Person centred approaches to learning hold a potential for a mature depth of understanding and engagement as opposed to the traditional 'transmission of knowledge' approach to learning

AimsDo students experience a person-centred experiential (PCE) approach to learning in a university context differently to transmitted knowledge learning from prior education, and if so, how?BackgroundThe person-centred approach, as defined and developed by Carl Ransom Rogers, remains on the margins of practice in the UK. The approach sustains a non-medical stance. All of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Person Centred Experiential Counselling (APT PCEC) workforce require a qualification in person-centred experiential counselling. In order to attune to Roger's hypothesis regarding the conditions required in order to facilitate psychological growth, person-centred learning is a principle stance.Researching experiences of PCE learning through anonymous feedback from students attending different levels of training (BA, MA and post qualification PCE-Counselling for Depress (CfD) License) is an initial test of the hypothesis .Counselling education in the UK is increasingly highly standardised and driven by competency frameworks. This work begins to uncover person-centred students’ evaluation of undertaking person-centred qualifications. Modules and continuing professional practice were constructed to facilitate a person-centred learning environment wherein the curriculum was designed by students or the experiential aspect of the learning drove the agendaMethodThe sample was made up of (N = 30) students. 8 students were studying for a Master's degree in person-centred experiential psychotherapy, 10 students were studying a BA in humanistic psychotherapy, 12 students were attending a mandatory IAPT Continuous Professional Development (CPD) training in PCE therapy. The evaluation responses were subject to a thematic analysis.ResultThe emerging themes parallel each other and indicate that degree students were very aware of the difference from their previous learning experience in education.68% of MA Students experienced psychological maturation through the process of training.83% of BA students became more agentic in their approach to learning.83% IAPT therapists noticed the nurturing, compassion and humane approach to the learning, despite the mandatory nature of the offer and empowered them in regards to their non-medical stance within an NHS context.ConclusionOur findings point to the significance and impact of person-centred learning for person-centred psychotherapists’ development during and post-qualification. Implications can be drawn in regards to engaging with person-centred learning in public sector and health contexts.Person centred approaches to learning hold a potential for a mature depth of understanding and engagement as opposed to the traditional ‘transmission of knowledge’ approach to learning.

The Importance and Limits of Experiential Psychotherapy

Experiential therapy focuses on emotions - whether we are talking about negative emotions, such as anger, pain, shame - correlated with past experiences, but also emotions associated with success, self-esteem, or even responsibility. Unlocking already experienced emotions and their subjective experience is the central point of experiential therapy - whether we are talking about the experience of the immediate and the awareness of our own being, or we are talking about "frozen" experiences, to which we have no conscious access outside psychotherapeutic practices. It reconfigures our mental maps by generating behaviors that make sense only in correlation with the understanding of those emotions, that are present in the subconscious but of which we are unaware and are not effectively rationalized. The article aims to analyze the field of application and the therapeutic particularities of experiential psychotherapy as a form of existentialist-humanistic therapy, as well as the limits of the experiential paradigm in a postmodern context.

Personality And Experiencing In The Context Of Experiential Psychotherapy

In the late nineties an international association was organized, bringing together representatives of the person-centered and experiential approaches, continuing the tradition of C. Rogers and E. Gendlin. The name of the association includes two key categories: personality and experience. In the paper, from the perspective of co-experiencing psychotherapy, the links between these categories are discussed, and options for the relationship between them are analyzed. The contours of the personal character of the experience and the experiential vision of the personality are outlined. In the theory and practice of co-experiencing psychotherapy, such characteristics of experiencing as its active mode, multilevel structure, dialogic way of being, cultural-historical mediation are revealed. This allows us to talk about the relation of the individual to his/her experiencing, about his active participation in the experiencing. Not an experience is doing experiencing, but a person. For psychotherapy, this raises the task of comprehending the criteria of the “desired” attitude of the individual to his experience and the search for methods to help the client to achieve the most productive personal position. The personal nature of co-experiencing as the activity of the psychotherapist is discussed from the point of view of the embodiment of “personal centeredness” in the experiential approach. The paper is written in the genre of theoretical dialogue.