PersonCentred Therapy: Looking Back and Looking Forward

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Person-Centred Therapy Looking Back and Looking
Forward

• Lecture for BAPCA London, September 9, 2006

Dave Mearns www.davemearns.com
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Humanity what is it?

• How about
• A willingness to make contact with another
  human being to reach out to meet them on their
  ground and to be prepared to be fully real in
  that meeting.

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• Sometimes humanity is one-way and sometimes it
  is two-way

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Some personal experiences of humanity, with

• The P.E. teacher
• The leader of the Partick X gang
• Mr Morrison, the bookie
• Peter in the List D school
• Doug the teacher
• Rick and others
• Carl Rogers.

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• When you meet the Buddha you have to kill him to
  meet the person

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• Carl Do you know what you are doing with him
  the patient?
• Dave Not a bloody clue, Carl.
• Carl Thats alright then.

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MACROPOLITICS and MICROPOLITICS
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The micropolitics of the person-centred approach

• genuinely, no manipulation?
• genuine valuing even of its opposite?

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Politics is something that lefties do we dont
have politics, only rightness.
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TOTALITARIAN CAPITALIST DEMOCRACIES

• You have a free vote
• But all the parties are the same!

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UNSPEAK

• Stephen Poole (2006). London Little, Brown.

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Examples of unspeak

• climate change (rather than global warming)
• ethnic cleansing
• cutting out the cancer means removing all the
  bad tissue
• war on terror
• freedom is on the march
• the repetitive administration of legitimate
  force.

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The politics of helping

• PREMISE 1 Institutions are institution- centred
  , not person-centred.
• PREMISE 2 The primary object is not to help,
  but to be seen as helping.

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Corollary 1

• If we can take the same resource but spread it
  out to twice as many people, then we are being
  twice as helpful!

Corollary 2
Reliability is more important than Validity
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• Deficiency Model Vs Potentiality Model

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The politics of helping

• PREMISE 3 Helping is generally a disguise for
  social control.

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How to respond to micropolitics?

• A By being frustrated and moaning.
• B By responding with humanity.

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Seven steps in responding to institutional
politics

• I want to understand the politics as fully as I
  can
• I want to understand the power by which the
  politics holds its administrators
• I want to be expansive rather than defensive
• I want to value those administrators they are
  human beings trying to make the best of their
  job, just as I am mine
• I want to remember that its not personal its
  only business
• I want to know what I want in the situation
• I want to engage in a process of articulation
  with the administrators.

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Countercultural Achievements

• Counselling in schools
• Counselling in primary care

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• Remember that, politically, the greatest dangers
  often come from closest to home.

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• Staying broad (Person-Centred and Experiential
  Therapies)
• Staying close to BACP

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A historical account of PCT in relation to BACP

• BAC rather than UKCP
• Individual Accreditation (Brian Thorne Elke
  Lambers)
• Course Accreditation (Brian Thorne, Dave Mearns)
• The Professional Committee of BAC
• Ethics (Tim Bond)
• Complaints
• Personal therapy.

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Who is doing what, now, in relation to BACP?

• Is relational depth to be judged as
  unethical?
• Are we to continue to be relevant only to 10 of
  the population?
• Why no campaign in relation to CBT unspeak?

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• get outward looking
• get connected
• get academic
• get political
• get powerful.

PCT (FORTHCOMING) Using our strengths.

• PCT (HISTORICALLY)
• So many riches so little confidence.

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What are our present strengths?
What are our present strengths?
ZAP!
HUGE!

• More BACP members than any other approach
• More training places than any other approach
• More book sales than any other approach
• An international journal
• A dedicated publisher
• 67 of Britains counselling professoriate
• EVERYONE HERE!

FAREWELL!
EVERYONE HERE!
WOW!