ABSTRACT
With respect to psychological contact and mental distress and person-centred therapy, the work of Garry Prouty is of pre-eminence (Points 15 and 68). Proutyg asked the fundamental question ‘What happens if the first of the necessary and sufficient conditions is not met?’ This led to the development of a person-centred system of thought and practice embracing clients with (for example) profound learning difficulties or schizophrenia. This became known as pre-therapy (see Prouty 2002a and 2002b) which (2002b: 55) is described as ‘a theory of psychological contact … rooted in Rogers’ conception of psychological contact as the first condition of a therapeutic relationship’. According to Krietemeyer and Prouty (2003: 152) pre-therapy theory ‘was developed in the context of treating mentally retarded or psychotic populations’. This is because, in Prouty’s experience, such people are ‘contact-impaired’ and have difficulty forming interpersonal connections. Pre-therapy theory led to the development of a set of practices by which psychological contact could be established (see case studies presented by Krietemeyer and Prouty 2003: 154–160 and Van Werde 1994: 125–128) and for which Dekeyser et al. (2014: 206–222) and Prouty (2001: 595–596) 100summarise the research evidence. Pre-therapy work with clients of different types is exemplified by Sommerbeck’s (2011: 235–241) introduction to pre-therapy with people diagnosed with psychoses, her (2014a: 67–73) work with people at the difficult edge (see Points 96 and 97) and Carrick and McKenzie’s (2011) work with people on the autism spectrum.
