ABSTRACT
While there is a view that much of what needs to be known about the practice of classic client-centred therapy was stated more or less completely in the works of Rogers and his colleagues published in the 1950s, this is probably held by a minority of people describing themselves as person-centred. For the most part, there is an acceptance that Rogers did not provide all the answers and a certainty that he did not address all the issues raised in and by the practice of counselling and psychotherapy in the modern world. More or less from the days of the Chicago Center, person-centred theory has been thought about and reflected on and modified in response. For example, Eugene Gendlin, one of Rogers’ leading colleagues and whose background was in philosophy, became more and more interested in how clients were facilitated to express, symbolise and articulate experience. From this interest flowed the development of focusing and thence (with other influences) experiential psychotherapy which many see as the second major branch to the person-centred family of therapies. Others also took the basic ideas of client-centred therapy in different directions. Notable amongst them was Laura Rice who incorporated some ideas from cognitive therapy traditions in her work. This led to an increased interest in the micro-processes of psychotherapy 72and ultimately to a way of doing and understanding psychotherapy which is sometimes called process-experiential therapy and the notion that those therapists in the broader person-centred tradition are process experts. This process of review, revision and expansion continues with, for example, the move into ‘Emotional-Focused Therapy’ as a derivative of the process-experiential strand (see Elliott et al. 2004b).
