There and back again: re-envisioning ‘relationship therapy’ as the center of a contemporary, cultural, and contextual person-centered therapy

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article, which is an extensively revised version of a paper given at PCE2021, discusses Rogers’ ‘relationship therapy’. It argues that this original relational turn needs to be revisited and re-envisioned, especially if Rogerian and person-centered and experiential therapies are to seed, grow, and flourish in different soil from that whence it originally sprung. The article is framed in terms of one of the themes of the conference, that is, contact, culture, and context. Thus, the first part of the article considers the history of relationship therapy (that is, contacting our history); the second part acknowledges the original conceptual framework of client-centered psychology and discusses two concepts that are based on and embody relationship therapy, i.e. diagnosis and contact (thereby representing the culture of this approach to psychology); and the third part offers some reflections how person-centered theory and practice needs to adapt to local conditions (that is, to its context) if it is to continue to be relational and relevant.