Carl Rogers never met with a couple or a family in therapy although his 1972 book, Becoming Partners, based on interviews with a diverse group of couples (all heterosexual), offered his thoughts on how a couple might be together. However, many client-centered therapists have written papers on the subject.  Indeed the journal Person Centered Review (edited by David Cain) offered a whole issue on working with couples and families (1989) and several books have chapters on the subject (Cooper, O’Hara, Schmid & Wyatt
2007; Mearns, 1989; Levant & Shlien, 1984). Many readers oriented towards work with individuals have been or will be asked to meet with clients and their intimate others. Couples work is often indicated when a relationship is the primary concern. Meetings with parents and siblings can be helpful and sometimes urgently needed as part of the therapy of a child.

In designing this special issue the editors sought to invite those authors who had the strongest publishing record in the field – all these authors accepted the invitation. The five papers offer a range of perspectives within the PCE field on therapy with couples and families. Two of the papers are by former students of Rogers (Gaylin and O’Leary) who have also written books on person-centered couple and family therapy. A third paper is by a family therapist with an experiential background (Rober) who has written numerous articles on family therapy and the experience of persons in dialogue. The other two papers (Greenberg & Goldman; Burgess Moser & Johnson) are co-authored by people who are particularly responsible for the development of emotion focused couple therapy which, experiential in origins, is one of the two approaches towards work with couples that have the strongest empirical support. Though there are predictable similarities in their theoretical basis, it is also interesting to see their divergence, as EFT integrates with other theoretical models.

Ned Gaylin offers a perspective about the core similarity of individual client-centered therapy and work with families. From his over fifty years experience he describes the unique challenges of work with more than one person and offers tools compatible with the core work of empathic acceptance. Like Gaylin, O’Leary presents a relationship therapy application of the six conditions of the person-centered approach. He also offers a therapist job description unique to relationship therapy and invites readers’ reflection
and comparison with their own work. Peter Rober discusses the self of the therapist in family therapy and the quality of knowing in action that affects therapy in a way that is beyond technique or even conscious intention. His invitation to attend to the therapist’s inner conversation has implications for a philosophy of therapy as well as supervision. Moser and Johnson write about Emotion Focused Couple Therapy with more emphasis on the effect of attachment issues. They show how EFT derives from client-centered
roots adapted to systems thinking and, in case examples, demonstrate the practice of empathy in the face of often rigid relationship patterns. Greenberg and Goldman describe the course of a whole therapy for couples in Emotion-Focused Couple Therapy. They consider three areas where emotion is important: attachment; identity and power; and attraction and liking; showing how each can be addressed by a therapy that is empathic and accepting. .

What all the authors have in common are two things; hundreds, if not thousands of hours in the presence of couples and families and an emphasis on facilitating the personal growth of each person in the therapeutic relationship. Even if we may think or behave differently in our own work, we cannot deny the rich experience of couple and family life that each author brings us. Every paper offers a perspective on remaining connected to clients’ inner experience while also holding the reality of each person’s effect on
every other person. The reader could locate these papers on a continuum from most directive to least directive - most prescriptive of client process to most open-ended. More usefully they could see each paper as facing the same predicament: how can I be facilitative of each client’s freedom to grow, to be understood, to make their own choices while permitting significant others to be safe and connected in their presence? Any therapist, indeed any persons reflecting on their own experience, will find useful
information, solid philosophy about therapy and facilitation and, perhaps, a feeling of not being alone in facing the complexity of relationships.


REFERENCES

Cooper, M., O’Hara, M., Schmid, P. F., & Wyatt, G. (2007). The handbook of person-centred psychotherapy
and counselling. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Levant, R. F., & Shlien, J. M. (1984). Client-centered therapy and the person-centered approach: New
directions in theory, research, and practice. New York: Praeger.
Mearns, D., & Dryden, W. (Eds.) (1989). Experiences of counselling in action. London: Sage.


Special Issue Editors
Charles J. O’Leary, USA
Dave Mearns, Scotland September, 2008