Robert Elliott (1) (1950–)

Essential reading for the course I'm doing, but beyond that it's generally enlightening and thought-provoking.

In examining the different ways of working that are generally identified as belonging to the person-centred approach, the book has helped me to reflect upon what I feel is acceptable to my own principles, and that which lies outside them. Not that I'm now without questions or am free of tension between what I believe and what I find myself practicising, but I am better informed and more able to reconcile those tensions to find the path that feels right for me in being in relation with my clients.

I find that I position myself in principle toward the classical client-centred pole, but perhaps in practice, at this stage in my development, veering toward a need to introduce some elements of instrumentality as a prop for a lack of confidence in my ability to embody Rogerian attitudes. My supervisor is helping me to explore this!

Despite misgivings about the title, I found Richard Worsley's chapter, Integrating with Integrity really helpful. His description of how he, in his view, fully maintains a Rogerian attitude whilst giving some rein to his spontaneity and inventiveness was attractive, and I'm now less dubious about having shelled out for his book, Process Work in Person-Centred Therapy, which I'll try to read at some point this year.

I'm rather turned off from Eugene T. Gendlin's Focusing approach, and the process experiential approaches that developed from it, as I'm unhappy with the unequal therapist/client power dynamic inherent in these approaches, although that is an issue they address and seek to redress by therapist ethical awareness of not intruding upon the client's experiencing and autonomy. I've got a couple of Gendlin's books, so I will give him a fair crack of the whip at some point.

Over against my wariness of the experiential approaches is a recognition that the present UK health care provision via the NHS values brief interventions, outcome measures and manualised treatments above the freer-spirit of client-centred therapy, so if I want to work in that setting, the practical (venal?) part of me is attracted towards Counselling for Depression, a manualised integration of client-centred and experiential modalities which the NHS accepts as part of its approved methods of providing therapy from a person-centred orientation.

If nothing else, this book has shown me that I've got a long way to go and, in the best Rogerian sense, that the process has no final end.… (mais)

Interesting perspectives on how to be effective with person-centred counselling in brief and time-limited settings.

Being a novice counsellor, my initial stance in relation to brief counselling was an unaccepting one as it did not fit my conception of the person-centred approach, being one that gives autonomy and power to the client. Therefore, the duration of counselling should, insofar as reasonably possible, be determined by the client and not imposed by the counsellor or (much worse!) an organisation or agency. However, one of my placements is in an NHS, time-limited clinic and I now have experience of the therapeutic change a client can achieve in a relatively short time (notwithstanding that some would have preferred to extend the number of sessions). I found of great help Isabel Gibbard's insightful comparison of the limited resources available within the health care to that faced by the human race on a global scale, the world's resources being finite and cannot be exploited as if they are limitless. Also, Keith Tudor's pointed reminder that life itself is time-limited.

So, with a new-found preparedness towards acceptance of time-limited therapy, I found much to inform my practice in this book. Much of it relates to experiential therapies, and piques my interest in reading more about Gendlin's Focusing-Oriented Therapy. There's a couple of chapters on Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR), which I found very interesting from a training perspective, but somehow still too directive for me (at this stage) to comfortably use with clients.

Much of the book is in the form of practitioners relating how they apply brief therapy in specific settings, such as primary care, a Young Offenders' Institution, student counselling, employee assistance programmes, etc. Being able to see how brief therapy works in real-life settings was, I found, very helpful.

So, not an integrated approach to brief person-centred counselling, but an examination of how some of the tribes making up the PC nation work in a time-limited setting.… (mais)