FIRST blog, first post, and some first steps:

What's this blog about?

It's about exploring a dialogue between the person-centred understanding of the self, and other perspectives - therapeutic, philosophical, imaginative, scientific. It's about opening the person-centred world-view to fruitful cross-cultural encounters, energising disagreements, and leaps of the imagination. It's about making links, following hunches, pursuing connections which may help us enrich our understanding of what goes on in ourselves, in our relationships, in the therapeutic encounter. 

Just now, I'm excited by the pathways between person-centred territory and the outlands of existential therapy, Karen Horney's reworking of Freudian practice and theory, Shakespeare's late comedies, and the neuroscience of child development. So that should keep us going for a while. But as we go, I hope the paths will deviate and multiply, and we'll find ourselves needing a whole new set of maps.

Who's it for?

Maybe, like me, you're training to be a person-centred counsellor; maybe you're training in another counselling or therapeutic orientation. Perhaps you're already up and running in your counselling practice, and are looking for another way to keep alive your connection to ideas and dialogue around counselling . Or maybe you're just someone who's still actively engaged in becoming a person. Whichever path has led you here, welcome to what I hope will be an unpredictable, open encounter between perspectives and voices - in dialogue, in process.