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  • Politicizing the Person-Centred Approach: An agenda for social change

Politicizing the Person-Centred Approach: An agenda for social change

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ISBN 978 1 898059 72 1 (2006)
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An international collection of papers offers critical analysis of the person-centred approach and its position on difference and diversity; class; culture and racism; sexuality; power and gender issues. Other contributions present a range of work including theory development; social change as a necessary and sufficient conditon for therapeutic personality growth; emotional literacy; work with refugees and asylum seekers; peace groups and ecopolitics. 


 

CONTENTS

1. Opening Remarks — Gillian Proctor
2. Politics and Therapy: Mapping areas for consideration — Pete Sanders

The Politics of the PCA
3. First Change the World, or First Change Yourself? The Personal and the Political Revisited — Clive Perrett
4. Is There a Political Imperative Inherent Within the Person-Centred Approach? — Seamus Nash
5. Person-Centred Therapy and Time Limited Therapy — Pauline MacDonald
6. Rethinking Person-Centred Therapy — Khatidja Chantler
7. The Cultural Situatedness of Language Use in Person-Centred Training — Rundeep Sembi
8. Personal Reflections on Training as a Person-Centred Counsellor — Lois Peachey
9. Therapy: Opium for the masses or helps those who least need it? — Gillian Proctor
10. Socialist Humanism: A progressive politics for the twenty-first century — Mick Cooper
11. The Spectacular Self: Alienation as the lifestyle choice of the free world, endorsed by psychotherapists — Pete Sanders
12. The Radical Humanism of Carl Rogers and Paulo Freire: Considering the person-centered approach as a form of conscientização — Maureen O’Hara
13. Psychotherapy: The politics of liberation or collaboration? A Career Critically Reviewed — Dave Mearns

Socio-political issues and the therapy relationship
14. Person-Centered Therapy with Children and Adolescent Victims of Poverty and Social Exclusion in Brazil — Elizabeth Freire, Silvia Koller, Aline Piason, Renata B da Silva and Deborah Giacomelli
15. Not Just Naming the Injustice: Counselling asylum seekers and refugees — Jude Boyles
16. Disability, Multidimensionality and Love: The politics of a counselling relationship in Further Education — Suzanne Keys
17. South Asian Women and Mental Health Services — Kamer Shoaib
18. Person-Centred Therapy, Culture and Racism: Personal discoveries and adaptations — Indu Khurana
19. White Counsellor Racial Identity: The unacknowledged, unknown, unaware aspect of self in relationship — Colin Lago and Sheila Haugh
20. Clients’ Experiences of How Perceived Differences in Social Class Between Counsellor and Client Affect the Therapeutic Relationship — Jane Balmforth
21. The Person-Centred Approach: A vehicle for acknowledging and respecting women’s voices — Bea White

Person-Centred Approach and Social Action
22. A Passion for Politics in Carl Rogers’ Work and Approach — Gay Barfield
23. Transformation in Transylvania — Reinhold Stipsits
24. The Centre: A Person-Centred Project in Education — Fiona Hall-Jenkins
25. Politicizing School Reform Through the Person-Centered Approach: Mandate and advocacy — Jeffrey Corneluis-White and Randel Brown 26. Emotional Literacy and the Person-Centred Approach — Mike Hough
27. What Does It Have To Do With Client-Centered Therapy? — John K Wood
28. Taking Sides – Or Not? — Rosemary Hopkins
29. A Personal View of How Activism is Relevant to the Person-Centred Approach — Mae Boyd
30. Toward a Person-Centered Politics — John Vasconcellos
31. Concluding Remarks — Pete Sanders

This book is overdue. A psychotherapeutic approach that takes itself seriously must examine, understand, voice and — most essentially — make use of, its political impact. … the [person-centred]approach itself, a social criticism by its very nature, is a foundational programme for a ‘therapy’ of society, for socio-political change. Doing is a way of being, and Politicizing the Person-Centred Approach is not only a call to leave the ivory tower and contextualize the consulting room, it is an important step in helping practitioners to do so. It is a scholarly, fascinating, accessible and most stimulating call to social action. Peter F Schmid

Gillian Proctor

Dr. Gillian Proctor is an independent Clinical psychologist and person-centred psychotherapist, offering individual therapy and supervision. She is a lecturer in counselling at the University of Leeds and a research supervisor.  She has a particular interest in ethics, politics and power and the importance for counselling from the insights of sociology and philosophy to broaden and deepen our understandings of relationships and ethics. 

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Gillian Proctor

Pete Sanders

Pete Sanders worked as a volunteer at ‘Off The Record’, Newcastle-upon Tyne, in 1972 before completing a degree in psychology at the university there, and then the postgraduate diploma in counselling at Aston University. He practised as a counsellor, educator and clinical supervisor for more than 30 years, and published widely on many aspects of counselling, psychotherapy and mental health, as well as co-founding PCCS Books in 1993. After practising and teaching counselling, he continued to have an active interest in developing person-centred theory, the politics of counselling and psychotherapy, and the demedicalisation of distress.  He died in February 2022.

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Pete Sanders

Mick Cooper

Mick Cooper is Professor of Counselling Psychology at the University of Roehampton and a practising counselling psychologist. Mick is author and editor of a range of texts on person-centred, existential, and relational approaches to therapy. Mick has led a series of research studies – both qualitative and quantitative – exploring the processes and outcomes of person-centred counselling with young people, and has published in a range of leading international psychotherapy journals. He is a Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and the Academy of Social Sciences.

He is the father of four children and lives in Brighton, on the south coast of England.

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Mick Cooper

Beryl Malcolm

Beryl Malcolm works in a Child/Adolescent Mental Health Team, as well as  supervising trainee play therapists. Her background and training are in teaching, counselling and Play Therapy. She is particularly interested in ethnicity issues in cousnelling/psychotherapy, and her MA research focused on race and culture in child therapy. She has worked in various settings in the voluntary and statutory sectors. She grew up in London but now lives in the the North of England.

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