Encounter person to person: Some aspects of person-centered relationship theory and further developments of the person-centered psychotherapy

Abstract

Regarding the client in a therapeutic relationship as a person and not as an object for treatment (cf. “Vom Individuum zur Person” in Psychotherapie Forum 5/4, 1997) strictly excludes any form of instrumentalizing him or her. The therapist him- or herself enters a process of personality development by being involved in a relationship on a personal level, thus giving up the traditional protection of the expert role. Psychotherapy like any other kind of socio-psychologi-cal activity therefore is to be seen as interpersonal relationship of fundamental equality. It aims at an openness for “personal encounter” - as the encounter philosophy calls that kind of relationship in which person to person communicates im-media-tely.

In the sense of the encounter philosophers, e. g. M. Buber, in particular in the radical understanding of E. Levinas, the client is focussed as actually being an Other, which makes of the therapist not only an alter ego but a partner in the encounter. Therapy becomes a mutual experience of encounter proceeding from the enclosed “I-Thou” to the open “We”. This understanding of psychotherapy as “art of encounter”, already present in Rogers’ work, leads to a number of important theoretical and practical consequences for the person-centered approach same of which are presented in form of theses. In this perspective the importance of the group and of group therapy at the interface between person and society becomes obvious.

Keywords:
Anthropology, encounter, presence, person-centered psychotherapy, group psychotherapy