Perspective and engagement in counseling and psychotherapy: The phenomenological approach

✍ Scribed by Douglas M. Snyder

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 822 KB
• Volume: 5
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0165-0653
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00119090

✦ Synopsis

A phenomenological view of counseling and psychotherapy is introduced via a consideration of Freudian and Rogerian approaches to these activities. Both the Freudian and Rogerian approaches axe seen to be based on an attempted disengagement between therapist and client. This attempted disengagement is found in the invalidation of the client's perpective by the therapist. The ackowledgment of the validity of the perspective of both therapist and client, and of the engagement resulting from the meeting of perspectives in interaction, is the basis for counseling and psychotherapy from a phenomenological approach.

In this presentation of a patient to his students, Kraepelin gave us an example of contact with a patient that illustrates well many of the issues to be discussed in the article. The following quote is from Kraepelin's (1905) Lectures on clinical psychiatry. It is taken from .