The Mystical Path of Person-Centred Therapy: Hope Beyond Despair

122 Pages·2002·0.65 MB·English

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The Mystical Power of
Person-Centred Therapy
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Dedication
In memory of George Aubrey Lyward, whose genius, vulnerability and
practical mysticism unlocked the prison of contractual living for so many.
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The Mystical Power of
Person-Centred Therapy
Hope Beyond Despair
BRIAN THORNE
Emeritus Professor and Director of the Centre for Counselling Studies,
University of East Anglia, Norwich
W
W H U R R P U B L I S H E R S
L O N D O N A N D P H I L A D E L P H I A
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© 2002 Whurr Publishers
First published 2002 by
Whurr Publishers Ltd
19b Compton Terrace, London N1 2UN, England and
325 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia PA 19106, USA
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of Whurr Publishers Limited.
This publication is sold subject to the conditions that it shall
not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out,
or otherwise circulated without the Publisher’s prior
consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published, and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed upon any subsequent
purchaser.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.
ISBN 1 86156 328 0
Printed and bound in the UK by Athenaeum Press Limited,
Gateshead, Tyne & Wear.
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Prologue ix
Chapter 1 1
Person-centred therapy since Carl Rogers
Chapter 2 9
The human person: hope or despair?
Chapter 3 19
The therapeutic relationship: professional contract or existential
encounter
Chapter 4 27
The person-centred therapist as secular priest and prophet
Chapter 5 37
The spiritual discipline of the person-centred therapist
Chapter 6 47
Person-centred therapy: a key to the resolution of three intractable
conflicts
Chapter 7 55
The use of self
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vi The Mystical Power of Person-centred Therapy
Chapter 8 65
Intimacy and sexuality
Chapter 9 75
‘Alive alive’
Chapter 10 87
When the world stopped turning
Apendix 95
A secular priest? Alison Leonard interviews Brian Thorne
References 107
Index 109
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Acknowledgements
There are many in the international community of person-centred scholars
and therapists who have contributed to this book through their under-
standing and their own spiritual quests. I am particularly indebted to the late
Dr Maria Bowen and, among my European colleagues, to Professor Mia
Leijssen, Professor Martin van Kalmthout and Professor Peter Schmid for their
writings and generosity of spirit.
As always, the unfailing support of the secretarial staff at the University
Counselling Service of the University of East Anglia has been crucially import-
ant to me. Most especially I wish to express my thanks to Paula Middleton
whose efficiency and creativity have won my unbounded admiration. I have
been singularly blessed to have had the enthusiastic help of so skilled an assist-
ant at every stage of the book’s evolution.
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Prologue
This book is a mixture of diary and reflection. It begins in June 2000 when,
like many others, I was grieving for the loss of a dear colleague who had died
after collapsing during a counselling session. It ends in September 2001 only
a few days after the suicidal terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and
the Pentagon. Not surprisingly, perhaps, a book framed between these two
events is not concerned with minor issues. On the contrary, at the risk of
seeming grandiose in the extreme, I have attempted to explore why, for me,
the practice of person-centred therapy is a profound spiritual discipline
which offers a powerful message to the world at a period of terrifying uncer-
tainty.
I am somewhat unusual, I know, in combining my work as a person-
centred therapist with a commitment to the spiritual tradition of an institu-
tional church. For some of my professional colleagues this dual allegiance is
difficult to understand or to accept while there are many of my co-religionists
who consider me to be dangerously heretical and an enemy of the true Faith.
Perhaps it is this often somewhat lonely position which has contributed to
my growing conviction that the theory and practice of person-centred
therapy have within them the promise of a hope which lies beyond our
current despair. From my own experience both as a person-centred therapist
and as a Christian who often feels in exile, I have concluded that Carl Rogers
was right when he stated that he had ‘underestimated the importance of this
mystical, spiritual dimension’ which his therapeutic experience had revealed
to him in the later years of his life.
This book takes Rogers’ statement with the utmost seriousness and
attempts to spell out its implications not only for the practice of therapy and
the training of therapists but also for understanding and addressing the
seemingly intractable conflicts which currently hold the world to ransom.
Such an undertaking has, at times, resulted in crippling self-doubt and I have
hesitated to put such reflections in the public domain. I do not, after all, wish
to place my professional reputation in complete jeopardy and I do not lightly
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