Person-Centred Therapy
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Person-Centred Therapy

A European Perspective

Brian Thorne, Elke Lambers, Brian Thorne, Elke Lambers

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eBook - ePub

Person-Centred Therapy

A European Perspective

Brian Thorne, Elke Lambers, Brian Thorne, Elke Lambers

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About This Book

`In this scholarly book, Thorne and Lambers have gathered together significant contributions to the advancement of person-centred theory and practice from leading exponents of the approach in Austria, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.... I found the book both stimulating and challenging. The insight it offers into working with "difficult" clients is invaluable and the sections on theory stretched me in my understanding of the approach. I strongly recommend it to anyone from within or without the person-centred tradition who wants to achieve a real understanding of the approach "post Rogers" and get to grips with the vibrancy and vitality of person-centred thought in Europe? - Counselling and Psychotherapy, The Journal of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy

This book brings together up-to-date contributions to the development of person-centred theory and practice from leading European practitioners.

The book makes available for the first time in English some of the most significant theoretical ideas and practical applications of a distinguished group of contributors at the cutting edge of the approach. It also gives a valuable insight into a vibrant professional network whose members are making a significant impact on the European world of counselling and psychotherapy. Covering a wide range of person-centred issues, the book provides unique and challenging material that will act as a springboard for debate at many levels between experienced practitioners, supervisors, trainers and trainees.

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Year
1998
ISBN
9781446234082

1

The Person~Centred Approach in Europe: Its History and Current Significance

Brian Thorne
In the summer of 1997 the Fourth International Conference on client-centred and experiential psychotherapy took place in Lisbon, Portugal. The previous three had been in Leuven, Belgium (1988), Stirling, Scotland (1991) and Gmunden, Austria (1994). The Lisbon conference saw the birth (ten years after Carl Rogers’s death) of the World Association for Person-centred Counselling and Psychotherapy and the delegates voted over-whelmingly that the next international conference should be held in Chicago as the appropriate venue both to mark the millennium and to acknowledge the ‘home’ of the approach.
The person-centred community in Portugal is currently not large but, as in neighbouring Spain, the influence of Rogers and person-centred ideas is growing and therapeutic practitioners with a clearly defined allegiance to the approach are increasing as training opportunities become more numerous. In Eastern Europe, too, the approach is gaining ground with the demise of the Soviet bloc and the emergence of more democratic regimes. Even in the former Yugoslavia, torn apart as it has been by hatred and violence, psychologists and others are eager to become acquainted with Rogers’s writings and the application of the person-centred approach both in therapy and in other fields. When Rogers himself visited Poland in 1979 he spoke to audiences thirsting for the liberation of the individual spirit and, although there is currently no professional association committed to the person-centred approach and no formal training programme, Rogers’s work is well known and contributes richly to the creative eclecticism which characterizes the present Polish psychotherapeutic scene. When he died in February 1987 Rogers was about to embark on a second trip to Russia, and a recent visit which I received in Norwich from a psychology student from the University of St Petersburg provided evidence that his ideas have not fallen on stony ground.
In the former Czechoslovakia the first reference to client-centred psychotherapy appeared in a psychology textbook written by Stanislav Kratochvil in 1966. Kratochvil subsequently studied in the USA, where he met Rogers, and on his return to his homeland spent many uncomfortable years as an external assistant at Brno University before being fired in 1978 because of his lack of support for Marxist ideology and his informal teaching style (deCarvalho and Cermak, 1997). Since the revolution of 1989 Kratochvil has been fully rehabilitated as Professor of Clinical Psychology, and person-centred theory and practice now flourish in both the Czech and Slovak Republics. The first formal Rogerian group was the Rogers Psychotherapeutic Association presided over by Vladimir Hlavenka who in the dying months of the old regime organized the first person-centred workshop in Czechoslavakia with Chuck Devonshire from the USA as the principal facilitator. Hlavenka now leads the Person-Centred Approach Institute – Ister in Slovakia, while in the Czech Republic there are institutes in Prague and in Brno. What is more, the person-centred approach is currently taught in both the Faculty of Letters and the Faculty of Medicine at the Charles University in Prague.
These developments demonstrate the continuing capacity of the person-centred approach to win new adherents and to respond to the needs of professionals and their clients in many European countries, both East and West. Such developments are but the latest evidence of the vitality of the approach on the European continent. This book has as its aim the presentation of some of the innovative ideas and practical applications which are the outcome of the committed work of European scholars and practitioners at a time when the growing power of insurance companies to determine potential clientele, the emergence of new and often restrictive national mental health policies and a move towards the ‘manualization’ of therapeutic procedures are creating both philosophical and practical difficulties for person-centred practitioners in many parts of the world, not least in the USA where the work of humanistic therapists in general is under threat from such developments.
Contributors to the present volume are drawn for the most part from those countries where the approach has been a significant force for some 20 years or more. By far the largest professional association of person-centred practitioners is to be found in Germany where the Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Gesprächspsychotherapie (GwG), founded in 1970, now has some 7,300 members and constitutes the largest professional body of psychotherapists and counsellors in the country. The psychologist, Reinhard Tausch, was responsible for establishing the first training programme in client-centred therapy at the University of Hamburg in the 1960s and in the 30 years since then the approach has become firmly established within the universities so that today it is represented in 76 per cent of psychology departments. The approach is in no way confined to a narrow emphasis on one-to-one psychotherapy but its relevant application to group work, social education, personal development, pastoral work and many other fields is acknowledged through training programmes and special interest groups. In Germany, too, much innovative work is taking place in the applicability of the approach to work with children and adolescents as well as with old people and those suffering from serious psychiatric disorders. As a result person-centred practitioners are currently to be found in a wide variety of settings including schools, hospitals and churches as well as clinical units specializing in marital or family therapy, crisis intervention, and many other specialist areas. At postgraduate level, too, there are courses leading to qualifications for those wishing to be more effective supervisors or trainers. The powerful presence of the approach within the university system also ensures a solid base for both outcome and process research studies.
There are those who would claim that the very success of the approach in Germany has led to a certain rigidity or conformism – a kind of ‘respectability’ which threatens to stifle creativity. It is well known that Rogers himself viewed with some anxiety what he perceived to be an increasing ‘dirigisme’ in the GwG in the early 1980s and Reinhard Tausch, too, has had his difficulties with the direction of the Association in recent years. However justified some of these misgivings might have been, there can be no doubt that the spread of person-centred ideas and practice in Germany has been extensive and shows little sign of abating. The chapters by Eva-Maria Biermann-Ratjen and Ute Binder in this present book provide powerful evidence of the major contribution of German scholars and practitioners to the understanding of personality development and to the growing effectiveness of the approach with the seriously disturbed.
It was no accident that the First International Conference took place in Belgium. As early as 1949 Professor J.R. Nuttin of the Catholic University of Leuven was writing in one of his books of ‘non-directive therapy’. Fifteen years later it was Nuttin who was chiefly responsible for the introduction of the first formal postgraduate training in the client-centred approach within the Faculty of Psychology at Leuven. In the intervening years, J. Rombauts became the first Belgian student to complete a thesis on Carl Rogers’s theories (1957), R. Van Balen was installed as the first client-centred student counsellor (1959), Rombauts went to work with Rogers, Gendlin and Truax at Wisconsin (1962–3) and returned to Belgium equipped to launch the first training programme with Nuttin’s encouragement in 1964.
Carl Rogers himself visited Leuven in 1966 and lectured to a large audience at the university. His visit followed closely on the founding of the Centrum voor Client-centered Therapie en Counseling and served to inspire and invigorate the young staff of the centre. Three years later, Germain Lietaer went to work with Rogers at La Jolla for a year (1969–1970) and in 1974 a Flemish client-centred society was founded whose influence and membership have grown constantly over the past 20 years. For French-speaking Belgians the situation has been less favourable because of a lack of regular and well-established training opportunities in the universities, but a French-speaking association has also been founded and there are notable proponents of the client-centred tradition within its ranks. For the Flemish Society recent years have been marked by close and cordial co-operation with colleagues in the Netherlands and there have been several successful joint conferences and publications. Germain Lietaer, the long-standing Director of the Leuven Centre, has himself been a source of inspiration for many practitioners and it was thanks to his dynamic leadership that the First International Conference was launched and proved to be such a pivotal event in the development of the approach in Europe. The present book contains contributions both from Lietaer and from his close professional colleague at Leuven, Mia Leijssen, who has been a major influence in introducing the work of Gendlin and focusing to European practitioners. The rich application of person-centred theory and practice is further exemplified by chapters by Dion Van Werde and his colleague, Chris Deleu, who provide a fascinating insight into highly innovative work with psychotic persons within a conventional hospital setting. Van Werde and Deleu are close associates of Dr Garry Prouty and their work is a striking example of the European application of ideas and practices developed in more recent years in the country of the approach’s origin. They also provide further evidence that person-centred therapy in Belgium is alive and well and can look forward to a balanced and creative future both within the university context and within clinical settings.
In the same year that Rogers’s ideas were being introduced into Belgium by Nuttin (1949), there appeared in the Netherlands an article by Van Lennep entitled ‘The Development of Clinical Psychology in the United States’ in which the writer presented the main ideas posited by Rogers in his first book Counseling and Psychotherapy (1942). Four years later, in 1953, the psychiatrist, Kamp, gave a lecture for the Dutch Association for Psychotherapy in which he attempted to explain the main principles and implications of ‘client-centredness’. Interest in the approach rapidly increased and this was much aided by training courses directed by Ella Goubitz who had studied with Rogers between 1950 and 1952. Prior to Kamp’s lecture, Toine Vossen had already started a client-centred child therapy course in Nijmegen and the 1950s saw the first steps towards the creation of an association for client-centred therapy mainly thanks to the initiatives of Cremers and Jan Dijkhuis. This association was formally established in 1962 and immediately began to offer its own training programme for potential members. Radical aspects of the programme were obligatory sensitivity training and the requirement to conduct several therapeutic processes under supervision. With the passage of time, the training programme has become more complex and demanding so that today it takes some five or six years to complete the curriculum largely as part of a postgraduate psychotherapy training provided by Regional Institutes for Postgraduate Training and Education. What is highly significant is the fact that client-centred therapy stands alongside psychoanalysis, behaviour therapy and systems therapy as one of the four mainstream therapies in which trainees can choose to specialize during their basic professional training. This indicates the current secure position of the person-centred approach within the spectrum of therapeutic orientations in the Netherlands. This is crucial in a country where psychotherapy is now subject to legal statute and where the completion of postgraduate training is a requirement for registration as a psychotherapist by the Ministry of Health.
Interestingly, in the early years client-centred therapy was applied mainly in the treatment of vulnerable and underprivileged people such as those in psychiatric hospitals and delinquent and disenchanted youth. This is no longer the case, and among the 950 or so members of the client-centred association there are many who operate outside the structures of institutional life and who provide help for those who are wrestling with a wide variety of issues both within clinical settings and outside them. Person-centred scholars are also concerned to relate the theory of the approach to wider existential questions and to an understanding of human development and personality formation. The contributions to this book from Martin van Kalmthout of the University of Nijmegen provide excellent examples of Dutch practitioners’ willingness to battle with issues of meaning and personality change without losing sight of the day-to-day challenges of clinical practice. The contribution from Lidwien Geertjens and Olga Waaldijk reflects the long-standing interest of Dutch practitioners in the problems of adolescence and is also an example of a willingness to be open to other orientations.
In Great Britain the ideas of Carl Rogers first surfaced in the context of the work of the Marriage Guidance Council (now called Relate) during the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the mid-1960s client-centred therapy was first taught in British universities, mainly by visiting Fulbright professors from America, as part of the core curriculum for those training to become school counsellors at the Universities of Keele and Reading. The surge of interest in humanistic psychology in general which swept London at the end of the 1960s resulted in the emergence of a loosely knit network of persons mainly in education and social work for whom Rogers became a principal source of inspiration. In 1974 Rogers himself had been invited to Britain but his wife’s grave illness at the time made him cancel the visit which had been initiated by a young psychologist from Scotland, Dave Mearns, who had studied with Rogers at La Jolla in 1971–2.
Over 200 people had signed up for the workshop at which Rogers was to appear but this number fell to a mere 90 when it became known that Rogers himself would not be coming. The event went ahead nonetheless and a key figure was Dr Charles (Chuck) Devonshire from the College of San Mateo in California, Director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Communication and a close associate of Rogers. It was thanks to the co-operative efforts of Devonshire, Mearns, Elke Lambers, a Dutch client-centred therapist living in Scotland, and myself that the Facilitator Development Institute (British Centre) came into being in 1975, and for the following decade provided annual summer residential workshops for members of the helping professions who wished to learn more of person-centred theory and practice especially with reference to small and large group work.
In 1976 the British Association for Counselling was founded and its first executive committee contained both person-centred practitioners and others sympathetic to the approach. The growth of the BAC in the past 20 years has been immense and its membership now totals some 15,000. Of these a significant number describe themselves as person-centred practitioners and many have held or currently hold key positions in the Association. Dave Mearns is the present Chair of the Association’s Professional Committee and Elke Lambers was for many years Chair of its Accreditation Committee.
In 1985 Mearns, Lambers, Thorne and William Hallidie Smith developed the work of the Facilitator Development Institute by offering the first full-scale training for person-centred therapists, and the Institute (renamed Person-Centred Therapy, Britain in 1988) continued to offer such training until 1997. During the same period Devonshire was energetically developing training programmes throughout Europe and his Person-Centred Approach Institute International began to offer a British programme in 1987. A splinter group from Devonshire’s original staff team subsequently founded the Institute for Person-Centred Learning and all three of these private institutes continue to offer professional training at a basic or advanced level.
In contrast to the American experience where client-centred work first established itself in the universities but, with Rogers’s disenchantment with the university system, then moved outside, the British movement has been in the reverse direction. While other private training institutes now offer programmes in person-centred therapy (most notably Metanoia in London) there can be no doubt that the major advances in theory, training, research and practice are to be found in the Universities of Strathclyde (in Glasgow), East Anglia and Keele where Mearns, Thorne and John McLeod (a graduate of the first Facilitator Development Institute programme) all hold chairs in counselling or counselling studies. As there are currently only four such chairs in British universities, this is a significant power base for the person-centred approach in Britain. Graduates from these university-based training programmes as well as those from the private institutes now form the bulk of the membership of the British Association for the Person-Centred Approach (BAPCA) which was founded in the late 1980s in order to give the approach its own unique voice in the British therapeutic world. In Scotland, too, the Association for Person-Centred Therapy (Scotland) has a membership of about a hundred therapists and owes much of its vitality to the work of Person-Centred Therapy (Britain) and the Counselling Unit in the University of Strathclyde where opportunities for post-diploma training are now offered.
The British contributors to the present book all work in the University of East Anglia, with Purton and Moore having trained originally in the private sector, and Hawtin having received her professional training in the university of which she is now a staff member. Their backgrounds in philosophy and English literature give their contributions the freshness which often typifies the work of British authors in this field where first degrees in psychology are not a prerequisite for professional training and advancement.
Mention has already been made of the commitment of Dr Chuck Devonshire to the development of the person-centred approach throughout Europe and there needs to be a generous acknowledgement of his formidable accomplishments in this endeavour. Both through his Centre for Cross-Cultural Communication and through the creation of various facilitator development institutes, Devonshire was instrumental in introducing person-centred ideas and practice to countless European nationals in the 1970s and 1980s. The founding of the Person-Centred Approach Institute International (with its original headquarters in Lugano) was jointly undertaken by Devonshire and Rogers himself, who cont...

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