Brian Thorne

From: Person‐centred Counselling: Therapeutic and Spiritual Dimensions

Prologue. Part 1 Self --exploration. Chapter 1 The blessing and the curse of empathy. Chapter 2 The God who comes: Good Friday 1946. Part II Theory and Practice. Chapter 3 Person--centred therapy. Chapter 4 The person--centre approach to large groups. Chapter 5 The quality of tenderness. Part III Values and Meaning. Chapter 6 In search of value and meaning. Chapter 7 Ethical confrontation in counselling. Chapter 8 Carl Rogers and the doctrine of Orginal Sin. Chapter 9 Counselling and the grocera s shop on campus. Part IV Papers for Special Occasions. Chapter 10 Intimacy. Chapter 11 Counselling and community development. Chapter 12 Conventional and unconventional relationships. Chapter 13 Who hates the counsellor? Chapter 14 Carl Rogers: The legacy and the challenge. Postscript. Author index. Subject index.

Counselling in the United Kingdom: Past, present and future

We chart the development of counselling in Britain since the Second World War through to the present and speculate about possible directions counselling may take in the future. Our major, but not exclusive, focus is on counselling as a developing profession and the particular role that the British Association for Counselling has played in this development. To this end, we consider some of the professional issues that have preoccupied practitioners in the field and those that may do so in the future. Thus, amongst others, we consider the relationship between counselling and psychotherapy, the costs and benefits of counsellings increasing visibility in British society, the role that supervision has come to play in the maintenance of professional standards, the debate that has surrounded the issue of counsellor accreditation/registration, the development of standards and ethics and the tension that exists between the relational and technical aspects of counselling. Counselling does not exist in a vacuum, and this is seen most strikingly in the speculations that we make about future developments of counselling. Thus, for example, we argue that counselling will have to grapple with the increasing emphasis that society places on the accountability of human services and with the inexorable progress occurring in the area of technological development. We note that counsellings response to these significant trends will have to be made against the backdrop of the continuing dissolution of barriers between previously distinct areas of human knowledge .

Spiritual accompaniment and the legacy of Carl Rogers

I fluctuate these days between a deep yearning for rest and a quiet life and the consciousness, which is often further heightened by my dream life, that we are living in desperate times and that to be an ageing ostrich is to perpetrate a form of self-betrayal which could threaten the entire meaning of my life and work. This talk is an attempt to devote what energy I have left to sounding a clarion call to those who cling still to the belief that humankind is called to embrace love and life and to oppose the forces of death and darkness. I feel rather like an explorer lost in a raging blizzard who knows he must keep awake and struggle on when the overwhelming temptation is to curl up in the snow, go to sleep and seek the comforting arms of death.