The conservative turn in person-centered therapy

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe significant battle being waged in contemporary psychotherapy is not between theoretical orientations but between different worldviews. One perspective assumes that therapy can measure, apprehend and even control human experience; the other recognizes that therapy is insufficient in explaining it and that it is ethically unsound to attempt to control it. The first is often complicit with the current master narrative of neoliberalism. By affirming the essential unknowability of being-in-the-world, the second is open to the possibility of the new and the creation of a life-affirming counter-narrative. Recent developments in person-centered therapy (PCT) have seemingly aligned it with the first rather than the second worldview. This article is divided into four parts. After an introduction on psychotherapy and neoliberalism, three developments are discussed, relating to philosophy of science, positive psychology, and politics – which justify, in the author’s opinion, the claim that PCT has undergone a conservative turn. Drawing on a variety of sources linked to PCT, this article sketches a way out of our current impasse and suggests ways to reinstate PCT as a radical practice and philosophy at the forefront of contemporary psychotherapy and cultural discourse.