Ethics and the person-centered approach

This article examines the relationship between ethics and the person-centered approach (PCA). It discusses the ideas of authors who question the perspective established by Carl Rogers. Using the work of Luiz Claudio Figueiredo, this article acknowledges that questions about ethics, which are understood as the human abode, precede epistemological inquiries. Also, according to Figueiredo, the PCA is assumed to be closer to romantic and liberal positions. Using these discussions, this article seeks possibilities for the PCA being open to difference. Based on Levinas, it considers alterity as a radical difference that establishes the subject and with which it establishes a relationship of insurmountable asymmetry. In light of the Levinasian proposal, notions such as “person,” as well as the conditions that facilitate the therapeutic process, are discussed. The article concludes that the PCA’s concepts are not completely averse to alterity and that Rogers did encounter it in his practice, despite never recognizing it in his theoretical formulations.