Humanistic Counseling and Relativity

By Shea Stevens. Last edited 11/21/23

Overview of Humanistic Counseling

The umbrella of humanistic counseling theory includes the major theories of Person Centered, Existential, and Gestalt Theory, among others. This umbrella of humanism finds common ground in its dedication to honoring the impulse of every person to grow, change, understand themselves and make meaning of their world.

To me, the relationship between these humanistic theories is less like a patchwork quilt and more like a nebulous blob of overlap that comes down to people using different terms and looking through different lenses, while engaging in largely similar ideas about humans, their impulses, and the nature of change. I think it would be extremely messy to entirely separate these theories from each other and impossible to neatly place them on a linear spectrum while staying true to their nuance, and in truth they developed in a common family tree.

Here is the Association for Humanistic Counseling (AHC's) webpage on Humanistic Theories for a brief overview on humanistic theory. Each specific theory has its own nuanced vision of the human impulse to change; the term self-actualization captures it pretty well, and those of us in the Gestalt theory camp tend to talk about things through the lens of meeting needs, self-regulation and “equilibrium”; individuals will always seek equilibrium and will creatively adjust to their life in the ways they naturally see fit to do so.

Regardless, all of us in this humanistic umbrella have a foundational trust in the human tendency to change and develop in a way that is uniquely appropriate to the individual, and reject the idea that change can, or should, happen primarily through behavioral conditioning, training, or even force.

Autonomy Rather Than Authority

I work often with recovery from authoritarian homes or church environments as part of my private practice niche. That fits in with my dedication to living both personally and professionally in a way that is liberatory, rather than authoritarian.

Carl Rogers, the founding theorist of Person-Centered Theory, started with a theory of change within a person, and wound up years later addressing people all over the world, conducting workshops with entire groups and organizations, talking to them not just about a theory of therapy but engaging in philosophy about individual autonomy, respecting differences among people, and his rejection of authoritarianism.

He details thoughts on these topics in a book of his collected talks, titled A Way of Being, which I’m currently reading. Carl Rogers had his own journey from being raised in a fairly authoritarian setting, and slowly released that framework to ultimately become the radical theorist that he was.

Rogers centered his life’s work around the idea that the therapist was not an authority on the client’s life, but was a catalyst for change when the necessary therapeutic conditions were met; namely, a therapist who practices empathy and unconditional positive regard, and is congruent while sharing space with the client. In these conditions a client could find support to engage in their natural drive of self-actualization, like a plant in rich soil growing toward sunlight.

Holding Space for Relativity

I am not strictly speaking a Person-Centered counselor, rather my theoretical foundation is in the Gestalt camp, but as a humanistic counselor I share many similar convictions with Carl Rogers. For the purpose of this blog post I want to focus on his particularly anti-authoritarian bent. Gestalt also was founded as a primarily anti-authoritarian theory of the human person, and therapy and Carl Rogers’ thoughts on the subject of relativity speak deeply to me. I was recently inspired by this topic of relativity as articulated by Rogers in his paper, “Do We Need A Reality?” written in 1974 and later published in 1978.

The idea of relativity is a feature of the phenomenological philosophy at the heart of Gestalt, Person-Centered, and other humanistic counseling theories. Rogers’ paper discusses relativity in a way that struck me anew, after having read much about phenomenological inquiry from other theorists. Maybe it only struck me in such a way because I read it a time when the concepts of therapy, humanism, authoritarianism, and phenomenology were all simmering together in my mind. Regardless, it sparked something.

The topic of Rogers’ paper is the principle that we are each experiencing our own reality. Carl Rogers argues that there is no need to assert that there is just one reality, and that it is in fact very dangerous to believe you have the power to assert that over others. He believes in allowing each person to live according to their own reality, to have self-determination. This has far-reaching implications on a societal level, on a world-scale, and also has implications in the therapy room. Some of these implications are complex. He does not fully explore what this might look like on a national scale, what government principles or laws would look like, in a nation that operates radically from that principle. I see a lot of potential difficulties there.

Still, it is a principle worth exploring- how can a large mass of people live peacefully, with justice and equity, when significant differences exist in how they each understand their realities? Can there be a social contract at the same time that there is a lack of unified vision of reality? Rogers denounces authoritarian force that would compel people to live according to one unified view of reality, at least to any extreme extent. He uses Nazi Germany as an extreme example of authoritarian enforcement of its vision of reality.

I don’t feel that I have a simple solution for how the implications of Carl Rogers’ words can fully take shape in a nation. I think it’s interesting and important to ask yourself what extent you believe people must agree to a unified social contract in order to live with both peace and justice for all. It seems to me that you must. Who gets to decide upon it, and who gets to influence how the social contract is changed over time? Who gets to decide “reality” in that way? Rogers argues that we would all benefit from practicing tolerance and even love for others’ unique realities.

I deeply appreciate the writings and work of adrienne maree brown, who talks about Emergent Strategy and imagining alternatives to what we accept as our fixed “reality.” I wonder how we can collectively create what we imagine. While I struggle to know how a radically tolerant coexistence of this kind can be achieved, I believe that this discipline of imagination is an important process to engage in. I do think humanity can make progress toward this goal.

Relativity in the Context of Therapy

These ideas of relativity and phenomenology can be applied at the micro scale of interaction between just two people: a therapist and their client. It is at all times clear to me that my client’s experience is absolutely distinct from my own experience. I am often musing on how very limited I am in practicing empathy with a person whose full scope of experience— whose own reality— eludes me. The full picture of their life and their field (a gestalt term, meaning context or situation) I can only barely begin to grasp. So how am I to be as a counselor?

Existential, Person-Centered, and Gestalt theorists answer this question with a decidedly phenomenological approach. We in these theories have a shared inheritance in the phenomenological tradition. The idea is that the therapist is constantly bracketing their own experiences, sometimes judiciously offering them as feedback to the client, but just as that; feedback.

The therapist must be aware of the limitations of their own experiences, and offer their own subjective experiences of the client with no expectation of being an authority on their own life. This attitude of curiosity, inquiry, and offering of feedback is done with detachment, not with a demand that the therapist’s experience be accepted as an objectively true interpretation. At least, in an ideal world the humanistic therapist is able to bracket their own reality to this extent. It is most definitely easier said than done.

The Tendency to Want an External Authority

The truth is, for many clients and therapists alike, it is challenging to operate in this way. Psychiatrists and Psychologists were, in the earliest days of therapy, the experts who handed on their interpretations of the clients as objectively true and authoritative. That legacy continues to today, as there continues to be expectations from some clients that their counselor is an authority.

Licensed therapists do have expert knowledge and skill. We are certainly expertly trained in the process of therapy, and we each have our unique specialties, approaches, and trainings. But this is not the same as being an expert in the sense of having answers to life’s problems. So, what I am really talking about is this sense of being an “authority.”

There are many other purposes that counselors serve, beside being an authority. Many of us specialize in humanistic, relational talk therapy in the phenomenological tradition for clients whose presenting concerns/issues do not primarily stem from a biology-based medical diagnosis. I am one such counselor.

Clients can see huge improvement in symptoms through humanistic, relational talk therapy. But the process is incredibly unique to each person, and the process of therapy often is anything but linear or predictable. And most of the time, the client gets an outcome that is proportionate to the effort they bring to the process.

Wanting Answers or Solutions from Your Therapist

Many clients have a tendency to want to find answers delivered neatly to them from their therapist, and conversely many therapists (myself included) feel internal and external pressure at times to have a simple answer or skill or intervention that is just what the client is looking for in that moment. An immediate solution. But so many times we cannot offer that, even when we want and try to.

And a major reason for that is what this blog post is all about: Relativity, subjectivity, and autonomy. I cannot know what your life has been like. I cannot know or live your life. To be honest, when I think about how small my share is of my clients’ reality, I feel very limited in what feedback I can offer. But when I accept this, and show up regardless with curiosity, rigorous listening and observation, kind regard and acceptance toward my clients, much like Carl Rogers believed, great things can happen.

My feedback, reflections, and questions to the client do add up to something significant. Simply holding empathetic and accepting space for the client to engage in that human drive I was talking about before, that is something unique and powerful. Clients can find the therapeutic alliance to be a catalyst for deep, meaningful and lasting change in their life.

So, although client and counselors alike are usually struggling with the void of authority in the room, it is important that we do protect the therapy space from becoming a place of “teaching” or “solving” and instead operate from a place of curiosity, exploration, and empathy instead. I think there will always be therapists and organizations that offer authoritative approaches to mental health issues. Some are certainly effective and necessary, maybe some more than others. But I believe the humanistic tradition of therapy is well worth preserving in its own right, because different people have a use for therapy for many different reasons.

And the pursuit of greater self-awareness, a major goal of humanistic therapy, will always be an important human endeavor, especially for those who want to establish peace within themselves and among the human family. It seems to me, much like Carl Rogers believed, that if more people embrace that different subjective realities can coexist, and live deeply by that attitude, the more progress can be made toward rejecting authoritarianism and building peace in the world.