A School of Education seminar hosted by the Centre for Research in Human Flourishing
Presented by Judy Moore
Abstract
Carl Rogers wrote in 1959 that, when researching therapeutic practice, we need to constantly return to our experience and ask: ‘Is this really true?’ (1959, p.188). This question is still pertinent today. It applies to our research practice and might also help us to understand how phrases like ‘research-led’ and ‘evidence-based’ are now being used to shape a narrative of the person-centred approach with which we may or may not agree. Over the past twenty years or so UK government funding has become increasingly directed towards therapies that can be proved by quantitative measures to be effective. I will describe how such pressure led to our undertaking an ambitious outcome study at my own university counselling service. This experience, together with my observation of other recent developments in the field, led me to wonder what the person-centred approach might be losing as we strive to prove ourselves primarily through measurable outcomes. Carl Rogers and a team of dedicated researchers recorded thousands of client sessions for over a decade, with the aim of making a detailed investigation into what makes therapy work and, from that understanding, to begin to formulate a theory, based on a process view of the person, that became known as client-centred therapy. Now, in our ‘post-truth’ age, the research landscape is very different, and we have come to depend on those with expertise in quantitative research to support the validity of existing therapies as well as to validate the emergence of newer therapies. For the person-centred approach this has been invaluable and has undoubtedly enabled its survival in many areas through applications such as person-centred experiential counselling for depression. But are we now perhaps buying in too much to the narrative of measurable outcomes, losing touch in the process with our own questionings and thus our potential for different and deeper understanding? Does a fixation on what is quantifiable and an over-reliance on the authority of experts facilitate the journey towards the quality of ‘truth’ sought by Rogers and his early colleagues—or has it, by this point in our history, made the person-centred approach (and its practitioners) vulnerable to fragmentation and confusion?
Reference: Rogers, C. R. (1959). A Theory of Therapy, Personality, and Interpersonal Relationships as developed in the Client-Centered Framework. In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: A Study of a Science, Vol. 3. McGraw Hill
Biography
Judy Moore was trained in the person-centred approach in the late 1980s before becoming a trainer on the Diploma in person-centred counselling and psychotherapy at the University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich, UK. For fifteen years she was Director of the UEA’s Counselling Service and Director of the University’s Centre for Counselling Studies. She has supervised many masters and doctoral level students and been involved in various research projects. More recently, she has been engaged in an evolving project to investigate anomalies within the person-centred approach by studying the original client-centred theory, particularly in the light of the work of Eugene Gendlin. She has contributed to and co-edited (with Nikolaos Kypriotakis) two volumes of Senses of Focusing (Eurasia Publications, 2021). She is a Certifying Co-ordinator for The Focusing Institute (TIFI), New York, and lives and works in private practice in Norwich, UK.