Julius Seeman

Nondirectiveness is a focal point in the debate about the nature of person-centered and client-centered therapy. In my view, the debate is essentially about the morally best way of doing therapy. Conceptions of nondirectiveness differ primarily in whether they emphasize pragmatic concerns for promoting growth and "meeting needs" or respect for persons. Two conceptions of nondirectiveness — instrumental and principled — are described and compared. Principled nondirectiveness is elaborated, and a justification for it is sketched.

Barry Grant is a part-time psychotherapist and college instructor. His first psychotherapy class was in client-centered therapy, which at the time seemed to him to be on to something important, but simplistic and unexciting. Later, upon reflection, and the (nondirective) influence of Barbara Brodley and Marjorie Witty, he came to see some of the depth of its simplicity.

10. HUMANISM - Steve Vincent. Southampton College (UK)

We often speak of client-centred therapy and the person-centred approach being ‘humanistic’. What is ‘humanism’?

11. Carl Rogers, More Relevant Today Than Freud - Edwin Kahn. The City University of New York.

I like Ed's direct, clear, well expressed contrast between Frued's "blank screen" and Rogers trusting his clients wisdom.

12. Conceptual Analysis of Client and Counselor Activity in Client-Centered Therapy - Julius Seeman. Check the date, 1951! This is before Carl Rogers was calling them the "core conditions", but they are all here.

14. Carl Rogers’ ‘Congruence’ As An Organismic - Not a Freudian Concept
(in Wyatt, G. (ed) Congruence: Rogers’ Therapeutic Conditions - published by PCCS Books, 2001)
Ivan Ellingham

Abstract.  The principal purpose of this paper is to illumine the extent to which Carl Rogers’ characterization of the central person-centred concept of ‘congruence’ is couched in terms of a Cartesian-Newtonian, paradigmatic world-view mediated by the theoretical formulations of Sigmund Freud. Crucial problems in such a quasi-Freudian characterization of ‘congruence’ are delineated demonstrative of a critical flaw in person-centred theory as a whole:  its being a mix of concepts deriving from the discrepant Cartesian-Newtonian and ‘organismic’ scientific paradigms. The re-formulation of ‘congruence’ in organismic terms is envisaged as part of a general need to conceptualize all key person-centred concepts in such a fashion.

15. ‘Counselling as a Social Process’: A Person-Centred Perspective on a Social Constructionist Approach

(The Person-Centered Journal, 2000, 7(2): 114-124)

Ivan Ellingham

Psychology Department,

Hertfordshire Partnership National Health Trust

Abstract: This paper presents a critical examination from a person-centred perspective of an approach to counselling influenced by the social constructionist thought of Kenneth Gergen. The general postmodernist character of such social constructionism is considered and critiqued; as are certain implications for counsellor training and practice. Caution is urged on those who would introduce social constructionist ideas into the framework of person-centred thought: that it be done in a way that does not compromise the fundamental vision of Carl Rogers, its main architect.

16. Foundation for a Person-Centred, Humanistic Psychology—and Beyond:

The Nature and Logic of Carl Rogers’ “Formative Tendency”

[In Watson, J. C., et al (2002) Client-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy

in the 21^st Century. Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books]

Ivan Ellingham

Jacob set out from Beersheba and went on his way to Harran. He came to a certain place and stopped there for the night, because the sun had set; and, taking one of the stones there, he made it a pillow for his head and lay down to sleep. He dreamt he saw a ladder, which rested on the ground with its top reaching to heaven, and angels of God were going up and down on it. (Genesis, 28: 11-12)

What will it take to generate a bona fide science of psychology?

The view I hold is that such a science will only come about through the construction of a unitary pattern of ideas—a “paradigm,” to use Thomas Kuhn’s term; a “metanarrative” to employ postmodernist discourse—whereby we will be able to integrate into a seamless web the empirical findings and theoretical contributions of contemporary psychology’s smorgasbord of rival and competing conceptual approaches. “What we need for a science of mind,” as Susanne Langer (1967) has written,  “is not so much a definitive concept of mind, as a conceptual frame in which to lodge our observations of mental phenomena” (p. 17).

17. Madness and mysticism in perceiving the other:

Towards a radical organismic, person-centred interpretation

(in Contact and Perception: Rogers’ Therapeutic Conditions.

Wyatt, G. & Sanders, P. (eds.), PCCS Books, 2002)

Ivan Ellingham

Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Trust

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

                           Jesus

The mystic, endowed with natural talent for this sort of thing and following stage by stage the instruction of the master enters the waters and finds he [sic.] can swim; whereas the schizophrenic [sic.], unprepared, unguided, and ungifted, has fallen or has intentionally plunged, and is drowning.

Joseph Campbell

18. Towards a Rogerian theory of mysticism

Ivan Ellingham

Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Trust

North Hertfordshire College

(in Moore, J. & Purton, C (eds.) Spirituality and Counselling. PCCS Books, 2006) 

The Nature of Mysticism

            Mysticism is a term used with reference to certain out-of-the-ordinary human experiences, experiences of a powerful nature belonging to that category of human experience that we label ‘spiritual’. Mystical experiences, that is to say, are powerful versions of experiences in which the individual knows that they, the world and those around them are seamlessly embedded in, and manifestations of, a unitary and ultimate, transcendent cosmic reality, a reality that F. C. Happold describes as ‘a beyond,…something which, though it is interwoven with it, is not of the external world of material phenomena,…an unseen order over and above the seen’ (1970: 18-19)—‘an actuality’, as Evelyn Underhill further elucidates, that is ‘beyond the reach of the senses’(1915/2000: 5).

19. Transference Trashed and Transcended

(in Person-Centred Quarterly, 2005)

                                                Ivan Ellingham

                                                Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Trust

                                                North Hertfordshire College

            Just as the concept of the earth as flat became trashed to be transcended by the concept of it as a sphere; just as Newton’s concept of gravity became trashed to be transcended by Einstein’s concept of curved space; so the psychodynamic concept of transference has become trashed to be transcended by the concept of the schema.

20. Serfing* Psychiatry:

Critical Reflections on Lisbeth Sommerbeck’s book ‘The Client-Centred Therapist in Psychiatric Contexts’

Ivan Ellingham

(Person-Centred Practice, 2003, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 106-113

Wonderful and good

In Internet discussion, two pillars of the person-centred approach recently pronounced ‘The Client-Centred Therapist in Psychiatric Contexts’ by Lisbeth Sommerbeck (2003a), ‘wonderful’ (Jerrold Bozarth), and a ‘clearly and beautifully written’ book that should be read by ‘anyone working in a medical or psychiatric context’ or ‘anyone working with seriously disturbed clients outside these setting’   (C. H. ‘Pat’ Patterson).

There was also a further positive endorsement which (rather unusually) came from Lisbeth Sommerbeck herself. Lisbeth records that having the book in her hands for the first time and reading ‘a little of it’, she thought it ‘a good book’, albeit that she ‘found some points that I think the author could have clarified better, and even some points that I, perhaps, disagree with, or may come to disagree with, although, for the moment…, I find myself in as close agreement with the author as it, I think, is humanly possible’ (2003b:1).

21. WIDENING AND INCREASING ACCESS TO PSYCHOLOGICAL THERAPIES

· Person-centred/experiential (PC/E) counselling and psychotherapy is a family of psychological therapies that can help clients develop more satisfying and fulfilling lives through the provision of an empathic, non-judgmental and empowering therapeutic relationship.

· Person-centred/experiential therapy enables clients to take responsibility for their psychological wellbeing and development, and is closely aligned to a patient centred healthcare agenda.

· Person-centred/experiential practice is an empirically-supported approach to therapy which is demonstrably effective for a range of psychological difficulties, including depression and mixed anxiety and depression, substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder and adjustment to life events.

· Meta-analyses indicate that person-centred/experiential therapy is equivalent in overall effectiveness to other therapeutic approaches, including CBT.

· Person-centred counselling is most obviously appropriate for delivery at Tiers 2 and 3, with some current and potentially efficacious application at Tier 4. More focused PC/E interventions are particularly suited to Tiers 3 and 4 and the use of person-centred counselling skills suited for widespread delivery at Tier 1.

· Person-centred counselling is well established both in the NHS and across a variety of settings in Scotland. Over the past 11 years, more than 25,000 patients have made use of this service in Lanarkshire alone.

· A large and skilled workforce of PC/E practitioners exists in Scotland, with over a thousand graduates of Scottish person-centred diploma courses in the past decade.

· Professional standards for counselling require all PC/E therapists to have regular clinical supervision and to demonstrate a commitment to continuing professional development and ethical practice.

· Person-centred/experiential therapies can make a significant and valuable contribution to the diversity and effectiveness of mental healthcare provision in Scotland.

22. Person-Centred Porridge (also see item 23)

(Published in Person-Centred Practice, 6(2): 110-112, Autumn 1998)

Ivan Ellingham

Within the field of counselling/psychotherapy, certain authors with varying degrees of allegiance to the person-centred approach show signs of having over-indulged in the avant-garde porridge of ideas known as ‘postmodernism’. Individuals I have in mind in this regard are Hazel Johns (1996), John McLeod (1993) and Pete Sanders (1996). Here I am not going to attempt to explicate in any great detail what is meant by postmodernism, nor am I going to point up exactly where and how counsellor educators Johns, McLeod and Sanders gobble up too much of the postmodernist agenda--I pass on such a task as an opportunity for discovery learning. Rather my aim is simply to encourage those associated with the person-centred approach to become conversant with postmodernist ideas and to develop a critical--not an unconditionally positive--regard for them.

23. On Transcending Person-Centred Postmodernist Porridge (also see item 22)

(Person-Centred Practice, (1999) 7 (2): 62-78.) 

Ivan Ellingham.

In ‘Person-centred porridge’, an earlier contribution to this journal (Ellingham, 1998), I made reference to the ‘porridge’ of ideas known as postmodernism. I passed comment on how, in my view, several counsellor educators associated with the person-centred approach, Hazel Johns, John McLeod and Pete Sanders, in their writings on counselling ‘gobble up too much of the postmodernist agenda’ (p. 111). What I had to say prompted a vigorous critical reaction from Sanders (Sanders, 1999), not least over my failing—for which I have since apologised—to explain my critique of his own work, First Steps in Counselling (1996), ‘or elaborate with examples’ (Sanders, 1999, p. 49).

24. Key Strategy for the Development of a Person-Centred Paradigm of Counselling/Psychotherapy--and Beyond

(Person Centred Practice, 1996, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 12-18).

Ivan Ellingham

A Bare-Faced Proposition

            In a 1995 article I had the ‘bare-faced’ effrontery to propose that ‘it is the person-centred framework of thought...that is set to provide a more adequate base on which to ground a paradigm for the field of counselling/psychotherapy’. I am not alone in holding such a view. After I had made the same proposal in an earlier paper, Brian Thorne wrote: ‘With Ellingham I happen to believe that it is the person-centred approach engendered by Carl Rogers...which has the potential to be developed into a paradigm for the field [of counselling/psychotherapy] as a whole’