3.5.8 Person Centred Modality

The word holistic is nowadays familiar to most people but sometimes its principles (and in particular its implications) are not fully understood. (Sometimes I have seen it spelt wholistic, which points to its origins – i.e consideration of the whole of something. However that spelling seems to have fallen into disuse).

It is generally associated with alternative or complementary medicine and practices.  The more establishment medical profession often view such practices with scepticism because they do not offer guaranteed or absolute certainty when it comes to healing. Though many practitioners within medicine are becoming increasingly open as time goes on.

Holistic healing posits that our body, mind and spirit are all connected, and if one changes the others change too.

So if I say that a holistic response is needed to solve a human problem, (as I stated when discussing hard and easy problems in respect of supporting people on the margins), I mean that the response needs to be alive and changing, (and has the potential to change further) rather than fixed and inert.

A holistic response also implies longevity – whereas speed towards closure (cure) is the essence of the medical intervention. (And because we all want to recover quickly from physical illness or injury, we would be very surprised and disappointed if it was any other way).

However, time (which is, remember, a root foundation) has a completely different meaning in the holistic response – and closure is determined as much by the person being helped as the practitioner. And speaking about the root foundations, longevity favours emergence too.

Holism has a systemic dimension.  I believe that it also involves creating an invitational atmosphere where people feel at their ease within themselves, and with each other.

Before you press on to read about Person Centred Therapy, I invite you, if not read already, to have a look at the post describing the relevance of systems theory to the family where, in respect of same, the concept of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts is discussed.

Carl Rogers, from USA, was a therapist who was very influential in the development of Person Centred Therapy (which I will refer to as PCT just for convenience) in the 1940’s and 1950’s.

Such was his influence that it is sometimes referred to as Rogerian Therapy. One of the most influential and widely read books about PCT is entitled On Becoming a Person by Carl Rogers. It is well worth reading to get a good overview of this form of healing. It is a relatively jargon-free book, and is full of common sense.

The new and radical (at that time) ideas of Rogers were influenced by thinking promoted by philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Buber, Paul Tillich and others.

Such philosophers explored many and varied aspects of being human, but from our point of view the most important thing to note was that they focused on human relationship as being fundamental to our existence.

The principles and general methods of Person Centred Therapy, which focused on personal power and healing from within rather than being cured by an external expert, took a long time to be accepted in the therapeutic world as psychology in the USA was at that time dominated by psychiatry and behaviourism which I have described already.

Person Centred Therapy (PCT) is based on three fundamental principles:

1. Empathy: Empathy is defined as the ability (and willingness) to walk in someone else’s shoes.  Not literally, of course, but metaphorically.  That is to invite the person in distress to describe what their situation is like, and then imagine what it might be like to be in that situation.  And remember, we walk in their shoes, not in their socks. (That is, the practitioner is part of the process, but not so much that he is immersed in it).

Often, when people describe empathy, they stress that it is different to sympathy. And indeed it is. Sympathy can call on us to do something, extend ourselves, give to charity, pray for someone, feel sorry for them etc. and it is of course a very good thing to be sympathetic to others who might be suffering.

Empathy, however, implies long-term healing and relationship. And it is in, and through, relationship that healing happens.

2. Congruence: If we are congruent we have the ability and willingness to be genuine. 

The genuine that is meant here is not the genuine that applies to a Rolex or a Ferrari. I believe that it is important to distinguish between being mechanically genuine and human genuineness. In a Rolex or a Ferrari, (or, indeed a diamond) any deviation from the manufacturer’s perfection (or, in the case of the diamond, the crystal formation) will render it non-genuine.

However, it is through imperfection that we humans are known.

In being genuine in a human way, what people see is what they get, even if it is imperfection. After all, to err is human and having an expectation that we will never err is unrealistic. Also, as I stated already, if we are not being genuine it will be spotted immediately.

3. Unconditional Positive Regard:  This is the trickiest one to describe – and indeed put into practice.  In essence, it is not having any goal for the person in distress – apart from that goal or those goals that emerge over time and that the person herself identifies.  (It does not mean that I allow someone to walk all over me – as it might be described by critics of Person Centred Therapy).

Now not having any goal might sound easy – but it is not.

We are accustomed to having positive regard for those who we deem to be progressing, whether it is in school, home, work, sport, and almost every human endeavour. And most of us will have noticed that those who can’t keep up are often sidelined. If we have ever been involved in helping others, in any way, we will have experienced the good feeling that comes from the person that we are helping improving his circumstances.

Because of our years if not decades of these kinds of experiences it can be very challenging to continually offer positive regard to someone we perceive to be standing still, or even going backwards, in respect of how we feel that they should be progressing.

At its best, unconditional positive regard is truly the honouring of non-progress.

As I also stated a number of times, paradox is part of our human experience. And the paradox inherent in unconditional positive regard is that when we (the practitioners) stop demanding progress……… it happens! (This is a bit like the butterfly landing on us when we stop chasing it).

Another difficult part, or challenge is that progress often doesn’t happen as fast as we might expect and/or it may be in a different direction to that which we wish for.

In its purest form PCT leans heavily towards the systemic or holistic way of looking at the world – and, as will be mentioned later in this Chapter – has a lot of potential in respect of the root foundations described already. 

Practitioners such as Carl Rogers (and indeed many others) found behaviourism (and, indeed, psychiatry, and related medical model modalities) to be generally unfulfilling and unrewarding and claimed that they failed to take into account many traits that are unique to humans.

While CBT, as I described already, has far more potential to be attractive to very hurt people than behaviourism, and acknowledges and affirms the ability of humans to think, (and think symbolically), if we are truly person centred we meet people where they were at, ultimately giving the people who are looking for help the responsibility for their own healing, and promoting the notion that they have the strength, wisdom, awareness, insight and potential to change their world from within.

It also proposes that people have innate traits such as creativity, idealism, optimism, zeal, individuality, strong feelings, compassion, and ethical awareness that we attribute to being uniquely human, as well as the root foundations described in the Chapter on Universal Theories of Change.

Because of the principle of Unconditional Positive Regard, PCT also relieves us of the burden of labelling someone as stuck, a favourite label used by practitioners for people who are not changing for the better fast enough.

In fact, it will, instead, encourage us to look at our own stuckness in our expectations, core beliefs and values, and even expectations arising from external pressures.

That is, when we say someone is stuck, does it mean that someone is stopping me getting my job done?

For a few final words on Person Centred Therapy, I will invite you to ponder on whether or not it makes sense to offer positive regard (or love, as positive regard is sometimes known as in its purest form) unconditionally?

PCT invites the person’s world into the practitioner’s space (whether that is a room, on the street, in a group etc.) and if we are truly committed to the invitation, we do so without conditions in respect of judgement as to how or in what direction the person will progress, if at all.

In this, it is very important to remember that, for those practitioners who are willing, implicit in the invitation is that power is also shared.

Remember the intertwining circles from a previous Chapter? Those diagrams try and depict how the Pillars, over time, dominate the space that the community occupies. 

It is vital, for practitioners of PCT, that they do not dominate the shared space and, psychologically, drive the unique and personal characteristics of the person seeking help out of it. Sometimes it reminds me of a spider walking on water. The surface tension of the water ensures that the spider doesn’t sink. In the analogy, the helper’s task is to tread lightly so that he doesn’t sink and then have to struggle to stay afloat.

Staying afloat (metaphorically) is the responsibility of the helper, and it makes reflection and self-awareness necessary elements in the practice of PCT. It implies the presence of (sometimes uncomfortable) chaos and uncertainty, but, on the up-side, it opens the way for creativity and encouragement of autonomy.

There will be far more about the applications of this in Section Five, Practical Applications, but for now I will just note that it is often the inability or unwillingness of practitioners to live with this discomfort, and their subsequent urge to drive it out, that causes them to, over time, (and often unintentionally), dominate the shared space.  (The Chapter on the Family Support Shamrock will discuss this in more detail).

In my opinion, if there is any magic wand (or silver bullet as it is sometimes called for some reason) in helping very hurt people and easing their pain I believe that unconditional positive regard comes closest.

It is very challenging firstly to find, and then give, and indeed sometimes accept but I believe that while it is elusive it does exist.

And the amazing thing about it is, because of the existence of the root foundations referred to in a previous Chapter, change will usually happen anyway, from within – when conditions are right.

I proposed already that people who have not experienced, or do not have a sense of personal power may obsess about garnering power and exercising control externally, often to the detriment of others.  In addition to this, a lot of what we call evil in the world comes about as a result of acting out some form of emotional pain.

I believe that unconditional love has the effect of easing people’s pain, taking away the twin tyrannies of competition and comparison, and allowing people to grow at their own pace.

You might be interested in the writings of Martin Luther King Jr.  Drawing on the beliefs of Mahatma Gandhi, M.L.K. believed that it was possible to solve major world problems involving injustice with love alone.  He believed that the application of love changed people’s perception of themselves and their world to the extent that they begin to tend towards justice rather than injustice. 

He did not believe that this was a quick-fix, however.