ABSTRACT
The person-centred approach can be considered as rooted in one or more of a number of philosophical or epistemological paradigms. It is not possible to point to one of these major paradigms and to say categorically ‘the person-centred approach belongs there’. Thus, the person-centred approach is not ‘humanistic’ (which may be considered as of the Romantic paradigm) even though it has been assigned as such and has some characteristics in common with humanistic approaches. For example (drawing on Spinelli 1994: 256–260), that person-centred therapy is ‘humanistic’ implies that the following are emphasised:
the client’s current experience rather than past causes which may ‘explain’ that experience;
the totality of the client rather than a particular ‘problem’;
the client’s personal understanding and interpretation of their experience rather than the therapist’s;
the client’s freedom and ability to choose how to ‘be’;
an egalitarian relationship between the client and the therapist;
the therapeutic relationship as intrinsically healing and/or growth-inspiring;
integration of self-concept and the ‘self’ per se;
the client’s inherent actualising tendency and innately positive nature;
the client’s core, unitary self as a source for individual development.
12However, it seems that the principles of client-centred therapy were established before those of humanistic psychology (see Merry 1998: 96–103) and possibly contributed to the development of that line of thought rather than being derived from it. Also, person-centred theory is an organismic theory, not a self theory (see Tudor and Merry 2002: 92). That is, it is concerned with the sum total of the biochemical, physiological, perceptual, cognitive, emotional and interpersonal behavioural subsystems constituting the person rather than a psychological construct, the self, which may be considered to be a particular and peculiar, ‘culturally embedded ethnocentric concept’ (see Sanders 2006b: 31) unique to Western thought.