ABSTRACT
Person-centred therapy (PCT) is stuck between the beautiful soul syndrome (‘Beauty’) and a mechanized view of therapy (‘Cyborg’). Enthused by a sense of its own purity and stirred by Christian narratives of love (often divine Agape rather than subversive and relational Eros), it wants to be effective in a world that it perceives as tainted. As the self-appointed conscience of the therapy world, PCT strives to maintain this self role by defending its principled ethos. At the same time, concerned about becoming irrelevant in a fast-moving world and wishing to be more effectual, it embraces neoliberalism and its bag of algorithms, data and market-driven ethics. Often separate, Beauty and the Cyborg are at times joined together in an unholy alliance within PCT. After examining both manifestations, this chapter charts a way out, drawing insights from organismic psychology, the roots of PCT and from literature.
