ABSTRACT
Carl Rogers is everywhere and nowhere. As founder of the Person-Centred Approach and a hugely influential figure in Humanistic Psychology, his work continues sending up shoots of insight for students of the therapeutic relationship but, as we survey the contemporary field of counselling and psychotherapy, the Person-Centred challenge to psychotherapeutic orthodoxy, and to the power structures beyond, is conspicuously dormant. In the session, Rogers experiences first-hand the limits and flaws in both psychological theory and 'theory-mindedness', so from exasperation more than intellectual rigour he subverts the conventional therapy dynamic by letting go his expertise and putting the client's reality first. Person-Centred Therapy, might still have a good deal to say about our times but just because we keep calling something 'revolutionary' does not make it so. Removed from expectations of change defined by a traditional psychotherapeutic framework, the combined gazes of client and therapist can also have a wider horizon than just intra- and inter-personal dynamics.
