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Person-Centred Therapy: a European Perspective
THORNE, B. & I.AmBERs, E. (Eds) London: Sage
ISBN 0-7619-5155-5 L14.99
Person-centred therapy has, often enough, been accused of over-simplicity and even derided as naive; whether or not this book plays a part in laying those myths to rest once and for all remains to be seen, but this reviewer has high hopes for it. No-one who reads the book can fail to be impressed by the active searching of the theorists and practitioners represented here to explore the most profound of questions concerning what it means to be a person and how therapy can contribute to the realisation of human potential. The person-- centred approach that emerges from the pages of this book is vibrant and respectful of both individual and their social contexts, and continues to evolve and develop in ways that would have both satisfied and, one suspects, surprised its founder, Carl Rogers.
A central theme is foreshadowed by Thome's remark in his Preface that 'the person-centred approach has come home'. The early influences of European existential philosophy on what at first was thought to be an American 'invention' took root in the evolution of the person-centred...