It took a long time of tireless searching to realize that freeing painful repressed memories would also free me from my fear of the stage. I began therapy in 2003 with Armin Klein and continued with his wife Grace in 2011, after Armin passed away. Armin and Grace Klein aretherapists who embody Carl Rogers’ person-centered values (Rogers,1995). When I combined psychotherapeutic tools with Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” I found my own strategies to uncovertraumatic memories of my earliest years. How I have remembered what I felt as an unborn child, infant, and child is difficult to explain logically. My stage-fright disappeared when I realized that when I stepped on stage I re-experienced exactly how terrified I felt of being born to my mother. At that very instant I also lost forever my terror of every person I met. Before therapy, I was a person who stumbled frightened and blindly through life. By remembering extremely early trauma, I am now a person who feels within a huge radiant sun that sheds warm brilliant light even on the darkest corners of existence.

Keywords: Stage fright, child abuse, Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” Person Centered Therapy, Spina Bifida.

Book review of Therapist Limits in Person-Centred Therapy by LIsbeth Sommerbeck

The Authors would like to express our gratitude to Natalie Rogers, who died on October 17, 2015. Many students, clients, clinicians, and friends alike mourn her passing and celebrate the contributions that will live on in our hearts. We dedicate this modest review to her and those influenced by her. We encourage readers to see http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/pressdemocrat/obituary.aspx?pid=1 76173816 for a formal obituary and information to contribute to a scholarship fund to more easily allow people to participate in expressive arts.

Carl Rogers’ theory of the actualizing tendency (Goldstein,1939; Rogers, 1959, 1980) involves the view that human nature is inherently constructive and prosocial. Critics (e.g., May, 1982) of client-centered therapy (CCT) have argued that it avoided negative antisocial feelings and impulses, exhibiting a bias toward the positive.Bradburn (1996) conducted a study on Rogers’ therapy to evaluate the charge of positive bias. She utilized 25 transcripts of Rogers’interviews to examine his responses to client expressions of positive, negative, mixed or neutral affective valence. Her aim was to determine (a) whether Rogers favored positive versus negative client expressions in general, as measured by his own affective valence and also measured by its intensity relative to the client’s and (b) whether client anger, reputed to be a troublesome emotion for Rogers, increased positive bias.

Results failed to substantiate any positive bias. (1) Analysis showed a strong positive association between the valence of client statements and the valence of Rogers’ statements (p < .005). (2) Except after positive client statements, Rogers gave fewer positive and more negative responses than expected (p < .005). (3) He diminished all client affective intensity more than he intensified it (p < .005), tending to do so relatively more often for positive than for negative client affect. This finding suggested that CCT responds not only to feelings but rather to the client’s whole meaning, including cognitive and information processing elements (e.g., Zimring, 1990a.b.). (4) Rogers tended to express negative valence or intensifyaffect in response to clients’ anger at a higher rate than for other negative effects.

Keywords: Carl R. Rogers, client-centered, person-centered, humanistic psychotherapy, empathic understanding responses, bias in psychotherapy, Rollo May, self-actualization, problem of evil, actualizing tendency, nature of man.

Book review of 

Review of Person-Centered communication: Theory skills and practice 

by Renata Motschnig and Ladislav Nykl

Reviewed by Kathryn A. Moon

Book Review of Understanding Person-Centered Counselling: A Personal Journey

by Christine Brown

Reviewed by Balcom, Ross

Book review of A Person-Centered Approach and the Rogerian Tradition: A Handbook

by Adam Quinn

Reviewed by Jerold D. Bozarth

This is a complete and corrected version of Dr. Kahn's article.

Book Review of Person-Centred Practice: Case Studies in Positive Psychology edited by Richard Worsley and Stephen Joseph. 

Review of Richard C. Page and Daniel N. Berkows' Unstructured Group Therapy:  Creating Contact, Choosing Relationship 

Book review of Jay Joseph's The Gene Illusion

Book review of J. Michael Tyler and Russell Sabella's Using Technology to Improve Counseling Practice: A Primer for the 21st Century.

This article presents an empathy-focused approach to conflict resolution among children that is applicable in schools and other settings. The authors illustrate the approach with a case example and with role definitions for speakers, listeners, and facilitators. The authors assert that complete communication (having children in conflict listen to one another and then empathically respond to one another without judgment or bias) is a highly effective and powerful means to conflict resolution. Important interpersonal and intrapersonal benefits include: increased self-efficacy and self-reliance, increased respect for self and others, increased empathy and emotional maturity, and increased skills in developing meaningful friendships. Further, this model may help prevent school violence resulting from children feeling ostracized and unheard. Additional applications are also discussed.

This paper argues that the major reasons for the ambiguous and disappointing results of the Wisconsin Project were the failure of the researchers to take client motivation into account and failure of the therapists of the project to respond on a level of concreteness that matched the client's level of expression. The paper asserts that correcting for these two factors leads to the major hypothesis of the Wisconsin Project being, after all, true: Client-centered therapy does effect therapeutic change in persons diagnosed with schizophrenia. This result strengthens the hypothesis that client-centered therapy is a universal therapy.

John Shlien contributed in many ways to the author's critique of the Wisconsin Project. The paper is also the history of his contribution.

Review of Counseling the Person Beyond the Alcohol Problem, by Richard Bryant-Jeffries

This paper compares Rogers' early formulation of the theory of personality and behavior (Rogers, 1951), which has become known as "The Nineteen Propositions," with his main statement of personality theory (Rogers, 1959). The theoretical developments which took place during those few intervening years, particularly in relation to unconditional positive regard, throw some light on, and support, Jerold Bozarth's reconceplualization of unconditional positive regard as "The primary condition of therapeutic personality change" (Bozarth, 1996, p.44). In this paper I want to describe those changes and demonstrate their importance to the development of person-centered theory.

The principal purpose of this paper is to illumine the extent to which Carl Rogers' characterization of the central person-centered concept of congruence is couched in terms of a Cartesian-Newtonian, paradigmatic world-view mediated by the theoretical formulations of Sigmund Freud. Crucial problems in such a quasi-Freudian characterization of congruence are delineated demonstrative of a critical flaw in person-centered theory as a whole: its being a mix of concepts deriving from the discrepant Cartesian-Newtonian and organismic scientific paradigms. The re-formulation of congruence in organismic terms is envisaged as part of a general need to conceptualize all key person-centered concepts in such a fashion. 

This paper depicts the therapist's share of possible ruptures in the client-counselor relationship. It presents an attitude toward these ruptures which can facilitate the therapeutic and the client's process. It distinguishes two kinds of rupture: unspoken rupture which can be discovered by the therapist without the client's explicit pointing at it; and explicit rupture which is expressed by the client. The most important feature of the paper is the presentation of a specific therapist altitude--that of humility--which when held onto by the therapist can facilitate using ruptures for therapeutic goals. The attitude of humility towards ones own imperfections as a therapist, and towards the client's view of the therapeutic relationship and therapy is developed through description and exemplification.

Review of the book "Carl Rogers' Helping System; Journey and Substance" by Godfrey T. Barrett-Lennard.

This paper presents Pre-Therapy as an evolution of Client-Centered therapy, while Pre-Symbolic Experiencing is seen as an evolution of Experiential therapy. Rogers considered Pre-Therapy to be of significance for the Client-Centered approach. Pre-Therapy emphasizes empathic contact, and is a theory of psychological contact. Pre-Therapy is not process-directive as is the case with Process-Experiential therapy, but surrenders to and follows the pre-expressive attempts of the client.

Client-centered therapy and ecopsychology start from very different ways of imagining the place of individuals in the world. However, in the tension between these two perspectives there is the potential for enriching both of them.

The claims that Carl Rogers was what is presently understood as a "transpersonal psychologist " or that he had converted to a "transpersonal movement" by virtue of various late-in-life experiences are shown to be unwarranted.

To understand his complex relationship with these subjects, it is noted that Rogers did not conform with much of the behavior with which they are associated. Nevertheless, he did have, from the beginning of his work in client-centered therapy, experiences which must be considered congenial with the essence of the "transpersonal."

The purpose of this article is to recognize the distinction between outward appearance and one's legitimate inner experience and to encourage a deeper exploration of this difference.

The criteria for communicating empathic understanding described in this paper are based on my work as a client-centered therapist. As my therapy evolved, I only gradually identified these criteria and recognized that they express the nondirective attitude that informs my practice. An early version of the paper was prepared for the First International Forum on the Person-Centered Approach in Mexico in 1982. An excerpt was published in the ADPCA newsletter, Renaissance, in 1984. In 1986 Carl Rogers published his article on "reflection of feelings" which gave support to my thesis that the client-centered therapist's intention in responding empathically is to verify understanding, not to manipulate the client's process nor to foster any therapist goal for the client. The fundamental nondirectiveness in client-centered work seems to be difficult for some students to understand or, perhaps, to believe. My hope that this paper will help to clarify the meaning of the nondirective attitude in empathic interaction process as well as clarify the criteria for overt empathic responding in client-centered therapy.

Review of the book 'Successful Psychotherapy: A Loving, Caring Relationship' by C.H. Patterson and Suzanne Hidore.

Review of the book 'Putting emotional intelligence to work' by David Ryback.

Drawing on the relevant literature and the authors' own experience and work, this article discusses therapy in the context of culture. Culture is defined and distinguished from race and the implications of cultural variables discussed in relation to the practice of therapy as well as the training of therapists. Rogers's (1957/1990b, 1959) six conditions of therapeutic personality change are developed from a cultural perspective.

The following interview, transcribed from videotape, is the first meeting of Lucinda, a writer and journalist who lives in Mexico, and Susan Pildes, a client––centered therapist of 22 years. It was recorded in Chicago in October, 1993. The setting was Dr. Marjorie Witty's Advanced Client- Centered Therapy class at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology. The tape was produced by Carl Aniel and transcribed by Tim Tribiano and Barbara Bogosian.

Revision of a paper presented at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Association for the Development of the Person-Centered Approach (ADPCA), Kendall College, Evanston, Illinois, May, 1994.

Special Section. This section has been added to encourage publications by individuals who are just beginning to write for journals.

In his second discourse, Jean Jacques Rousseau claims that human beings were most happy and free in their instinctive natural state and that social institutions are responsible for the corruption of humankind. For counselors and their clients, the goal is to maximize this original human nature through person-centered psychotherapy, that encourages the concepts of self-actualization, autonomy, and empathy.

This paper discusses the utilization of play therapy as an appropriate therapeutic method in the counseling of children. It identifies the theoretical basis of child-centered therapy, the attitudes necessary for the therapist, and the therapeutic conditions necessary for growth. It also outlines the limits which should be set in regards to child-centered therapy.

June Ellis reviews the book Beyond Carl Rogers by David Brazier.

Jules Seeman reviews the books Celebrating the Other by E.E. Sampson and Women's Growth in Connection by J.V. Jordan, et al. and the article The Person-Centered Approach: From Theory to Practice by Peggy Natiello.

The person-centered approach is not a psychology, a psychotherapy, a philosophy, a school, a movement nor many other things frequently imagined. It is merely what its name suggests, an approach. It is a psychological posture, a way of being, from which one may confront various aspects of human behavior. The best known activity it has been applied to is client-centered therapy, which is a psychotherapy, has a theory, a method and has accumulated a substantial body of research generally supporting its theoretical assertions. This article considers the same sixty years of applications of the person-centered approach to phenomena which include – as well as psychotherapy – education, encounter groups, and large groups intended to improve transnational understanding, to explore intergroup conflicts, to learn the nature of culture and its process of formation.

Observations over the last thirty years have revealed shortcomings in the psychology of client-centered therapy, as a suitable theory for applications of the person-centered approach. A direction is indicated for the formulation of an appropriate psychology for all of the application – including client-centered therapy itself. Reflection on this discussion might also inform the practice of psychotherapy as well as suggesting “interdisciplinary” projects that would be naturally unified by the paradigm proposed.

At the Annual Conference of the Association for the Development of the Person-Centered Approach in 1994, I asked Jules if I might interview him. As a member of a panel earlier in the day in which participants talked about client-centered theory early in its development, Jules spoke of a “lost piece” of his history early in development of client-centered theory. Jules also talked about his theory, a human system model of positive health. Moreover, he described the basic methodology which therapists from this theoretical perspective might enter a client’s “system” by making connection, and facilitating therapeutic growth through communication. My purpose in interviewing Jules is threefold. I would like others to hear Jules tell his story – that is, to tell how his ideas emerged, found a home in Rogerian theory, and continue to unfold. I would like to acknowledge the “lost piece” in Jules’s history. And I hope to provide others with a narrative account of the development of client-centered (now person-centered) theory and how complimentary person-centered theory is to human systems theory, for which Jules has not only a conceptual definition, but a methodology.