Issue 3:3  Fall 2004

Editorial:  Taking Stock and Looking Forward

With this issue, we are changing the focus of these editorials. From now on, we plan to use this space to apprise the reader of the ways in which the Journal is developing and also of significant developments in the field. We don’t intend the editorial to serve a newsletter function, but we will mention what appear to us to be interesting or significant developments.  One such example is the recent award of significant funding from the Carnegie Foundation for a collaborative venture across three Scottish Universities (Abertay, Aberdeen and Strathclyde), led by Professor John McLeod of the University of Abertay. This will establish a counseling research clinic, particularly dedicated to conducting empirical work in the domain of person-centered and experiential psychotherapies and supported by colleagues internationally.

One of the fundamental aims of PCEP has been to develop the internationalism of the journal. Sometimes the term ‘International Journal’ can come to mean ‘USA journal’, but this is certainly not the case with PCEP. In the first nine issues the 41 papers have featured principal authors from no fewer than 11 countries – Argentina (1), Australia (1), Austria (3), Belgium (4), Canada (4), England (3), Germany (5), Holland (5), Scotland (6), Slovakia (1), and the USA (8).

PCEP offers a particularly supportive editorial process for papers originating in languages other than English. In a two-stage review process, papers are first assessed in their native language versions before going into translation and further English language review.  Furthermore, we have begun offering authors the support of a mentor (drawn from our Editorial Advisory Panel) to assist with revisions to the manuscript, which is now no longer in the author’s native language.

This issue continues with papers from the 2003 World Conference held in Egmond aan Zee in Holland. In addition, we have issued a call for papers from the June 2004 conference in Leuven, Belgium. This event, entitled ‘The Wisdom of Client-Centered Therapy’, was an important conference on person-centered and experiential psychotherapies organized on the occasion of the retirement of Germain Lietaer. It should be noted that all submitted conference papers go through our standard scientific review process and that PCEP is pleased to receive many submissions unrelated to conferences.

As well as reflecting a range of countries, another aim of PCEP is to create a dialogue among person-centered and experiential psychotherapies. A journal that focuses narrowly on one subset of an approach may starve itself if the lines are drawn too tightly. Also, that policy misses out on the kind of differences that can stimulate useful and creative dialogue. For example, we believe it is safe to say that many of the subscribers to PCEP see themselves as relationship-centered (or some equivalent term), while just as many are more likely refer to themselves as process-centered (or some closely related term). One policy for a journal might be to see these as completely separate and needing different publications. However, we are concerned that such an approach would just add further fragmentation to an already fragmented field. Therefore, the editorial view we are taking is that although these positions do represent different emphases, we are all looking at very much the same kind of psychotherapeutic material. If we can hold our differences within one journal, then we can create the truly exciting prospect of helping our relationship-centered therapists to become more ‘process aware’ and our process-centered therapists to become more ‘relationship aware’.   We are committed to maintaining this as a creative tension, and we are pleased by the fact that throughout these first nine issues of PCEP our articles have properly expressed a range of sub-orientations, including person-centered, process-experiential and focusing-oriented approaches to psychotherapy.

In addition to these fundamental aims of internationalism and creating a dialogue among the sub-orientations, we want to move the journal in the direction of more fully exploring practice issues. PCEP is already important for trainers worldwide in terms of its theoretical articles and, while there have been a number of practice-based papers, we would like to see more of these, in order to enhance the Journal’s relevance among trainers worldwide. So we are issuing a general call for articles on practice, including information on what really happens in therapy sessions (for example, detailed case studies and transcripts of therapy sessions). We particularly want to encourage the submission of papers describing creative or interesting applications to different client populations in a variety of clinical situations.

Until now, the major conferences of the World Association for Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy and Counseling have taken place every three years. The next is scheduled from July 12–16, 2006 in Potsdam, Germany. The theme of the conference will be ‘Leading a good life: a PCE perspective on psychological health’. The theme is chosen to have relevance to the wide variety of orientations and cultures represented in the PCE world and also to be looking outward to the contributions person-centered and experiential therapies can make to contemporary society.

An interesting decision of the 2003 World Conference was that, after 2006, these World conferences should take place every two years. That should serve to increase the level of academic dialogue within our approaches and also through the pages of PCEP.

Turning now to the papers in the present issue of PCEP, which features further papers from the Egmond conference: we lead with Barry Grant’s paper, in which he argues that every psychotherapy requires an ethical justification and goes on to sketch this for clientcentered therapy. Jeffrey and Cecily Cornelius-White next offer a careful analysis of the content of the Egmond conference program, revealing some interesting and not-fully recognized patterns. One of the well-attended events of the Egmond conference was a roundtable dialogue on the plural nature of the self. This dialogue was recorded and has been edited into a paper by the main presenters, Mick Cooper, Dave Mearns, William Stiles, Margaret Warner and Robert Elliott. Martin van Kalmthout’s article concludes the Egmond 2003 papers for this issue, with a piece on the relationship of person-centered psychotherapy to science and spirituality and its future position in the mental health system. We close the issue with a review essay and a regular-length review.

By the time you receive this, the final issue (4) of volume 3 will already be in press. We are pleased to have many papers submitted for review for later publication. PCEP is proving to be a popular location for international papers. However, we always welcome submissions, and look forward to hearing from you. Finally, please remember to encourage individual and organizational subscribers to PCEP.

Robert Elliott, Dave Mearns and Peter F. Schmid

August 2004