PCE2006
7th World Conference for
Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy and Counseling

July 12–16, 2006, Potsdam, Germany

 

Keynote Speakers

 

 

 

Keynote: Steps Along A Path – Full Functioning and Self-Righting

Art Bohart
Saybrook Graduate School and Research Institute, e-mail: ABohart@saybrook.edu

Abstract:

In this talk I first refer to distinctions between different meanings of the "good" life: the happy life, the moral life, the fulfilled life, the effective life. I next briefly review the formative tendency, the actualizing tendency, self-actualization, the fully-functioning person, and the process scale. Using these I will draw a simple model of effective human functioning, compatible with the concept of the fully-functioning person and the process scale. I will use this to propose a person-centered concept of psychopathology. Finally, I will discuss implications for therapy and for society.

The discussion will include the following points:

  1. Full functioning is primarily a concept of receptive openness.
  2. Receptive openness at the personality level is not needed to live a good life if the person lives in a relatively stable environment (or has a lot of power).
  3. The "enemies" of receptive openness are a) defensiveness, b) fixed ideas, including moral superiority, c) the feeling of realness, d) internal and external pressures towards uniformity, e) self-doubt.
  4. Constructs are tools.
  5. A positive path model of human functioning includes creative use of constructs as tools.
  6. Psychopathology occurs when people's defensiveness or self-doubts get in the way of being receptively open.
  7. A major societal cause of psychopathology is therefore the "one right way to be" idea.
  8. Implications for therapy: All therapy works by freeing up clients' creative intelligence.
  9. How person-centered therapy works. One component is that: empathic reflections facilitate inward reflection and reduction of defensiveness.

Keynote: Actualizing Tendency – the link between PCE and interdisciplinary systems theory

Jürgen Kriz 
Prof. Dr., Universität Osnabrück, FB 8 Humanwissenschaften, Dept. of Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Clinical Psychology, 49069 Osnabrück, Germany, Phone: +49 541 969 4742 (private), +49 541 969 4727 (office, morning only), Fax: +49 541 969 4747, e-mail: juergen.kriz@uni-osnabrueck.de, website: http://jkriz.de

Abstract:

Actualizing Tendency is a core concept in the PCE. It is neither a belief nor an assumption in Rogers' theory, but a simple description of the consequences of seriously taking interconnectedness and relations into account. Remarkably, relations and their feed-back loops are typical for human beings – from the biological level of networks of neurons or of other parts of the body, and the psychological loops of the cognitive and
emotional processes which continually create new meaning and the "self", to the feed-back loops of mother-child, client-therapist, individual-family or -society, etc. Similarly, in modern interdisciplinary systems science, feed-back loops are the essence of "emergence" and "phase transitions" of patterns and order. Conversely, "symptoms" can be understood as non-adaptive patterns in the processes of life, while "health" means a creative adaptability to new conditions or phases.

Actualizing Tendency is, therefore, a link between PCE and interdisciplinary systems science. However, this close relationship between the characteristics of systems science and PCE is not emphasized in order to explain the processes of health and leading a good life in the frame of natural science. In contrast, the common principles highlight the fact that the PCE is still as revolutionary to psychotherapy and psychology as systems theory is to the natural sciences. Some classical principles of 350 years of ("mechanistic") science have had to be revised because of systems theory – but these principles are still in the heads of our clients - working via metaphors about "the functioning of the world", "relations to things and humans" or "relations to man himself". It is about time that such/these destructive and maladaptive principles and metaphors change/be changed in order to lead a good life.

Keynote: Psychological literacy for an uncertain world – Another look at Rogers; Persons of Tomorrow

Maureen O'Hara, Ph.D
President Emerita, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, 138 Altura Way, Greenbrae, CA 94904, 
Phone (Voice ) +1 415 461 2224, e-mail: mohara@saybrook.edu

Abstract:

We live in challenging times - citizens of a global society, living in unprecedented conditions of boundless complexity, rapid change and radical interconnectedness. Old identities, rules and models of behavior and understanding have been swept into a confusing and fast-changing mix, and no new certainties as yet stand reliably in their place. With psyches constructed in and for a world that is no more, from tribal village to Silicon valley, humanity faces a conceptual emergency. In this presentation Dr. O'Hara will address the global capacity gap as both a threat and an evolutionary opportunity and will suggest some ways person centered facilitators can become hospice workers for the dying cultures and midwives for the new.