Person-centred Therapy Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

This research aims to identify the alterity pictures that lay in each one of the three phases of person-centered therapy, developed by Carl Rogers. It was based on the premise that ethics constitutes Psychology as an independent knowledge, and, therefore, it matters to analyze the way that such theory deals with the problem of difference. As a methodological perspective, it was adopted the Gadamerian hermeneutics, which assumes that every interpretation is also creation, since it is afusion of horizons between a reader full of preconceptions and authors. Specificaly, this work aimedto make a theorical construction throughout many manifestations of alterity in the different phases of Rogers’s thinking, which are non-directive, reflexive and experiential, through the analysis of classic works of each phase. Even though usually analyzed from a technical point of view, in this research it was understood that each of these phases also imply in ethical changes, so that the way the therapist addresses the client acquires new shapes, with moments of larger or smaller openness to alterity. The notion of alterity adopted in this research was Emmanuel Lévinas’s, who postulates that ethics comes before ontology and that, therefore, each one of us has an untransferable responsability to the alterity. During the non-directive phase, as long as Rogers trusts in the clarity that comes from the insight, and therefore keeps closed to the difference of the other, he also gives us conditions to point the presence of the Other of the ignorance, the Other of the narrative, the Other of affectation and the Other of the refraction. During the reflexive phase, in its turn, Rogers moves away from alterity when he insists to be guided by a naturlistic a vitalist vision of human experience, assuming that it has a natural teleology. However, he gets closer to alterity when the gives us the elements to think about the Other of the experience, the Other of acknowledgement, the Other inverted in His reflection and the Other of the relationship and of the contact. About the experiential phase, Rogers opens a very little space to deal with the difference when he bets on a natural harmony ot the organism and on an education toward this harmony. At the same time, he increases the possibility of manifestation of alterity on the Other of the therapist, the Other of experiencing, the Other of incomprehension and the Other of ex-centric authenticity. It is concluded that the changes that Rogers’s work has been through do not implie in phases that follow each other, but in relational conditions that modify each other aiming the meeting with the experience of the Other, and, therefore, affirms the therapeutic relationship as meeting and presence. From an initial appreciation of acceptance, the theory advances toward an emphasis on understanding and, thus, on genuineness. Therefore, it can be said that the main factor in the alterity pictures and in its synthesis is the availability of both, therapist and client, in order to be in touch with the experience of the present and to be open to have it as the element that modifies their practices and conceptions about themselves and the Other.