The concept of the ‘masterclass’ is that it is an opportunity
to introduce others to my most recent work in a fashion that
allows dialogue and practical illustration. Certainly, the
class includes recent theory but even that is well illustrated
by examples. In the person-person setting it is even possible
to demonstrate a variety of ways in which the therapist might
engage the client. This brings the cases from the books to
life.
Each year since 2001 I have updated the Masterclass to place
less weight on earlier work and more on my more recent
efforts. Hence, the present revision merely mentions the
earlier work on ‘Configurations’ but places much more emphasis
on the 2005 book (with Mick Cooper) entitled Working at
Relational Depth in Counselling and Psychotherapy and also
goes into more detail on my attempts to update Carl Rogers’
Self Theory into a more dialogical form. Although this theory
development dates from 2000 I did not previously develop it in
the Masterclass. However, I realise that it is becoming more
and more relevant, and, despite the fact that it is highly
theoretical, it appears to arouse considerable interest, so it
plays a fuller part in the present class.
The present class continues to include the ‘Dominic’ casework
extracts – mainly because they illustrate so much but also
because they offer a challenge to conventional thinking on
work with this kind of client. I had hoped to include the work
from Chapter 6 in the 2005 book ‘Earning the right to work
with Rick: a traumatised client’. But, in fact, this is one of
the few cases that is easier to communicate in writing than to
illustrate in a lecture – probably because the patient does
not say anything in the first 26 sessions. I will happily
respond to questions from those who have read the ‘Rick’ case.
The present class also places more emphasis on my work on
‘existential touchstones’. Arguably, this may be one of the
most interesting notions in modern psychotherapy. It comes
from a pure person-centred position and begs the question:
‘how much of our self can we effectively employ in the therapy
room?’ It shows how the therapist may employ a range of their
own self-configurations and also make good use of a variety of
earlier self-experiences, even those that initially might have
been experienced negatively. This work is introduced in
Chapter 8 of the 2005 book.
Completely new in the present class is an early analysis of
ego syntonic process. In this part of the class I explore
the ‘difficult process’ by which the client seeks to protect
himself and stay firmly in control by accepting the behaviour
and experience of others only in terms of his own conceptual
and valuing framework. Clients labouring under this form of
difficult process rarely seek therapy, but that has as much to
do with the very marrow way in which we present therapy. When
we do encounter this client we are considerably challenged, so
there has been a tendency to label them as ‘not suitable for
psychotherapy’.
From May 2007 the class will incorporate new material from the
considerably expanded third edition of Person-Centred
Counselling in Action.
