(2021). Editorial. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies: Vol. 20, Qualitative Research; Guest editor: Maria Kefalopoulou, pp. 195-198.

ABSTRACT According to the person-centered theory of therapy, the therapist’s congruence is one of the necessary and sufficient conditions for therapeutic personality change. However, the development of therapists’ congruence has received limited research attention. This study was designed to explore the ways in which eight experienced person-centered therapists fostered their congruence. Data was collected

ABSTRACT Research on experiences of former young soldiers in Colombia, from their own frame of reference, and which includes both distress and growth, is rare. Person-Centered theory argues for an inherent potential for growth in all organisms and could provide further understanding of the experiences of these young women. The present study aimed to explore the experiences of six demobilized Colombian

ABSTRACT Person-centered therapy conceptualizes anxiety as occurring when an individual perceives incongruence within themselves, so better understanding the self-concept of anxious individuals can help us understand this incongruence. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three health anxious white British women which were then subjected to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. This produced

ABSTRACT This paper asks how to best foster high-quality relationships in online encounter. As video-platforms have been set up to serve business purposes, not personal growth, their architectures work brilliantly for establishing content, but less so for process. As virtual rooms have become a reality, they need to be appropriated by all those aiming to support collaborative, relational and co-creative

(2021). Online counseling and psychotherapy textbooks for the person-centered and experiential psychotherapies: from COVID-19 and beyond. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT 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

ABSTRACT Since the first Japanese encounter group was held in 1970, numerous encounter groups with many participants have been held. In addition, countless studies have been conducted on encounter groups. In this paper, Japanese-style encounter groups are described. An encounter group facilitator needs to be aware of both the physical and psychological elements that comprise a group. Unlike physical

ABSTRACT In Carl Rogers’ written work schizophrenia and psychotic symptoms are mentioned over 2300 times. The use of the terms reflects the theoretical background prevailing at the time as well as the practical experience of Carl Rogers. Over the course of the publications a change in access to psychotic phenomena can be observed. In early years, Rogers viewed psychosis as fundamentally different from

ABSTRACT Focusing practitioners and researchers emphasize the importance of Focusing attitudes. The purpose of this research was to gather evidence concerning the construct validity of the Focusing Manner Scale 18 (FMS-18) which was developed to measure Focusing attitude in daily life by conducting exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and correlation analysis. The

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the possible contributions of the Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) to the exploration of the person-centered approach (PCA) hence relating Michel Foucault to Carl Rogers. Different paths lead us to similar forms of understanding concerning meaning, discourses, subjective experience, personal power, self-actualization, epimeleia heautou (care of the self), parrhesia

ABSTRACT Working therapeutically online can offer a number of challenges, not least to therapists’ ideas about ways of engaging and working with clients, and views of reality, as well as to familiar theories about therapy, including the therapeutic relationship or ways of therapeutic relating. Taking Rogers’ theory of certain necessary and sufficient conditions – of psychotherapeutic change and of

ABSTRACT The present study included two experiments to determine whether the implicit association between psychological distance and valence would differ in the context of a structure-bound manner of experiencing. In Experiment 1, participants responded to a questionnaire that assessed individual differences in this manner and completed the proximity–distance Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure

ABSTRACT This study examined the clinical effects of a brief group experiential therapy treatment centered on psychodrama in a sample of military veterans. The sample (N = 72) comprised male (n = 54) and female (n = 18) United States military veterans (Mage = 44.19, SDage = 12.51) who completed the six-day treatment. Self-reported military-related posttraumatic stress (M-PTSD), anxiety, depression

This article examines how the person-centered approach (PCA) became established in Aotearoa New Zealand, and draws parallels between how a Western psychology lands and settles and the process of co...

ABSTRACT This paper explores aspects of the past, present, and future of person-centered and experiential (PCE) therapies through a number of emotions that PCE practitioners may have about its theory, practice, location, and reception. Drawing on Jaak Panksepp’s work on affective neuroscience, the article applies his seven emotional systems – SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, PANIC/GRIEF, PLAY, LUST, and CARE –

This study aimed to assess the empirical validity of Carl Rogers’ vision of the authentic person to be ecologically minded. 238 participants were asked to complete the Authenticity Scale, the Connectedness to Nature Scale, the Love and Care for Nature Scale, the Ethically Minded Consumer Behaviour Scale, and the Brief Social Desirability Scale. It was found that higher scores on authenticity were associated

The counselor’s emotional response to clients plays a crucial role in psychotherapy. It can have a profound influence on the client’s experience, on the therapeutic relationship, and on therapeutic...

Four aspects of Barbara Temaner Brodley’s practice of ‘classical’ client-centered therapy (CCT) are appraised in ways to suggest a rapprochement with the process-guiding experiential therapies that...

This is the third and final special issue in facilitating encounter, at least for the time being. We have been delighted by the level of interest in this subject and hope that the scholarship these...

ABSTRACT This paper illustrates how Community Play Therapy (CPT) can be used to facilitate person-to-person encounters in school avoidant and neurodiverse children. CPT provides a psychologically safe space for children who hesitate to go to school or have difficulties with school life due to neurodevelopmental disorders. CPT includes the children, volunteer assistants, and facilitators. The core conditions

ABSTRACT Despite the available literature on facilitative conditions noted in numerous writings on encounter groups, cofacilitators’ experiences are substantially under-researched. This present study aimed to explore psychotherapists’ experiences co- 10 facilitating encounter groups with two or more co-facilitators. A subsidiary question was: How do therapists who have facilitated large encounter groups

Narrow or restricted case formulation considerations can limit therapeutic effectiveness, limit the lived base of evidence guiding psychotherapy, and contribute to psychotherapist microaggressions....

ABSTRACT In the 21st century, the push and pull between localism and globalization define competing discourses. Social and political identities serve as external supports to a ‘symbolic universe’, a sense of belonging. Yet, today, social representations of an imagined homogeneous national entity are being challenged by mass immigration, refugee crisis and competing models of a global village. Within

Researches on emotion regulation have suggested that contextualizing a negative life event within a broader time frame, what is called impermanence focus, buffers its emotional impact. Does imperma...

ABSTRACT Both the person-centered and experiential (PCEP) and the Transactional Analysis (TA) approaches act on the assumption that the counselor would have unconditional positive regard (UPR) or an OK-OK-Position, respectively, and be real and self-disclosing. Thus, they complement each other very well. At times, counselors have to work with offensive, devaluating, passive, and otherwise challenging

The ability to fully comprehend the mental experience of those suffering from psychotic symptoms can sometimes elude the empathic capabilities of therapists. Even the most experienced psychiatrists...

Robert Kramer’s The Birth of Relationship Therapy focuses on a critical inflection point in the history of psychotherapy: the turn from a psychoanalytic focus on ‘interpretations’, and toward the p...

ABSTRACT The current study is a qualitative, descriptive-interpretative study that utilizes an emotion-focused therapy (EFT) theoretical framework as the basis of interpretation of clients’ experiences of co-morbid anxiety and depression among three women with breast cancer. The study consists of analysis into the clients’ in-session presentation of their difficulties. The study uses a multiple case

ABSTRACT Dynamic neurodevelopment occurs in the first months of human life and requires optimal environmental conditions to advance in a typical way. One of the most important determinants of this process is the stable availability of a safe and responsive caregiver. This provides the child with a facilitative context for solving naturally emerging developmental conflicts, namely conflicts between

ABSTRACT The therapeutic contract is an important aspect of the counseling process. However, it has received limited research interest, especially in the person-centered community. The objective of this qualitative study was to examine the perceptions and use of therapeutic contracts of seven experienced, person-centered therapists in Greece. A grounded theory design was chosen to guide the analysis

ABSTRACT Person-centered therapy’s cross-cultural relevance and nondirective stance have been doubted and challenged in counseling and social justice literature. In order to incorporate multiculturalism and social justice advocacy into effective and ethical practice, it is critical for person-centered counselors to be able to conceptualize, understand, and serve social justice issues through a person-centered

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to critically examine the axiom of Cooper and McLeod that the person-centered approach should incorporate pluralistic practices based on clients’ goals and wants. First, we examine Cooper and McLeod’s argument that the uniqueness of clients means that therapeutic work should orientate around helping clients to identify what they want and how to achieve it. Second,

ABSTRACT Our objective is to introduce therapeutic intervention, in an EFT framework, with gender diverse people. We review research outlining mental health comorbidity, and some of the unique needs of this population. We understand risk and protective factors and intervention targets through the lens of minority stress theory. Proximal minority stress variables – internalized transphobia, expected

ABSTRACT Person-centered therapy aims to help clients actualize their own power. When working with adolescents, the developmental needs of the client and the power difference between client and therapist may present additional barriers to this. This study sought to understand the power dynamics of the therapy relationship from the adolescent client’s perspective. Seven adolescent clients in person-centered

ABSTRACT Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) is an increasingly popular form of humanistic therapy that is spreading internationally through standard training curricula. The empirical investigations of training in EFT have, however, received little attention. This study investigated certified EFT therapists’ experience of learning EFT, including their experience of didactic training, experiential exercises

ABSTRACT Relational depth (RD) refers to moments in a therapeutic relationship in which a person has feelings of aliveness, satisfaction and immersion. However, no research has yet tested for the association between RD and concepts closely aligned with Carl Rogers’ hypothesis of how people change in a growth-promoting relationship. In this study, 55 therapy clients completed the relational depth inventory

ABSTRACT While it has become clear that high-conflict divorce/separation can have both short- and long-term negative effects upon children, traditional measures of health and adjustment are limited in their ability to fully capture the depth and scope of this trauma. The impact of parental conflict and divorce can arguably be more deeply grasped by clinicians attuned to existential considerations.

ABSTRACT The article is a summary of our brainstorming and should provide readers with ideas rather than with a full coverage of the theory of person-centered group facilitation. We revolve around the topic by describing encounter as an attempt to improve personal relations and by attributing a central role to the existence of the organism of the group. The facilitator’s role is considered from a practical

ABSTRACT Drawing from Carl Rogers’ theory of interpersonal relationship, a definition of person-centered encounter is offered in terms of attempting what he termed ‘improving relationship’. Within this, facilitation is seen as necessarily integral to encounter, based on his consideration of the facilitation of group tension and conflict. The concept of congruence is examined in the context of encounter

ABSTRACT A brief introduction is made to a training course in group facilitation run by the authors. This is further illuminated by a set of operational principles and a description of the educational approach and methodology. The core structure of the course is based upon an open group process where participants and facilitators explore whatever emerges within the group setting whilst, from time to

ABSTRACT In the first part of this personal reflective paper we describe setting up the ‘Central London PCA Encounter Group’ in the UK, which has been running monthly for the last two years. We explore the motivation for establishing the group, the ethos of facilitation, the challenges of the role of facilitators, conflict and the attitudinal qualities of the group, and the diversity and growth of

ABSTRACT The main aim of this paper is to present members’ experiences in three long run encounter groups that function as collaboratively facilitated ones without a designated facilitator. Shared experiences of the members outline some themes around the feeling of being in an encounter group with the facilitator in contrast to facilitating it ourselves, such ones as freedom, responsibility, safety

ABSTRACT This paper outlines a personal experience of facilitating encounter groups within person-centered training in some UK’s universities and colleges. It centered around the following questions: Does the person-centered approach (PCA) become sterilized within institutions increasingly run like businesses, where trainees are seen as customers and tutors as functionaries? What are the challenges

ABSTRACT Human beings do not have a fixed sex/gender but everyone is constantly (re)creating the concepts of femininity and masculinity. But gender still functions as a basis for discrimination in the existing social order. The authors point out the importance of knowing about and reflecting gender prejudices as well as gender stereotypes, forms and mechanisms of discrimination being at work in order

In this second special issue on facilitating encounter, we focus particularly on encounter groups as part of training, teaching and what it means to facilitate encounter groups in this context. Encounter groups are sometimes used as part of person-centered counseling and psychotherapy training, as well as in related teaching contexts. There are conflicts and dilemmas involved for trainers who also

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to offer a definition of encounter and encounter groups based on the author’s understanding and experience as a participant and facilitator. Through reflection on experience as a participant, consideration is given to how the self-awareness and insights gained from this can shape the understanding of the role of facilitator, and how it enables what can be offered to

ABSTRACT The use of encounter groups in counselor training is widespread and long-standing tradition in academic programs. Some educators are opposed to the implementation of encounter groups due to the perception that encounter groups as part of training programs are unethical because they are considered facilitation of therapy with students. This article explores the rationale, definition, and role

I would like to dedicate this issue to Charles O’Leary who died in October, just after his article was printed in the first ‘facilitating encounter’ special issue. Charlie has been a central part of these special issues for me. When we, the editors, first released the call for papers inspired by the encounter experience at the PCE conference in Vienna in July 2018, Charlie was the first to respond

ABSTRACT This paper deals with the potentials and limitations of group encounters in academic teacher training. The major research question is whether person-centered encounter groups should get their space within teacher education and if so, which factors need to be taken into account to maximize students’ whole-person learning through encounter. The author’s – my – finding after more than a decade’s

ABSTRACT Individuals are invited to the kind of Encounter Groups referenced in this article with language such as this: ‘We sit together in a circle, using the opportunity to talk and otherwise communicate. Our aim is to understand and experience our personal relatedness to happenings that concern us. Our conversations are essentially sincere but not without humor. People actually listen, and we hear

ABSTRACT This article discusses large group encounter in the context of biculturalism, a concept that is specific to the relationship and engagement between indigenous and settler cultures, especially, though not exclusively in countries such as Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States of America. It is written by five colleagues who work in the same tertiary educational institution

ABSTRACT The question of how to support a group best in the sense of the person-centered approach (PCA) leads to a distinction between person and role, each with its own responsibilities. Role is not seen as an opposition to the person, but as an aspect of a person resulting from their social function. The condition between person and role is examined on the basis of the individual therapy setting

ABSTRACT In 1973 Carl R. Rogers, Natalie Rogers Fuchs and John K Wood and a staff that included the current author collectively conceived of a series of events that would explore three core questions–whether or not Client-Centered principles shown to be effective for facilitating positive change in individuals demonstrate similar growth promoting effects on collectivities such as families, groups and

ABSTRACT In February 2019 we hosted our first online Diploma training weekend. None of the participants were physically present to each other as they were in their own homes and connecting through an online meeting environment. Our training program is well known for the intensity that is created in an unstructured space where we are all physically present with each other. Therefore, the inclusion of

ABSTRACT Inspired by experience in a large unstructured person-centered group in which I was both distressed and the cause of distress in others, I find parallels between group experience and that of persons in intimate relationships. In both, enchantment and belonging can give way to frustration and alienation. The encounter with the other brings confusion and disappointment that can interfere with

ABSTRACT Encounter is much more than a way of practicing psychotherapy or group work. These practices are just applications of a basic anthropological, epistemological and (socio-)ethical stance on how we humans find ourselves in the world and how we can choose to relate to other human beings, groups, communities, the society, givens in the world and the world as such. This paper tries to call to mind

ABSTRACT In this paper, I define what I understand by encounter and what rewards can arise from such relationships. I emphasize the importance of the stance of humility or not knowing to encounter the mystery of the other. I argue that the precondition for a successful encounter is the shared belief in the equality of all. I then try and elucidate the key aims that I hold for myself as a facilitator

ABSTRACT The article revisits and recounts the history of the evolutionary developmental nature of change in person-centered encounter group processes and emphases over 5 decades, as viewed from the author’s participation over that time period, focusing on the socially conscious, egalitarian, feminist, linguistic equity, power, and political elements of change, as central to that direction.

ABSTRACT In this editorial, we introduce our inspiration for this special issue in facilitating encounter. We explore some of the tensions inherent in the person-centered literature, such as working with or prioritizing individuals or the group. We emphasize the necessity for the authenticity and spontaneity of facilitators and their role as participants as well as facilitators. In the current context