ABSTRACT
As Sanders (2006b: 33) states, the ®rst of Rogers' necessary and suf®cient conditions, the requirement that `contact' (Rogers 1959: 213) or `psychological contact' (Rogers 1957: 96) exists between client and therapist, is consistently overlooked in most books about therapy and often in the training even of personcentred therapists. This seems to be an important oversight because what is being expressed in this condition is that successful therapy depends upon there being a relationship between the client and the therapist. Rogers (1959: 207) makes this clear in his de®nitions of terms:
Contact. Two persons are in psychological contact, or have the minimum essential of a relationship, when each makes a perceived or subceived difference in the experiential ®eld of another.
