Person-centred coaching psychology: A meta-theoretical perspective

Abstract

Coaching psychology provides a new professional arena for thinking about psychological practice. Many will recognise the ethos of coaching psychology as different from the medical model and many coaching psychologists would not recognise a description of the profession as grounded in the medical model. It will be argued, however, that because coaching psychology has emerged in relation to other professional branches of psychology which do adopt the medical model, it has as a consequence implicitly adopted the values of the medical model. The implication of the medical model is the view that we ourselves are the expert on our client’s life. This stands in contrast to the person-centred model view which is that our client is their own best expert. It will be argued that coaching psychology should reject the medical model and instead adopt the person-centred meta-theoretical perspective.