Godfrey Barrett-Lennard

A fresh tracing of phases of experience from birth to approaching death is the terrain of this article. It is a momentous journey variably overlooked in everyday living with all the preoccupations of the immediate "now" of this journey. A new-born baby is conscious, and at age 5 or 6, enormous strides have already been taken in evolving consciousness. Experience in the period of primary schooling is a major further saga. Relationships are increasingly important and many children invent "imaginary companions" they are attentive to. Later, inner conversations become common. Dramatic emergence of the new consciousness of adolescence is almost like another life. By the 20s, long-term commitments, dreams, and preparation toward paths in life are prominent. Great qualitative unfolding of experience follows on through adult middle years. Late adulthood includes gradual transition to more reflective retirement and growing awareness that personal life will end. The gauntlet of a major health setback and/or loss of a life partner may have to be endured, though an easier or less conflictual flow in the absence of most "have-tos" tends to follow. Consciousness can become more mellow and even the approaching end of personal life taken for granted.

The aim of this study was to translate and provide an initial validation for a full Mandarin-Chinese version of the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory (B-L RI:MC) to include forms Other toward Self-64 (OS-64) and Other toward Self-40 (OS-40) for use in the Mandarin-Chinese research and clinical contexts. B-L RI:MC OS-64 was translated by a bilingual panel and subsequently administered to 658 Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese respondents online using an age-stratified random sampling strategy. Through both the factor analytic strategy of principle component analysis (PCA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the reliability and construct validity were investigated. The final results support the original four subscale dimensionality of the inventory. B-L RI:MC OS-64 showed Cronbach’s alpha was .96 and KMO = .97. PCA using Varimax rotation yielded a four-factor model supporting the sub-scales: level of regard, empathic understanding, unconditionality of regard and congruence, which explained 49.911% squared loading of the total variance. B-L RI:MC OS-64 and OS-40 were supported by the structures in CFA, which displayed NFI = .95 and .95, CFI = .97 and .96, IFI = .97 and .96, and RMSEA = .092 and .091, indicating a promising construct validity. In conclusion B-L RI:MC OS-64 and OS-40 versions can be considered appropriate for measuring the Rogerian therapeutic relationship conditions within a Mandarin speaking community.

Reviews the book, Practicing Client-Centered Therapy: Selected Writings of Barbara Temaner Brodley edited by Kathryn A. Moon, Marjory Witty, Barry Grant, and Bert Rice (2011). This book is a generous and lovingly edited volume. Its voice is one of searching connection and mature conviction by a person who steadfastly tended and advanced the flame that Carl Rogers set alight in the 1940s. Barbara Brodley maintained her humanistic client-centered focus on the experiencing individuals in therapy—clients and therapists alike—throughout the 45+ years of her professional and always personal career. This book also reflects the work and voice of a dedicated teacher resourcefully demonstrating, documenting, and showing the way to client-centered practice in the Rogerian tradition. There are many very interesting passages with concise nuggets of meaning. The empathic process is a primary theme in the book, and in another place the author examines "criteria for making empathic responses". Interestingly, two of the criteria have to do with some felt uncertainty and desire to check whether the listener is on track and correctly understanding the client's experience and meaning. One chapter is devoted to extensive and close study of the verbal manifestations and self-correcting path in therapy of empathic understanding and following. Naturally, the focus is not always on receiving and understanding the client's felt experience, and a later chapter methodically offers a set of "guidelines for responses from the therapist's frame of reference".

This study explores broad features of political culture and event of the 1930s and World War 2 years, viewed in relation to the emergence and rapid early growth of the new therapy of Carl Rogers. The paper traces Rogers' early professional life and examines distinctive emphases in sociopolitical thought and development during Franklin D. Roosevelt's leadership as President over the prolonged emergency of the Great Depression and the crisis of the War. The study includes a focus on the President's own outlook and style, pertinent New Deal innovations, and wartime needs. Twelve features of this larger context are discriminated as together having vital importance for the new therapy and its founder. The congruent courses of the macrocontext and of Rogers' innovation are followed to the ending of Roosevelt's life. Direct causation is not attributed, but the evidence adduced newly points to particular contours of a larger environment favorable for the expression of Rogers' values and rare ability. In sum, the author concludes that a synergy of highly conducive historical circumstance and individual exceptionality contributed to the philosophical underpinnings, attitudinal values and early momentum of Rogers' client-centered therapy.

This article surveys a half-century journey of unfolding inquiry, thought and writing by the author – up to his most current work. Concern with relationship processes and their correlates is a core theme. The journey began with research to test Rogers' “conditions of therapy” theory; moved to new applications and development of the author's Relationship Inventory; and on through several other regions of practice and inquiry. These latter include a focus on developmental small groups; contributions on family process and on empathy; community; and the plural self in relationship. New work is in progress that extends the author's previous thought. This unfolds a relationship-centered vision of human life with development of a unified paradigm that is both system- and experience-sensitive.

Interpersonal empathy is a subtle and multisided phenomenon which can, nevertheless, lend itself to systematic portrayal and investigation. This paper further refines the author's account of empathy as involving a sequence of distinct steps or phases. Freshly introduced here is the idea of empathic response not only to self‐experience but also towards relationships conceived as emergent living wholes with their own felt presence and individuality. Given described preconditions for empathy, three main phases in a complete empathic process are distinguished: reception and resonation by the listener; expressive communication of this responsive awareness by the empathizing person; and the phase of received empathy, or awareness of being understood. The phases are not a single closed system, thus do not occur in lock step and are semi‐autonomous in practice. Responding empathically to relationship systems (existing as ‘we’ or ‘us’ to the participants and as a joint ‘you’ to others) may be interwoven with empathic response to individual ‘I’ experience. Although differing in focus, the empathic process follows the same phasic course in both cases. An underlying view is that individual selves are only one of the forms human life takes; other forms include relationships, families and living communities.

This paper explores the early phase of interest and enthusiasm for the philosophy and practice of client-centered therapy in relevant Australian circles, touches on issues in its subsequent decline here and traces more recent developments and the currently rising interest. The attenuation of relevant training opportunities and research in the United States from the late 1960s (when Rogers was no longer based in universities) also contributed to the diminishing visibility of his approach in Australia. Yet, core elements were often absorbed, unacknowledged, into the culture of helping services and education, and there were pockets of focused activity. From about the time of Rogers' death in 1987, the building visibility and vitality of the expanded PCA movement in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe was helping to fertilize the re-growing interest here. Recent and new programs in Australia are providing an increased footing for person-centered work with contemporary emphases.

This paper makes the case for recognition of the centrality of relationship in human life generally as well as in the particular case of person-centered and related therapies. Relationships are understood here as emergent process entities that develop life and presence. Therapy is one relationship among others in a client's life; each one capable of influencing other interpersonal systems in the client's experience, and all falling within larger systems of association. An extended therapy case study helps to illustrate the author's psycho-relational approach and theoretical understanding. The client's described journey is infused with relationship issues carried within her, from her family and in her everyday life and found also in the unfolding partnership with her therapist. This perspective on personal therapy connects with other proposed levels of healing that are needed across the full spectrum of disturbed human association.

This paper freshly asks “What is the phenomenon of human relationship, in its basic nature?” Two approaches or paradigms are distinguished. In the more individualist view, relationship is something that happens between the participants, who remain the causative players. Effectively, the individuals are the assumed agents of a relationship in its beginning, development, continuation or ending. In the second perspective, relationship is seen as something in its own right that comes to have presence, life and influence. Individual life crucially forms from and flows into and through relational wholes. This understanding implies that human problems are essentially problems in and of relation, at many interwoven levels. Thus also, personal wellness is a connective quality, founded and expressed in relationship.