Roelf J. Takens and Germain Lietaer

Arthur C. Bohart

Abstract.     Typical views of therapy are therapist-centric. Therapists and their interventions are portrayed as operating on client processes to create change. Some writers on client-centered therapy portray empathy responses as interventions designed to focus clients on feelings, access feelings or experience, deepen processing, and so on. An alternative to therapist-centric perspectives is offered. Clients are seen as active change agents who extract patterns of meaning from the therapy interaction, deduce implications, and use therapist empathy responses for purposes of self-support, validation, exploring experience, testing self-understanding, creating new meaning, and making connection with the therapist.

Abstract.     This article considers the importance to the Person-Centred Approach of awareness of an ‘unconditioned self’ that can be accessed within the body. Carl Rogers’ early view of the self is presented, as is that put forward in Eugene Gendlin’s 1964 personality theory. The significance of inner awareness to Gendlin and his view of the unconscious as located in the body are considered in the light of work by more recent colleagues. Eastern and other spiritual perspectives on therapeutic practice are considered. An example from client work demonstrates the value to both counsellor and client of responding from unconditioned inner awareness. Carl Rogers’ openness in his later years to taking into account inner physiological reactions as a means of living more positively and in tune with the evolving flow of experience is regarded as consistent with Dogen’s ‘forgetting’ of the ‘self’, and is seen as a desirable step in human spiritual evolution.

Abstract.     Coming into therapy the client first creates with the therapist a relationship space. In this space the reflection space develops. When the client is reflecting on a felt sense they are in the focusing space. When the client explicates this felt sense they work in the symbolization space. When new ideas pop in spontaneously, experiencing symbolizes itself; this happens in the self-symbolization space. Such a cycle or sequence, going to the focusing space and the symbolization space, is passed through countless times. On this micro-level a space is part of a change step. For a long period the client may work mainly in the relationship space. There they make many cycles of a change step, by which their therapy slowly moves up into the reflection space. On this macro-level a space is a phase. The essential role language plays in each moment and each dimension of change is outlined.

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