As the 7th World Conference for Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy and Counseling, from July 12 through 16, 2006 in Potsdam, Germany, comes nearer we are looking forward to it as an exciting event for the person-centered and experiential community. The subject, Leading a Good Life: A PCE Perspective on Health, has attracted interesting presentations, abstracts for which can be found at <http://www.gwg-ev.org/pce2006/abstracts/>. We invite presenters to submit their papers in article form to this journal, which will publish much of the outcome of the Conference in its forthcoming issues. Do not hesitate to contact the coeditors either at Potsdam or before. At the conference we will also present an open, roundtable discussion on PCEP, with the co-editors, book-review editor and publisher all present.

One of the main tasks of the editors is to encourage non-native English-speaking authors to submit their work to the international readership of the Journal. The review process for such work can be partially in the mother tongue, and every reasonable help is provided to work towards a final, publishable English version. The editors see it as their foremost mission to further cross-language and cross-cultural exchange, which we believe to be crucial for the further development of our approaches.

In this issue of PCEP we have four papers, a review essay and three further book reviews. The first two papers focus, in different ways, on the political importance of research. Elliott and Zucconi emphasize the importance of practice-based research and present a framework for selecting instruments that can be used not only in evaluations of person-centered/experiential (PCE) psychotherapies, but also in the evaluation of training. The paper by Hutschemaekers and van Kalmthout focuses on the Dutch context, where the new multidisciplinary guidelines for mental-health care have put a political squeeze on PCE therapies. In their close examination of the guidelines and the production criteria for those guidelines the authors note that the results are severely limited by the fact that only ‘level one’ evidence (RCTs) has been considered. We publish this paper in the knowledge that this issue recurs in numerous other parts of the world. Indeed, the issue is a matter of considerable current debate, particularly with respect to the comparison of the effectiveness of PCE and CBT. On this question we would like to draw readers’ attention to a relevant current publication by one of PCEP’s co-editors (Stiles et al., 2006).

In the third paper Rennie describes his experiential person-centered approach to therapy with its key concept of radical reflexivity. Historically, Rennie has firmly grounded his work on discoveries from extensive qualitative research and he has given us numerous rich concepts. In this paper he continues to move forward the discussion on client agency and its facilitation. Finally, there is a growing interest in Mindfulness and in linking Mindfulness training with PCE therapies. In the last regular paper in this issue Tophoff continues this exploration by examining Sensory Awareness as a training method in Mindfulness.

The reviews begin with Bohart’s review essay on Wilkins’ book, Person-Centred Therapy in Focus. A review essay in PCEP is treated like a paper in that it is subject to a normal refereeing process. Also, it is a longer piece that, in this case, allows Bohart to explore in some detail Wilkins’ responses to the main criticisms of person-centered therapy. In the first of the shorter book reviews Grant looks at Raskin’s book, Contributions to Client-Centered Therapy and the Person-Centered Approach, a comprehensive collection of his papers over a lifetime of work in client-centered therapy. Barrett-Lennard has also contributed many years of academic work to the approach, culminating in three major books in the past eight years. O’Leary reviews the most recent of these, Relationship at the Centre: Healing in a troubled world. In the final review in this issue Schmid reviews the attempts of the person-centered and existential therapists Mearns and Cooper to analyse the notion of ‘relational depth’ in their book, Working at Relational Depth in Counselling and Psychotherapy.

This issue also includes an announcement of the new French-language journal, ACP Pratique & Recherche, dedicated to the Person-Centered Approach. PCEP intends to improve communication with French-speaking members by including French-language titles and abstracts from the next issue. We are also interested in developing titles and abstracts in Japanese, and we would welcome approaches from colleagues who might assist with translation.

We are delighted to welcome the Dutch association Vereniging voor Cliëntgerichte Psychotherapie (VCgP), with its large membership, who are joining the associations from Britain and Austria in providing PCEP to all their members as part of their membership. The benefit for the association is a discount to the price of the Journal and a cancellation of the organizational membership fee, as well as a reduction in the dues for individual membership.

We hope that this encourages other associations to follow and make the same contract with the WAPCEPC secretariat: <secretariat@pce-world.org>.

Robert Elliott <robert.elliott@utoledo.edu> Dave Mearns <dave@davemearns.com> Peter F. Schmid <pfs@pfs-online.at> William B. Stiles <pcep@muohio.edu>