical decision-making. The PCC/SDM notion has migrated quickly across many areas where it is less clear how it applies, due to patients being in non-standard conditions with regard to personal capacities or care context, and detected to offer a number of peculiar ethical and practical challenges. But the migration has also reached areas with even less similarity to the original PCC/SDM landscape of somatic hospital care. In this presentation, we describe – based on comissioned and work in a Swedish context and ongoing research studies – three examples of this expansion and survey these for extra ethical complications: forensic care, social services and public health (outside of health care institutions). Each area offers peculiar extra ethical challenges for PCC/SDM, as they depart extensively from standard assumptions by, in various ways, embracing goals not built on the standard individualist assumptions of health care ethics. It is possible to implement adapted forms of PCC/SDM to these areas, but these cannot be assumed to serve ideals of emancipating, empowering or recognising individuals as persons. Rather, they have to be viewed though a lens of public goods aimed for in the respective areas. Clients and patients are entitled to be made aware of this fact, but regardless of this, the mentioned perspective-shift will pose particular challenges for health professionals. At the same time, PCC/SDM strategies may also open up for approaches to resolving these tensions and meet typical challenges that would otherwise have remained out of reach.

Meaning in life is generally not considered to be one of the most central
aspects of person-centered and experiential therapies. However, Carl
Rogers described how clients found purpose in life by going through
a process that helped them to connect to their inner experiencing. This
process was evoked by an empathic, accepting, and genuine therapeutic relationship and resulted in positive therapy outcome. Recently,
scholars have also stressed the importance of the therapeutic alliance
to foster meaning-making processes in therapy. Meaning in life is also
related to well-being. Therefore, the aim of this study is to test whether
meaning in life would mediate between therapeutic alliance and therapy outcome in person-centered and experiential psychotherapies.
Our sample consisted of 96 outpatients nested within 23 therapists.
Using multilevel modeling, we found that meaning in life indeed
mediates between the therapeutic relationship and therapy outcome.
This suggests that meaning in life might actually be at the very core of
person-centered and experiential therapies, and therefore deserves the
attention of clinicians as well as theorists. Our results support the idea
that the therapeutic bond might foster meaning(-making processes) in
therapy, leading to better therapy outcome. However, this idea should
be explored further using longitudinal methods.

In dit artikel wordt stilgestaan bij de laatste inzichten in de ontwikkeling en plasticiteit van het brein in het algemeen en de impact van interpersoonlijke relaties op neurofysiologische processen, de groei van neuronale circuits, in het bijzonder. Vanuit een interpersoonlijk neurobiologisch perspectief laat ik zien dat de non-specifieke factoren van de psychotherapeutische relatie het brein op een heel specifieke manier kunnen veranderen.

This chapter will explore the core values that underpin a person-centred approach to working with people who have long-term mental health problems. The emphasis will be on adapting models and approaches to person-centred mental health care, to different stages in a person’s recovery from, or life with a long-term mental illness. In order to adapt how we work with people during transition from an acute phase of illness in to recovery; during recovery; whilst maintaining wellness and during relapse; it will be proposed that it is our responsibility as practitioners to be flexible; to fulfil different roles in the relationship; and to respond to the person’s needs rather than expect the person with mental illness to fit in with prescribed professional roles and teams. This will require the reader to accept two things. First, that healthcare services exist within complex systems and that it may be a challenge to adapt some of these principles to the context in which they work; and second, that the therapeutic relationship is fundamental to all of our work with people with long-term mental health problems. We must first invest in the relationship with our clients so that any of the models or organisational frameworks might be employed effectively.

In order to have the chapter centred on the experience of people with long-term mental health problems, it is illustrated by a letter from Jonathan, a service-user with schizoaffective disorder. It is a reasonable critique of service-user involvement that one or two voices do not represent the experience of all and that it is not possible to generalise from the narratives of, in this case, Jonathan, and to translate his experience to others. However, there is power in his narrative and as you will see below, Jonathan acknowledges “I can only tell you what I need and this may be different from the next person, but at least it is a start.” His narrative will be used to link theory to practice and to explore different approaches to person-centred care.

The applicability of the Person-centered Approach to psychotherapy (i.e. PCA) toward culturally varying clients is often claimed to be limited, as it has developed based on Rogers’ ideas that are often accused of being culturally biased. In particular, Rogers’ concept of self-actualization with its emphasis on personal autonomy and independence has been subject to the criticism that it reflects Western individualistic cultural emphases on the view of the independent self while disregarding the view of the interdependent self that is prevalent in non-Western collectivistic cultures. This article explores Rogers’ concept of self-actualization, evaluating the applicability of the PCA toward both Western and non-Western cultural contexts. Arguing for its applicability to culturally varying clients, it suggests that organismic potentialities of individuals involve the tendencies toward both independence and interdependence that may be manifested by the actualizing tendency in different ways, influenced by different cultures. Therefore, although what clients aim to achieve in terms of self-actualization may be different, therapists need to focus on what is universal in relation to self-actualization, that is, the actualizing tendency that is the motivation for therapeutic change. It also explores what focusing on the client’s actualizing tendency would mean and involve in multicultural counseling.

In the 1980s I knew a remarkable man called Carl Rogers. He was one of the most eminent psychologists of the last century. He became so because, on the one hand, he was inspired by the limitless potential that he saw in the human spirit and, on the other, because he was willing to ask awkward questions, think them through and develop new thinking. He was also very good at drawing together a circle of talented people inspired by his ideas but also willing to go on and develop their own.

Vanhooren, S. (2019).  In W. Krikilion & J. Pieper (Eds.). Positieve psychologie en zingeving: Integratie en toepassingen (pp. 51-66). Tilburg, N: KSGV. Op zoek naar zingeving? Antwoorden vanuit de positieve en de experiëntieel-existentiële psychologie Inleiding Wat één of twee decennia geleden nog oubollig zou geklonken hebben, staat vandaag in het centrum van onze aandacht. Existentiële thema's zoals zingeving, identiteit en eindigheid klinken niet alleen door in de media; ze vormen ook de eigenlijke grond van onze hedendaagse maatschappelijke debatten. Angst voor cultureel identiteitsverlies, angst voor controleverlies en de dreigende onleefbaarheid van onze planeet, kleuren politieke discussies gaande van de huiskamer tot in het Europees parlement. Het voorjaar van 2019 werd gekleurd door klimaatmarsen waarbij scholieren en studenten blijk gaven van het besef van deze mondiale existentiële problematiek. Tegen deze achtergrond zoekt de westerse mens-die materieel alles bezit, maar bang is om het te verliezen-naar een manier om zijn of haar bestaan zin te geven. Dat de existentiële nood op individueel vlak hoog is wordt bevestigd door onderzoek. Zo blijkt één tot twee derde van de cliënten in de GGZ vandaag op zoek te zijn naar zingeving (Golovchanova, Dezutter, & Vanhooren, in press; Hill, 2016). Volgens Hill (2016) blijken psychotherapeuten hier trouwens moeilijk mee overweg te kunnen. In het kielzog van een vertechniseerde samenleving dreigt onze hulpverlening verdund te worden tot een aaneenschakeling van interventies, waarbij het aanwezig kunnen zijn bij de existentieel lijdende ander in toenemende mate een schaars goed wordt (Schneider & Serlin, 2009).

This research paper is a narrative literature review, carried out from a humanistic perspective of Psychology, presenting the historical and current context of group psychotherapy. Several authors have contributed to its development since the beginning of the 20th century, starting with the pioneering work of Joseph Pratt. The modality developed substantially after the horrors of World War II and, since then, Carl Rogers and Irvin Yalom stand out as the most prominent spokesmen of this particular way of therapy in the Humanistic Psychology. The research juxtaposes the theoretical and practical thinking regarding group psychotherapy from the perspective of the Person Centered Approach, founded by Rogers, to the theoretical and practical views fostered by the existentialist Yalom. In his individual therapy, at first, Rogers postulates a totally non-directive approach, later transitioning to a “client-centred therapy” and finally to the “Person-centred Approach”. He applies the assumptions of the later – the three core conditions – in his approach to group psychotherapy. The psychiatrist and novelist Yalom, on the other hand, disengages from psychoanalysis and embraces the existential-humanistic psychology, releasing the highly regarded treatise on group psychotherapy: "Group Psychotherapy: Theory and Practice" in the 70s, which has since been the foundation for many group psychotherapists all around the globe. Yalom interprets that the group therapeutic process occurs through a tangled interaction of human experiences, which he termed "11 therapeutic factors." It's evidenced that the knowledge necessary for the facilitation of Rogers' groups are extensions of the same concepts already formulated in his individual therapy and “Way of Being”. It's concluded that Rogers' core conditions are sine qua non premises for Yalom's therapeutic factors. Both authors consider the group a therapeutic tool with enormous potential for human development – especially when coordinated by a well-educated facilitator.

This paper aims to give a general overview of the theoretical and practical background of person-centred group biblio/poetry therapy, and introduces the 'Pécs School' (Hungary) which represents this field. The author summarizes some opportunities of biblio/poetry therapy offered to different target groups, facilitated by professionals trained in Pécs. This work is based on books and other text-like materials used as mental health tools to spark interactive and (self)reflective reading, writing, and discussion that promote personal growth, and improve positive outcomes for people of various gender and age groups in different social contexts, living with mental health and emotional wellbeing issues.

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This chapter presents a framework for understanding the knowledge, skills and attitudes that support effective and ethical dance movement therapy (DMT) practice across cultural boundaries. I summarise and discuss a long-term qualitative inquiry conducted through cognitive-behavioural modelling, action research workshops and interviews with health, caring and managerial professionals from over 60 countries. Drawing on my application of the model in professional development programmes, my own clinical experience and interviews with other dance movement therapists, I discuss the implications of the ensuing Transcultural Competence model for DMT theory and practice. I provide a framework for practitioners to review their own practice and development needs, propose ways in which the DMT profession can be strengthened by giving greater attention to cultural issues in training and supervision, and make suggestions for future research.

"This paper illustrates the potential uses of poetry therapy for practitioners interested in
cognitively based psychotherapies. Separate brief discussions of cognitive therapy and the
uses of poetry and poetry therapy are presented. The congruence between these two
approaches is addressed. Sample exercises and poems as illustrations are presented that
demonstrate this congruence."

The drive for a theoretical integration of psychotherapy arises out of is dissatisfaction with the inadequacy of single systems/theories. It has been suggested that there is a need for a 'meta-theory' that provides a framework to integrate different psychotherapy theories in terms of some shared construct. The theoretical integration should take into account behaviour, emotion, cognition, and interpersonal factors. In addition, trans-theoretical considerations should include theory and data from neurology and psychiatry. Some different integrative 'frameworks' are noted, including Clarkson's 'Systemic Integrative Psychotherapy'. Some neuroscience based frameworks for integration are also mentioned. It is proposed that homeostasis could serve as a meta-theory that encapsulates principles in terms of which to 'systematically' integrate aspects of psychotherapy, including trans-theoretical dimensions.

This essay introduces Carl Rogers' person-centred therapy.  It explains the core conditions of congruence, unconditional positive regard and empathy and provides a critique of the core conditions.  It then discusses difference and diversity, theoretical underpinnings of psychotherapy, therapist bias, and cultural confusion regarding the role of the therapist.

¿Cómo se puede poner en práctica la consideración positiva incondicional dentro de una relación psicoterapéutica? Sabemos que se trata de una de las condiciones que menciona Carl Rogers para crear un clima facilitador de crecimiento, al lado de la empatía y la congruencia. Sin embargo, la consideración positiva es un sentimiento y por lo tanto no se puede forzar. Entonces, ¿cómo un psicoterapeuta o un acompañante puede experimentarla frente a sus clientes y evitar el juicio o la evaluación proyectiva?

Therapy can be confusing: two people converse in a private room, one in distress, the other described as a helpful expert. At least one of the two is likely to express thoughts and feelings usually kept secret. In other circumstances, the exchange of such intimacies may herald a more physical relationship. For therapists, however, the professional relationship explicitly precludes such contact. The BACP Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy,1 for example, requires that practitioners must not abuse their client’s trust in order to gain sexual, emotional, financial, or any other kind of personal advantage. Sexual relations with clients are prohibited, along with sexualised behaviour.

While psychotherapists and counsellors generally acknowledge that sexual attraction is a common and often ordinary human response to another, they also recognise that acting on such feelings in therapy will quickly become problematic. The early psychoanalytic community had to confront and respond to such instances as Jung’s relationship with Sabina Spielrein.2 Rosie Alexander’s3 description of the times she sat on her therapist’s knee and felt his erection, elicits a mixture of emotions in the reader, not least shock, and the narrative is saturated with a sense of betrayal.

There have been several types of research investigating boundary breaches and sexual boundary violations.4 In spite of these, however, there is little certainty about how common sexual boundary violations are, as the sources of information about them (confession, client reporting, complaints to organisations, and knowledge of colleagues’ conduct) are all vulnerable to error. Further studies have attempted to identify characteristics of transgressing therapists and the factors that contribute to such events (see Moggi et al5 for an example), and to understand the effects on clients who have experienced therapist-client sex.6 If sexual feelings are ubiquitous and sexual attraction a real possibility in the context of the therapy relationship, how are these managed in therapy? Complaints about sexual boundary violations form a small proportion of complaints about therapists and health professionals.4, 7, 8 Is it the prospect of opprobrium from colleagues or the threat of sanctions from regulatory agencies that contains the relationship within professional boundaries? Do reported violations represent only a small proportion of actual sexual boundary violations? .......

There are very few psychoanal-ists, Gestal-tists, behaviorists, transactional analysts, synergists, or any other Western-sty1e mental heafth practitloners of whatever description in Afrlca. There are, however, izctngomt, ttnagclLltct, dlngabct and n' gcth-c,-, the practiti-onerrs so often described as divj-ners or witchdoctors, who have also t..ndergone training of an elitist nature. Some have been trained according to the custom of the umdaLnu, the lion people, while others belong to Line nguni, the sable-antelope cuft. Of all the trJestern approacl-res to psychotherapy, perhaps none are more at home on the African continent than that of Rogers and Jung. In fact, I have been wondering for several years now about the seerningly unlikely afflnity of the approaches of Rogers and Jung to the vrork of the indigenous healers of Africa. In this paper I would like to consider some of the striking sirnilarities and also dissimilarities between the Person-centered approach of Rogers and indigenous healing. What do these t\,./o approaches, which have devefoped in vastly dlssimifar cultural contexts/ many thousand of miles away from each other, have in common?

This article explores existential principles through autoethnographic poetry and narrative reflections. The use of poetry and narrative as tools in qualitative research is explored. Poetry and narratives are shown to be valuable tools for presenting people's lived experiences of complex existential principles and processes. The use of poetry and narrative in this research is positioned within the traditions of expressive arts and postmodern research methods.

The binary brain of the lizard suits its context. Lizard survival depends upon accurate answers to simple questions: Is this food, or not food? Is there danger, or no danger? As humans, we share this ancient, primitive, binary brain structure with lizards-yet the limited capacity of the binary brain does not, by itself, suit any human in the context of twenty-first century life. Questions of survival remain simple, but life-promoting strategies, in the sense of skillful or efficacious actions, require processing an exponential explosion of interdependent variables, themselves contingent upon shifting interpretations of ever-changing events.

This literature review brings together almost all of the literature available worldwide for person-centred counselling for autistic people. The review demonstrates that person-centred counselling can be a highly effective therapy type for the autistic client group, the core conditions of empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard are vital. Autistic people often grow up with many conditions of worth, the PCA is ideal for breaking these down. The review explores what adaptations are currently being made and which could be made to make person-centred counselling more accessible to this under-supported group. The author is of the firm opinion that as autistic people are individuals too, it is important that all therapeutic approaches are made available to them, not just CBT which is the predominant offering.

Posttraumatische groei kunnen we het best begrijpen als een
grondige herschrijving van wat het betekent onszelf te zijn in
relatie tot de ander en tot wat ons overstijgt. Aan de hand van
zowel mythologische verhalen als van cliëntervaringen staan we
stil bij wat het betekent om door de hel te gaan en daar onze
fundamentele nietigheid te ervaren. Voorbij de wanhoop kunnen we met de hulp van anderen de moed vatten om onszelf en onze wereld met een nieuwe openheid naar onze ervaring betekenis te geven.

O presente estudo propõe uma reflexão sobre a compreensão da angústia na psicoterapia centrada na pessoa, tendo como ponto de partida básico algumas obras de Carl R. Rogers (1902-1987). A pesquisa desenvolveu-se a partir de inquietações oriundas desse tema e pelo interesse de conhecer como a psicoterapia centrada na pessoa compreende a angústia. Por meio de uma revisão bibliográfica, foi possível perceber uma concepção de angústia como um fenômeno inerente à realidade existencial, pertencendo, pois, ao campo fenomenal da pessoa. Com a produção de tal estudo, percebeu-se também que a angústia é invariavelmente associada a um estado de desadaptação, oriunda do desacordo vivido pela pessoa entre o " Eu " e sua experiência. Assim sendo, o processo terapêutico surge como um elemento que contribui para a diminuição da angústia, visto que a pessoa tende a atualizar-se ou, sob uma perspectiva organísmica, a funcionar plenamente.

Abstract

THE EFFECTS OF EXPRESSIVE ARTS ON DECISION-MAKING:
SENSEMAKING IN SITUATIONS OF COMPLEXITY AND AMBIGUITY

The increase in personal and global interdependence, interconnectedness, and diversity is compelling individuals and organizations to make decisions in situations of escalating complexity and ambiguity. There is a need to find methods that allow individuals to make sense of complex situations where no clear way of proceeding is evident. In this dissertation, this researcher focuses on expressive arts methods to facilitate sensemaking and decision-making in situations of high complexity and ambiguity. This qualitative research is an exploration of the questions: What can we learn from high functioning people about the value of their artistic practices in helping them to make good decisions? and How can this knowledge be integrated with expressive arts coaching to help individuals and groups strengthen their own decision-making processes? The first part of this study included interviews with a diverse group of high functioning, well-adapted, successful individuals, who consistently practiced the arts. They were interviewed about how making art functioned in their lives from childhood up to the moment of the interview. The second part of this study included one group expressive arts workshop and individual expressive arts sessions designed to facilitate decision-making about specific questions brought in by the participants. All of the questions were about situations of high ambiguity where no clear path was readily identifiable, such as: (a) What is my role in the community?, (b) How can I fit more on my plate without taking anything off?, (c) What should I do next professionally?, (d) What should I look for in a future mate? and (e) How can I move forward in my art career? The research resulted in a number of important findings. From the interviews, it was found that practicing the arts played a role in five domains of the interviewees' lives. These domains were: The Self, Emotional Management, Connection to People, Connection to the World, and Creative Visualization. These five domains were visualized as a network to understand their relationships in accordance with ideas from the complex adaptive system metaphor. The issue of resistance to expressive arts methods from people unfamiliar with them was linked to the relation between the exploration of new possibilities and the exploitation of old certainties, which is a concern for all complex adaptive systems including individuals and organizations. In this study, the researcher helped to identify ways in which expressive arts can contribute to decision making: (a) it was observed that expressive arts allowed individuals to turn ambiguous situations into comprehended ones, explicitly in words, which permitted them to take action: either deciding something mentally and/or implementing a decision, (b) Expressive arts allowed people to manage emotions while making decisions, and (c) to manage emotions while implementing decisions. The use of expressive arts highlighted personal and environmental unfolding, emergence, agency, flow, and transience that could have been obscured by using exclusively analytical methods for sensemaking and decision-making. The encouraging findings obtained in this research call for further, extensive, and in-depth explorations of the use of expressive arts as a tool for sensemaking and decision-making—for individuals and groups—in situations of high complexity, ambiguity and emotionality.

Aim: To identify therapists’ views on sexual boundaries and the strategies they employ to manage them in therapeutic practice. Method: In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with a sample of 13 accredited, experienced practitioners of psychotherapy or counselling. A grounded theory approach, informed by principles from Free Association Narrative methodology, was employed, in which team members used debriefing sessions for extending depth of understanding of the interviews. Findings: There is consensus about boundaries at the extremes, but variability about fantasy, flirtation and touch. A core process was generated from accounts of successful management of sexual attraction. We identified four problematic ways of reacting to boundary pressure, each with potential to harm clients and therapy. Discussion: A participant-observer stance was conceptualised as essential for managing threats to boundaries, consistent with the empathic stance. Minor boundary crossings were viewed by interviewees as both potential precursors of more serious transgressions, and as opportunities for understanding the client's difficulties. Implications for practice: These span training, accrediting organisations, supervision and therapy practice.

Darkness and destruction are as much part of human life as
depression, anxiety, and joy are. However, humanistic therapies –
and especially the person-centered approach – have not been very
explicit about how to deal with clients who leave a trace of sexual
and physical violence behind them. The theory-building case
study of Bruno not only helps us to broaden our theoretical
understanding about patterns of destructive functioning, but
also shows how a sustained effort in fostering the therapeutic
relationship and the experiential processing of painful traumatic
experiences can lead to an improved affect regulation, selfsoothing,
and self-acceptance. On an interpersonal and existential
level, the client’s growing capacity to listen to his unfulfilled
existential needs made him aware of his yearning for human
connection. It also created an openness to search for meaning in
life and connect with others in a deeper and meaningful way

Gender is an intimately experienced feature of who each of us is as a person. Gender is also a source of theoretical upheaval. Reconceptualization of the concept of gender is underway throughout the academic world. Joining this effort, I give a brief overview of relevant feminist literature and explore some of the ways gender is treated in person-centered and experiential (PCE) theory and practice. I discuss a number of negative consequences in our theory and our life together that result from ignoring the effects of gender issues and suggest that increasing our empathic attention to the gendered context in which we live would prepare us to more fully embody the liberating potential with each other that is inherent in our theory, and better communicate that potential beyond the PCE community.

This article explores fundamental epistemological and methodological themes in the visionary work of Carl Rogers and colleagues. These revolutionary themes contribute to the creation of an integrative, post-patriarchal, post-dualistic paradigm for psychology, human development, gender studies and other related fields. These themes hold significance far beyond the boundaries of personality and psychotherapy. Research on the perceptual and phenomenological approach to psychotherapy and personality development, generated by an amazing cohort of client-centered theory creators was prophetic and is still vibrant today. (Raskin

This article explores the congruence between poetry therapy and the strengths perspective of social work. It demonstrates the ways in which poetry therapy is consistent with the strengths perspective and discusses methods for its utilization in direct practice settings. Case examples are provided to help the practitioner learn how to utilize poetry therapy with clients from diverse backgrounds. As a tool in strengths-based practice, poetry and poetry therapy can help empower clients and help to focus practitioners on clients' capacities and resilencies. This article seeks to expand upon the growing literature of strengths-based social work, addressing how the theory can be applied to clinical practice situations. Table 1: Useful Resources for Poetry Therapy Zahner-Roloff, L. (1987). Social despair in adolescent boys: Poetic therapies and metaphoric diagnoses.

This paper explores how creative counselling can enhance person-centred counselling (and similar talking therapies) for autistic people, bridging the gap from a predominantly verbal endeavour, which can exclude people who struggle verbally. Included is a piece written by Harry who is 13 and ASD, demonstrating how art can prompt a deep understanding of feelings.

This article was first published as a blog for The Creative Counsellors Club: https://thecreativecounsellorsclub.com/2019/08/07/autistic-clients/

Experiential-existential therapy is an emerging approach within the broader spectrum of humanistic and existential psychotherapies. Rooted in person-centered and experiential psychotherapy, it emphasizes the experiential and interactional process aspects of existence. Experiential-existential therapy differs from contemporary person-centered and experiential therapies because it adopts an existential theoretical framework to deepen the therapist’s understanding of the client’s life process. As a consequence the therapist is more able to resonate and empathize with the client’s existential concerns. It not only increases the therapist’s capacity to be with the client’s deepest issues, the experiential and interpersonal focus make it also possible to engage with the client’s life process in the here-and-now situation. This new model reclaims the original existential-phenomenological foundations of person-centered and focusing-oriented therapy and puts experiential meaning-processes at the heart of the therapeutic work. Theoretically it seeks a new balance between process and content aspects and between not-knowing and research. In this chapter we introduce experiential-existential psychotherapy, its unique position in the field of existential and experiential therapies, and its future challenges.

Rogers lahir di Oak Park, Illinois, pada 8 Januari 1902. Pada umur 12 tahun keluarganya mengusahakan pertanian dan Rogers menjadi tertarik kepada pertanian secara ilmiah. Pertanian ini membawanya ke perguruan tinggi, dan pada tahun-tahun pertama Rogers sangat gemar akan ilmu alam dan ilmu hayat. • Setelah menyelesaikan pelajaran di University of Wisconsin pada 1924 Rogers lalu masuk Union Theological College of Columbia; disana Rogers mendapat pandangan yang liberal dan filsafat mengenai agama. Kemudian pindah ke Teachers College of Columbia; disana Rogers terpengaruh oleh filsafat John Dewey serta mengenal psikologi klinis dengan bimbingan L. Hollingworth. Rigers mendapat gelar M.A. pada 1928 dan doctor pada 1931 di Columbia.

This dissertation explores the views, attitudes and experiences of four accredited therapists working in Ireland in relation to crying in front of a client. Only a handful of publications have dealt with the subject directly and this void in the literature necessarily impacts upon how training programmes address the topic. Research efforts so far have mainly used quantitative measures to investigate the phenomenon, with the exception of Waldman’s (1995) qualitative study. These enterprises have confirmed that some counsellors do cry in client sessions, though some do not, and that a number of factors may determine the responses of practitioners. This additional qualitative enquiry is guided by the evident need to gather more specific data about how therapists actually think in the moment and about how they manage experiences of emotional intensity that could lead to their crying. The researcher also wanted to find out whether therapists’ theoretical perspectives affected their thinking about crying in the context of their work. The important issue of transcendent tears, omitted from most previous discussions, is also examined. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was chosen as the most suitable method for addressing these areas, through on-to-one interviews. The interviews revealed the crying behaviour of participating counsellors to be an extremely complex phenomenon, touching upon many significant aspects of the therapeutic process. An important distinction between tearing-up and a full crying episode emerged, in which the former behaviour was accepted by participants as part of counsellor congruence and empathy. Issues are identified for consideration by training institutions and implications for the supervisory process and therapist self-care are assessed. It is hoped that this research will go some way towards distinguishing between helpful and unhelpful forms of crying as well as normalising this mode of emotional expression as a legitimate form of self-disclosure, when situationally appropriate, for therapists in the course of their clinical work.

Carl Rogers – The Pioneer

Up until the 1950’s, particularly in North America, psychoanalysis and behaviourism dominated the psychological approaches employed by psychologists and psychiatrists (Glassman & Hadah, 2009). Many people felt that these paradigms ignored the deep feelings that they had – that they were much more than programmed creatures, slaves to conditioned responses and behaviour over which they had no control and of which they were supposedly not even always consciously aware. Rather, most people firmly believed “that they were unique, thinking, feeling, hoping, dreaming, planning, growing beings that were special in their own unique ways” (Glassman & Hadah, 2009).

Nous nous situons dans le contexte de l'Approche centrée sur la personne de Carl Rogers.
Comment peut-on mettre en pratique le regard positif inconditionnel dans la relation ? On sait qu'il s'agit d'une des conditions que mentionne Carl Rogers pour créer un climat facilitateur de croissance, aux côtés notamment de l'empathie et de la congruence. Mais ces trois conditions n'ont pas tout à fait le même statut. La congruence et l'empathie sont des attitudes que l'on peut cultiver et développer alors que la qualité de mon regard positif dépend en grande partie des sentiments que j'éprouve pour mon client, de mes jugements, peut-être même de mes projections et interprétations. Alors, comment un psychothérapeute ou un accompagnant peut-il adopter cette attitude de considération positive inconditionnelle vis-à-vis de ses clients et la maintenir au fil de la relation?

Life after a traumatic experience is never easy. This is certainly the case for victims. For many offenders, committing a crime might be a traumatic experience as well, and incarceration may confront them even more with the consequences of their deeds. Humanistic therapies are very suitable for encouraging clients to embark on an explicit meaning-making process. In this article, we explore with a case study how experiential–existential therapy can foster meaning making and posttraumatic growth in prisoners. With Diana, we started with identifying her global meanings, which had been threatened by her own actions. The therapy offered her a safe nonjudgmental space where she could learn to explore all aspects of the crime she committed and its consequences. By processing her past in an experiential mode, she generated new meanings about herself, about others and about the meaning and purpose of her own life. Diana found new ways to meet her basic existential needs. She developed a more nuanced set of meanings and a richer pallet of coping skills that enable her to live her life in a more meaningful and in a better adjusted way.

This research aims to identify the alterity pictures that lay in each one of the three phases of person-centered therapy, developed by Carl Rogers. It was based on the premise that ethics constitutes Psychology as an independent knowledge, and, therefore, it matters to analyze the way that such theory deals with the problem of difference. As a methodological perspective, it was adopted the Gadamerian hermeneutics, which assumes that every interpretation is also creation, since it is afusion of horizons between a reader full of preconceptions and authors. Specificaly, this work aimedto make a theorical construction throughout many manifestations of alterity in the different phases of Rogers’s thinking, which are non-directive, reflexive and experiential, through the analysis of classic works of each phase. Even though usually analyzed from a technical point of view, in this research it was understood that each of these phases also imply in ethical changes, so that the way the therapist addresses the client acquires new shapes, with moments of larger or smaller openness to alterity. The notion of alterity adopted in this research was Emmanuel Lévinas’s, who postulates that ethics comes before ontology and that, therefore, each one of us has an untransferable responsability to the alterity. During the non-directive phase, as long as Rogers trusts in the clarity that comes from the insight, and therefore keeps closed to the difference of the other, he also gives us conditions to point the presence of the Other of the ignorance, the Other of the narrative, the Other of affectation and the Other of the refraction. During the reflexive phase, in its turn, Rogers moves away from alterity when he insists to be guided by a naturlistic a vitalist vision of human experience, assuming that it has a natural teleology. However, he gets closer to alterity when the gives us the elements to think about the Other of the experience, the Other of acknowledgement, the Other inverted in His reflection and the Other of the relationship and of the contact. About the experiential phase, Rogers opens a very little space to deal with the difference when he bets on a natural harmony ot the organism and on an education toward this harmony. At the same time, he increases the possibility of manifestation of alterity on the Other of the therapist, the Other of experiencing, the Other of incomprehension and the Other of ex-centric authenticity. It is concluded that the changes that Rogers’s work has been through do not implie in phases that follow each other, but in relational conditions that modify each other aiming the meeting with the experience of the Other, and, therefore, affirms the therapeutic relationship as meeting and presence. From an initial appreciation of acceptance, the theory advances toward an emphasis on understanding and, thus, on genuineness. Therefore, it can be said that the main factor in the alterity pictures and in its synthesis is the availability of both, therapist and client, in order to be in touch with the experience of the present and to be open to have it as the element that modifies their practices and conceptions about themselves and the Other.

Client-centered theory and feminist theory have each evolved over the past half century as two separate streams running parallel to each other. Each has developed with scant attention or accurate knowledge of the other. Each has written cogent critiques of the dominant psychoanalytic paradigm. Of greater value, however, are the fresh frameworks they offer in several significant areas. These include: restructuring power relationships, reassigning epistemological authority, the centrality of relationality and intersubjectivity, and the historical contextual nature of all knowledge. This radical reconstruction offers a truly inclusive, emancipatory, and egalitarian vision for the practice of psychotherapy and of all human relationships. My intention is to lift some common themes from feminist and client-centered theory to suggest points of convergence. It is my contention that the increased power generated by the convergence of these streams will serve to create the change both envision. In order to create that possibility, we must increase our mutual understanding of these two theoretical movements, examine the intellectual milieu and historical context in which each developed and carefully consider the existing critiques of each movement. These models developed independently of each other, separated by several turbulent decades of the twentieth century. What is the legacy of these two powerful attempts to radically re-conceptualize psychotherapy? Theory is always influenced by the conditions which shape it, thus, it is important to ask the following: • What are the implications of feminist theory emerging in reaction to Freudian psychoanalytic theory? • What are the implications of client-centered theory emerging from Rogers' early empirical training, and his evolution toward an existential/phenomenological perspective? What follows is a contribution to answering these questions and building connections between these theoretical viewpoints.

The aim of this article is to present a succinct review and evaluation of the main areas of contention in the false memory debate and, from this basis, to suggest ways in which the best from both sides can be utilized. We examine the potential pitfalls of therapy in terms of the fallibility and suggestibility of autobiographical memory and therapists and therapeutic techniques as the architects of false memories. We then evaluate the case for false memory formation examining if some researchers hold misconceived views of psychotherapy, if experimental studies lack ecological validity, and the effect of trauma on memory. Finally, we explore how the potential pitfalls of therapy can be avoided in practice, reflecting on the usefulness of British Psychological Society guidelines, how clinicians can implement research findings, and how research on the false memory debate can be improved. We conclude that the way forward is researcher–clinician collaboration in the development of ecologically valid research paradigms.