Category: Person-centred Approach

Learning In An Unstructured Group – Dot Clark & Colin Lago

Dot Clark

An hour of conversation with Colin Lago and Dot Clark on their experiences of holding open learning environments.

Colin has, for some time now, been facilitating the Temenos Postgraduate Supervision Training using this mode of learning, and Dot has joined him as co-facilitator on the last two courses. The next course is due to begin in October 2014.

The aim of creating such a learning environment is to enable participants to take responsibility for their own learning process and to support the making of meaning within a rich context of appropriate resources and relationships.

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Rage and Shame – Sue Parker Hall

Sue Parker Hall

In the trainings I deliver I have frequently been asked “what is the link between rage and shame?” Participants and myself have intuitively known that there is a strong relationship between them both. As a consequence I have been inspired to research the issue and have developed a model that articulates the connection between the two, and also a deeper understanding of how the therapeutic relationship can address these commonly presented, often perplexing, issues.

In this online interview I discuss a practice example of how a client may oscillate between rage and shame, the impact that this had on me as a therapist and how I worked with it.

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WAPCEPC – Relationship, Empathy, and Cultural Differences – Iguaraya Morales

Iguaraya Morales

As a result of researching on the Venezuelan episteme (along with Dr. Alejandro Moreno), it was found that Venezuelans perceive themselves as “in-relationship”; they do not conceive themselves as individuals.
In consequence, as a Clinical Psychologist, I started thinking about the implications of these findings on the therapeutic relationship and the way empathy is established.

Rogers considered empathy and relationship concepts from a modern paradigm where the person is an individual self; but Venezuelan therapists need to overcome the phenomenology and take into account what has been lived and shared in the same life-world and hermeneutic horizon.

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A Person Centred Approach to Counselling Children and Young People: The Benefits, the Challenges, and Some Thoughts on Counsellor Training – Sue Lewis

Sue Lewis

In this presentation Sue intends to set out her thinking on the person centred approach’s contribution to working with children and young people, to explore some of the benefits and challenges of working in this way and to start a conversation about a person centred approach to the development of counsellors of children and young people.

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Counselling for Depression (CfD): My Experience as a Trainer – Kate Hayes

Kate Hayes

When the IAPT (Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies) funding was announced it caused an initial ripple of delight- which soon became a dreadful shock as surgery’s lost their counsellors and CBT seemed to be the only choice for free on delivery ‘psychological therapy’ in the NHS.

Then Counselling for Depression (CfD) emerged and when I read the manual I was excited to recognise the person-centred approach throughout. It was then I decided to do my best to support its development as it was clear the funding allocated to it was temporary and unless it was taken up, the person centred approach in free on delivery services would not survive.

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Beyond the Frontiers of Person-centred Purism: Pluralism and Experiencing Diversity of Therapeutic Practices – WAPCEPC Online Event with Mick Cooper

Mick Cooper

In recent years, Mick Cooper has been working with John McLeod to develop a ‘pluralistic’ approach to therapy, which Mick has described as a person-centred ‘metatherapeutic’ approach. That is, a person-centred way of thinking about the therapeutic field as a whole.

This dialogue will explore the concept of pluralism and its implications for person-centred theory and practice: introducing research and theory on client preferences, therapeutic goals, and ‘metatherapeutic communication’: talking with clients about the process and focus of therapy.

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Personal Growth And Societal Impact: The PCA as Ethics, Philosophy and Psychology for Personal and Social Change – Peter F. Schmid

The world faces substantial challenges: from globalization to climate change and the planet’s limited resources, from religious warfare and terrorism to new ways of inter- and intra-national relationships and community, partnership and ‘family’ building – to only name a few.

This calls for a considerable change in the self-understanding of us humans. I am convinced that we have the potential to deal with the encounters ahead constructively, if we indeed understand and approach them as encounters, we have to face and are able to do so.

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Hope for this Hour: Watch Out for Angry Flying Cows – Carol Wolter-Gustafson

Carol Wolter-Gustafson

Today, it takes just an instant to be electronically connected to human suffering half way around the world. Amidst endless streams of variously sourced information, we absorb the world, and make choices in response. Amidst cynicism, corporate dominance and competing narratives, how is it possible to “be the change we want to see in the world?” What are we to do?  How is it possible for us to have hope for this hour in which we live?

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We Start From Where We Are – Dot Clark

Dot Clark

Our theme, ‘Going Global’, can easily arouse anxiety and helplessness when we consider the scale of the challenges facing the world today. However, “we start from where we are”, even when that includes despair and panic, by endeavouring to approach our experience with compassion and acceptance. The Person-Centred community has much to contribute here and now, especially if we can reach out beyond the confines of therapy into the world.

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Raising Awareness of Aspergers Syndrome: Demonstration and Discussion – Kate Stubbings & Allan Turner

Kate Stubbings & Allan Turner

We estimate that 1 in 10 of individual counselling clients is affected (either personally, or through a close relationship) by Autistic Spectrum conditions. For couples counsellors we estimate that this figure climbs to 4 in 10 since it creates so many relationship difficulties. In this demonstration workshop we will first role play the partner of a person with the condition and then the client with the condition. There should also be about 30 minutes of discussion time.

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Person Centred Couples Counselling – Allan Turner & Kate Stubbings

Allan Turner

This is an important, but often neglected area of Person Centred Counselling. There is very little theoretical writing which is exclusively person centred, on this subject. This presentation is unashamedly person-centred and will focus on PCA theory as it is applied to couples work.

Our two presenters are both very experienced in the field with more than 40 years experience between them. They are both Senior Accredited members of BACP.

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WAPCEPC – Mutuality of Rogers’ Therapeutic Conditions: The Process and Outcome of Successful Psychotherapy – David Murphy

David Murphy

In Rogers’ theory the natural consequence of therapy is for the client to experience greater congruence between experience and awareness, unconditional positive self regard. As a consequence of being received by the therapist experience of UPR and empathic understanding for the client, the client comes to experience these conditions towards others. Through my research I have provided empirical support for this aspect of our theory. Not only this, the research suggests that when the therapeutic relationship is characterised by the mutual experiencing of therapeutic conditions outcomes are also improved.

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What Have the Positive Psychologists Ever Done for Us? The Person-centred Approach and Positive Psychology? – Stephen Joseph

Stephen Joseph

Over the last decade the world of psychology science and practice has been changing. One mainstream development that person-centred psychologists need to be more aware of is positive psychology – the science of optimal human functioning and well-being.

The big idea of positive psychology is that we should be interested not only in distress and dysfunction but also in what makes life worth living. Does this sound like a familiar idea? It should.

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Is There Life After Retirement? – Dave Mearns

Dave Mearns

From 2011 he set about his challenge. He had always loved writing but now the challenge was to switch genres and to use the structure of the novel to illustrate the variety of human developmental process and the ways people use relationship in support of their development. The first result is the Scottish novel, Smoky Bacon Crisps: Finding the edge of life, published as an e-book on Amazon Kindle and in hard copy via www.davemearns.com/smoky-bacon-crisps.asp. Appropriately to the title of our event, the three central characters in the book begin the significant developments in their lives after they retire.

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Learning – and Being in Action? – Lynette Green & Max Hope

This online conversation is with Lynette Green and Max Hope. Lynette is a person-centred psychodramatist and Max is a person-centred educator.

During this online discussion, they talked about the benefits of using psychodrama as a tool for learning as well as their own views of person-centred education. They addressed the dilemmas of being open to being led by a group whilst also having their own agenda (in terms of content and method).

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Working with Anger – Mike Trier

Mike Trier

I’ve worked for many years with teenagers labelled as angry, and poorly behaved, first as a teacher, and currently as a counsellor. I’ve developed ‘Working with Anger’ groups, aimed at teenage boys. We make sure they feel heard. And then we support them as they begin to take more control over their lives, even under difficult circumstances in school and at home.

We don’t have a magic wand, but we’ve a track record in helping young men engage with school more effectively!

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Encounter Groups: A Place to Experience the Magic? – Terry Daly

Terry Daly

Terry has been in Encounter groups from the age of 14 and has experienced much ‘magic’ in the moments of connection with other human beings in this unique and radical context.

Terry is passionate about the need for difference to be spoken and heard in all walks of life and feels that even after more than 40 years of history the Encounter Group is still a relevant context to make contact with others while being authentically ourselves.

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Encounter Groups A Passionate Presence – Interview with Peggy Natiello

Peggy Natiello

Peggy Natiello authored “The Person-Centered Approach: A passionate presence” as a challenge to those who practice the person-centered approach “to recognize and fully engage the philosophical belief system, the passionate style of living and the integrity that person-centeredness demands.” Her challenge extends to both therapists working one to one and those who would enter the encounter group experience.

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