Re-Visioning Person-Centred Therapy: The Theory and Practice of a Radical Paradigm

"By exploring various ways to assimilate recent progressive developments and to renew its vital links with its radical roots, Re-visioning Visioning Person-Centred Therapy: Theory and Practice of a Radical Paradigm takes a fresh look at this revolutionary therapeutic approach. Bringing together leading figures in PCT, and new writers from around the world, the essays in this book create fertile links with phenomenology, meditation and spirituality, critical theory, contemporary thought and culture, and philosophy of science. In doing so, they create an outline that renews and re-visions person-centred therapys radical paradigm, providing fertile material in both theory and practice. Shot through with clinical studies, vignettes and in-depth discussions on aspects of theory, Re-Visioning Visioning Person-Centred Therapy will be stimulating reading for therapists in training and practice, as well as those interested in the development of PCT."--Provided by publisher Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Dedication 6 Table of Contents 8 List of contributors 11 Introduction 17 Tribute to Fyodor E. Vasilyuk 25 PART I: Some kinds of love: person-centred therapy and the relational dimension 30 1. Therapy as an accident waiting to happen 32 Old tradition – new wave 32 1 Radical ethics 42 2 A real audacity ... 43 3 ...animality is more honest 43 4 Showing rather than telling ... 43 5 ... power in their hands ... 44 2. The psychotherapeutic encounter as a political act of micro multitude 46 Introduction 46 Political considerations 46 Politics and psychotherapy 49 References 55 3. Beauty and the Cyborg 57 Introduction 57 Person-centred, human-centred, self-centred 58 A comic faith 60 The beautiful soul 60 Some kinds of love 63 Love and ‘the Powers’ 65 Technofixes 67 Empathic manipulators 68 Necessarily insufficient 70 Beastly love 71 References 72 4. Walking backwards towards the future: reclaiming the radical roots – and future – of person-centred therapy 75 Looking back 75 Looking under 78 Looking forward 82 References 85 5. Ethics and the person-centered approach: a dialogue with radical alterity 89 Introduction 89 Figueiredo and philosophy of science 89 Possible abodes for the PCA in the territory of ignorance 92 The ethics of Levinas 94 Places for strangeness in the person-centered approach 96 Conclusion 101 Note 102 References 102 PART II: The politics of experience 106 6. Dialectics of person and experiencing 108 Playing a symphony 113 A single ellipse with two focuses 119 Note 120 References 120 7. Actualizing tendency, organismic wisdom and understanding the world 122 Introduction 122 Directional and interactional 123 “Buen Con-Vivir” 124 Reflections and learning from the practice of psychotherapy 126 Body wisdom and understanding of the world 130 Some examples 131 Esther’s example 133 Rita’s example 134 The richness and complexity of organismic wisdom 135 In short 136 Notes 137 References 137 8. Person-centred approach as discursivity and person-centred therapy as heterotopic practice 139 Introduction 139 Modernity and person-centred discourse 139 Person-centred particularity/otherness 145 (Post)modernity and person-centred discursivity 145 Person-centred heterotopia 153 References 154 9. Client-centered: an ethical therapy 157 A path not taken 157 Therapy is defined, and its power relationship discussed 158 Client-centered therapy is described 158 Freedom as ethical premise for practice 160 The medical-model concept of therapy rests on a different ethical premise 160 We reject Carl Rogers’ actualizing tendency 161 The ethical therapist respects the client’s right to direct her own life, including her time in therapy 162 Our ethical premise does not require the client always to regard her therapy as nondirective 163 The practice of client-centered therapy, if faithful to its theory, is ethical 164 Notes 164 References 164 10. Experiencing and the person-centred approach 166 Lying there 166 Empiricism 167 Experienciality 169 The whisper of thought and language 171 Experiencing 172 The role of experiencing 174 Epilogue 177 Notice 177 References 178 11. Experiential-existential psychotherapy: deepening existence, engaging with life 180 Introduction 180 Experiential–existential psychotherapy 182 Facing one’s own existential challenges 182 The existential roots of experiential therapies 183 Micro, meso, and macro searching 185 Meaning 185 From I-Me and I-it to an I-I and I-Thou relationship 186 The therapist is fully implied 187 Concluding thoughts 188 Notes 189 References 189 PART III: Person-centred therapy and spirituality 194 12. From the scientific to the mystical in the work of Carl Rogers 196 Introduction 196 The accidental mystic 198 The mystical moment and Rogers 200 Note 202 References 202 13.Living from the ‘formative tendency’: ‘cosmic congruence’ 203 Introduction 203 On becoming a person 204 ‘Congruence cannot be defined as explicit symbolization’ 206 ‘Presence’ as congruence 208 ‘Congruence as story’ 209 ‘Cosmic congruence’ 211 Carl Rogers’ ‘presence’ as agápe 214 The social dimension 215 The changing face of an institution 216 Coming full circle 218 Conclusion 219 References 219 14. “A kind of liking which has strength” (Carl Rogers): does person-centred therapy facilitate through love? 221 Introduction 221 What does love mean? – A phenomenological investigation 221 Many forms of love – or One Love 223 Varieties of one love? 228 Love in the PCA 230 Summary: the PCA is about the power of love 234 References 235 PART IV: Person-centred learning and training 238 15. Enter centre stage, the case study... 240 Prologue 240 Note 252 References 252 16. Sheep of tomorrow 255 Introduction 255 This is the dawning of the age of the fish bowl 256 The name of the father 260 Infernal locus of evaluation 260 UPR for all 262 Sheep of tomorrow 264 One hundred plus years of solitude 265 References 265 17. What do I know and how do I know it?: theories of knowledge and the person-centred approach 266 Introduction 266 The divided brain 268 Deconstruction 270 Apophasis 271 A theology of the event 273 Conclusion 274 References 275 18. The empathor’s new clothes: when person-centered practices and evidence-based claims collide 276 Introduction 276 Psychotherapy from a manual 277 Low fidelity isn’t fidelity 279 The babies and the bath water 282 Common factors 285 The curious paradox 286 Looking along and looking at 288 Conclusion 289 Note 290 References 290 PART V: Challenging some aspects of person-centred practice 292 19.Challenging snoopervision: how can person-centered practitioners offer new alternatives to the fracturing of the person in the supervision relationship? 294 Introduction 294 The extinction of the species 294 A double bind 296 Trigger warnings 298 A story 300 Post-truth 301 Notes 303 References 304 20. Re-visioning person-centred research 306 Introduction 306 Jo’s narrative of encountering Rogers 307 Conclusion 315 References 315 21. Psychopathology and the future of person-centred therapy 318 Introduction 318 Carl Rogers and psychopathology 319 Client perceptions of distress 321 Contemporary person-centred attitudes to the medical model 323 Pockets of hope within the medical model 326 Conclusion 326 References 327 22. Presence: the fourth condition 329 Current state of the person-centered approach 329 Person-centered core conditions 330 Presence: the fourth condition 331 Presence is relational 332 Presence requires self-care 333 Presence engages self-acceptance 335 Questioning celebrity in order to access presence 336 Presence and directivity versus non-directivity 337 Rogers’ unrecognized path to presence 338 Presence can save our approach 340 References 342 23. A place in which everything can go 344 Introduction 344 Congruence and saying everything 345 Radical self-disclosure 346 Keeping silence 350 Breaking silence 353 Free communicating, free conceiving 355 Conclusion 356 Acknowledgments 357 References 357 24. A person-centred political critique of current discourses in post-traumatic stress disorder and post-traumatic growth 359 Introduction 359 Psychopathology and PTSD: critiques and connections 361 Traps for the unwary 363 Trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing and person-centred approaches 364 Conclusion 367 Note 367 References 368 Index 371 "By exploring various ways to assimilate recent progressive developments and to renew its vital links with its radical roots, 'Re-Visioning Person-Centred Therapy' takes a fresh look at this revolutionary therapeutic approach. Bringing together leading figures in PCT and new writers from around the world, the essays in this book create fertile links with phenomenology, meditation and spirituality, critical theory, contemporary thought and culture, and philosophy of science. In doing so, they create an outline that renews and re-visions person-centred therapy's radical paradigm, providing fertile material in both theory and practice. Shot through with clinical studies, vignettes and in-depth discussions on aspects of theory, 'Re-Visioning Person-Centred Therapy' will be stimulating reading for therapists in training and practice, as well as those interested in the development of PCT."-- Quatrième de couverture