Master Class

Dave Mearns - Masterclass Description - ‘THE PERSON-CENTRED APPROACH – A RELATIONAL THERAPY’

The masterclass ended in April 2008. Over seven years 51 classes were delivered. I ended them because they relied on the constant addition of new theory and practice. There would come a time, as a retired person, when the class would become stale, so I decided to end them before that point was reached. However, I have decided to leave this description of the class and its development in the website because it may be of interest.

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 dialogue within the class 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.

The masterclass began in 2001 as a project designed to introduce counsellors, counselling psychologists and psychotherapists to my latest work. Each year the masterclass was updated to place less weight on earlier work and more on the newer developments. Hence, in 2008, the revision included slides on 'resonance' from my two 2006 papers with Peter F. Schmid and about twenty new slides with material from the 2007 3rd Edition of Person-Centred Counselling in Action. The 3rd Edition represents a complete re-working with an additional 20,000 words of new material, so the masterclass benefits from those developments.

The 2008 class continued 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.

The 2008 class emphasised 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 of ‘how much of the therapist can effectively work in the therapy room?’ It shows how the therapist may make good use of a variety of self-experiences, even those that initially might have been experienced negatively.

Retained from the 2007 class was my analysis of ‘ego syntonic process’. I am a strong admirer of Margaret Warner and her work on ‘difficult process’ (eg ‘fragile process’, ‘dissociated process’). I believe that Margaret’s approach to psychotherapy, in addressing ‘client processes’ rather than ‘disorders’ is the way to go in PCT. Her work shows how the client has developed these ways of processing, generally as attempts at self-protection, and how the therapy relationship is challenged by them. So, in ‘ego syntonic process’, rather than use terms such as ‘personality disorder’/’psychopathy’/‘narcissistic personality’, 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. Margaret Warner and I presented a joint dialogue on our work for the July 2008 World Conference in Norwich.

So, the ‘Masterclass’ was a moving feast – its contents continually developed. Its delivery was also flexible. We did it in an evening, a day, two days, a week. The content was the same, but the opportunity to dwell on the issues varied.

The 140+ slides that comprise the masterclass can be downloaded. There is no restriction on copying and using this material as long as acknowledgement is given.

Dave Mearns.

My Masterclass Power Point presentation can be viewed and down loaded. Click Here.

Last modified: 26 Nov 2011