ABSTRACT
Person-centred therapy is predicated on trust. First there is the axiomatic basic trust in the person as of worth and propelled by the actualising tendency to achieve potential. In other words, clients are to be trusted – given the right climate, they will do what they need to do as and when they need to do it. (The prime requirement of person-centred therapists is to establish this trust in the potential of others. It is to this end (and others) that training in the approach and attention to personal growth are directed (Points 53 and 56). The belief that the necessary and sufficient conditions are precisely that is fundamental to person-centred therapy. From this follows a trust in the process of therapy. Sometimes this is expressed glibly as ‘trust the process’ but this shouldn’t be taken to imply a laissez-faire attitude is good enough. As Tudor and Merry (2002: 145) point out, it is also necessary to ‘process the trust’. Trusting the process is about full engagement with and an understanding of what is happening and about being actively facilitative. However, it is a given that, for person-centred therapy to work, person-centred therapists must trust their clients, the process and themselves. But it is also true that the client must be equally trusting of the same elements. It is unlikely that clients will have a realistic trust in the therapist and the process of therapy when they first present and certainly not in their organismic experiencing (otherwise they wouldn’t need therapy). Therefore ‘establishing trust’ is something to be addressed in the early stages of the therapeutic relationship.
