Abstract
Guided by Foucault’s argument that “knowledge is an ‘invention’ behind which lies something completely different from itself: the play of instincts, impulses, desires, fears, and the will to appropriate,” this study considers the possibility that “nondirectivity” in Rogerian psychotherapy operates as a trope for power. This is partly based on Edwin Kahn’s observation that nondirective therapists may be less mindful of their own fallibility than other therapists, less wary of their capacity to influence clients, and therefore, less prepared to interrogate the ways they might actually be influencing them. Nondirective, client-centered therapists, in short, may be less likely to have doubts about their comments and interventions, and thus more likely to exercise influence. What I show in this study is how Rogers did just this in his famous session with Gloria, how—without telling Gloria about his personal and theoretic biases, without first discussing them with her to see if and how they fit her goals—he continually pushed her to view herself through the lens of those biases.
One of Foucault’s contributions to the understanding of social life has been his capacity to unveil the play of power in places often regarded as free, benevolent, and productive. Whether in his studies of sexuality, education, or the medical clinic, Foucault revealed the subtly layered enticements, seductions, and deceptions through which people impose their will on others by means of the most ordinary (and not so ordinary) conversational devices. His idea that people are defined by the ways they communicate—that “nothing has any meaning outside of discourse” (Foucault, 1972, in Hall, 2001, p. 73)—implies that wherever there is conversation, wherever people exchange ideas and produce knowledge, there is power:
This form of power applies itself to immediate everyday life which categorizes the individual, marks him off by his own individuality, attaches him to his own identity, imposes a law of truth on him which he must recognize and which others have to recognize in him. It is a form of power which makes individuals subjects. (Foucault, 1982, p. 781)
A second contribution has been Foucault’s efforts to show how the supposedly objective human sciences such as medicine, psychotherapy, and criminal justice are cultural constructions permeated with unanticipated and unseen interests. For Foucault, these interests prevail, not because they exclude or repress, not because they “weigh on us as a force that says no,” but because they induce pleasure, form knowledge, and produce discourses which “systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 1972, p. 49; Foucault, 1980, p. 119).
The following research extends both dimensions of Foucauldian epiphany to explore the play of power in Rogerian “nondirective” psychotherapy, also known as client-centered or person-centered psychotherapy. Rogers (1942, pp. 88-89) defined the central feature of this approach as “freedom from any type of pressure or coercion,” based on the therapist consciously refraining “from intruding his own wishes, his own reactions, or biases into the therapeutic situations.” According to Rogers (1942, p. 89), the difference between nondirective psychotherapy and other types is the former’s aspiration to free itself from power: “Advice, suggestion, pressure to follow one course of action rather than another—these are out of place in therapy.” My purpose here is to examine how Foucault’s (1978, p. 61) belief that “power is everywhere” matches up with Rogers (1942, p. 109) belief that power can, and must, be excluded from therapy, that “therapy and authority cannot exist in the same relationship.” To avoid confusion, it should be noted that as a therapist, Rogers was quite explicit in his wish to influence clients. However, because he believed that his efforts were directed to helping clients give up a “false self” in favor of their “true self”—in favor of their a priori core identity (a position directly opposed to Foucault’s belief that the self is constructed through discourse)—he interpreted his mode of therapy as nondirective (Rogers, 1961).
Curiously, in 1966, Charles Truax, using a sample of Rogers’ own therapy sessions, disconfirmed Rogers’ hypothesis that therapy and authority cannot coexist. Truax noted that when Rogers’ client said something that resembled either Rogers’ words or style, Rogers was more empathic, more warm, and accepting. Conversely, when the client said something sharply different from Rogers, he tended to show less empathy, less warmth, and acceptance. Truax set his study in the context of the behaviorism–humanism debate, focusing on whether Rogerian therapy had reinforcement effects similar to Skinnerian therapy, and thus did not explore whether Rogers’ tendency to reward clients who mirrored his own words and style had implications for the concept of nondirectivity. He did not even mention the word “bias.” Maria Bowen (1996), on the other hand, studied a therapy session conducted by Rogers in 1982 and noted that Rogers’ response patterns were indeed personal and idiosyncratic. This led her to conclude that the whole concept of nondirective psychotherapy is more mythic than real. From what she observed, the personality and preconceptions of the therapist do have an effect on the direction of so-called “nondirective” psychotherapy.
This study also sees the concept of nondirectivity as mythic. It argues, and shows through examination of Rogers’ therapy session with Gloria, that Rogerian nondirective psychotherapy, like the Christian confessional, and for that matter, like all manifestations of psychotherapy which depend on the exploration of people’s innermost secrets, unfolds within a power relationship. As Foucault (1978) explained,
one does not confess without the presence (or virtual presence) of a partner who is not simply the interlocutor but the authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console, and reconcile. (pp. 61-62)
Psychotherapists, generally speaking, command their clients’ respect. They claim, either overtly or covertly, some kind of expertise. Thus, clients’ listen to psychotherapists. While Foucault, like Rogers, believed that efforts to influence people through exhortation, suggestion, reassurance, encouragement, advice, interpretation, and persuasion are direct expressions of power, he did not believe they could be removed from therapy or any other enterprise by an act of will. On the contrary, he argued that power is endlessly ironical, often rearing its head in the very operations designed to oppose it. Perhaps the most famous example of this kind of irony in Foucault’s writings is his interpretation of the “humanitarian” changes in psychiatric treatment initiated by Philippe Pinel and William Tuke during the late 18th century. Instead of treating Pinel’s mythologized act of releasing “the mad” from their chains at Bicetre as an example of liberation, Foucault (1965) argued that the madman’s chains had been “the very element of his liberty . . . Delivered from his chains, he is now chained, by silence, to transgression and shame . . . his torment was his glory; his deliverance must humiliate him” (p. 261). Whether the mad did indeed feel more liberated when manacled to a wall, the larger point is that power is inherently difficult to pin down—it is always open to a variety of interpretations—because its success depends on its invisibility, its capacity to hide its mechanisms from its objects and agents: “Would power be accepted if it were entirely cynical? For it, secrecy is not in the nature of an abuse; it is indispensable to its operation” (Foucault, 1978, p. 86).
The motivation to write this article comes in part from the question of whether (and how) nondirective psychotherapy conceals power. But on a more immediate and pragmatic level, it comes from the responses to Edwin Kahn’s (1999) critique of nondirective therapy, in particular, from the scholars who argued that subjective bias is not a necessary part of psychotherapy, and that therapists can avoid bringing their personal agenda into the therapy room by adopting Rogers’ (1957) core conditions: a congruent or genuine state of mind, unconditional positive regard for the client, and an empathic understanding of the client’s internal life (Bozarth, 2002; Levitt, 2005; Merry & Brodley, 2002; Sommerbeck, 2002). In Bozarth’s (2002) words,
In person-centered theory, nondirectivity is logically deduced from the central theoretical axiom of the core conditions that promote the self-actualizing tendency. . . . The point is not that the therapist should attempt to be nondirective. Rather, the theory of client-centered therapy results in the nondirective attitude. . . . The therapist who operates on the premise that [the core] therapeutic conditions are necessary is inherently nondirective. (pp. 80-81; italics added)
For Brian Levitt (2005), empathic understanding is the key:
Non-directive empathy is an understanding that is entirely in the service of the client’s own theory of him- or herself. From this perspective, the client is the map and the map-maker. . . . To restate, with non-directive empathic understanding, the client’s experience is itself the map. The therapist does not use his or her own personal experiences or some other externally generated theory (that is, external to the client) as a map. Through non-directive empathic understanding, the therapist tries to understand the map in front of him or her from the client’s world-view, as the client presents it. The only theory that is ever relevant is the client’s own theory of him- or herself. (pp. 9-10)
Levitt’s assertion that a therapist can understand the “client’s own theory of him- or herself” the way one reads a map raises a number of questions. Does everyone have a theory of themselves? If yes, what does it look like? How can a therapist affirm that he or she is reading this map correctly? And how does a therapist, or anyone, account for the alarming fact that a person’s sense of “self” can appear differently to himself or herself at different times and to different observers? While Bozarth and others argue that a nondirective attitude results from the therapist’s congruence, empathic understanding, and accepting attitude, it is also true that these qualities, like the client’s theory of himself or herself, have an inescapable abstractness. They have no shape, no substance, and, by implication, our efforts to understand how these states of mind become manifest in therapy, not to mention how they influence the expression or suppression of the therapist’s biases, remain fundamentally problematic. A therapist may feel that he or she has an empathic understanding with clients, or may claim to have such a feeling, but we have no way to directly measure whether or how a therapist’s feeling can reflect some dimension of the client’s reality, especially given Rogers’ (1959, p. 197) belief that feelings always have an unconscious dimension. As Gendlin (1962, p. 54) articulated the issue, “What potential cognitive status does . . . feeling have, such that thoughts and expressions may represent it adequately or inadequately? What constitutes adequacy?” Most perplexing, perhaps, is that without clear criteria for distinguishing between congruent mind-sets and incongruent ones, between empathic understanding and nonempathic understanding, or between unconditional acceptance and more guarded varieties of acceptance—without clear behavioral referents—precise communication on the core conditions remains vague and incoherent. By implication, self-deception is an ever-present possibility. Therapists may justify a comment or intervention in the name of, say, congruence, they may claim a feeling of complete genuineness and transparency, and they may believe it, but what if they are actually nontransparent to themselves and others? How would they know they are concealing? (Geller, 1982). Merry and Brodley (2002, p. 74) claim that “Empathic understanding in a client-centered context, by definition, results from an indwelling by a therapist in a client’s personal world in which theoretical (and personal) frameworks are laid to one side,” but how is a therapist to know that what he or she is feeling toward their client conforms to this definition? For therapists who claim that adhering to Rogers’ core conditions guarantees their nondirectivity, this is the problem par excellence: How can they make something that is essentially subjective, objective? How can they rely on their sense of congruence, empathic understanding, or unconditional acceptance when those qualities are available only to themselves as feelings or hunches? How can a therapist dismiss claims of personal bias based on their feelings of congruence, empathy, and acceptance while at the same time knowing so little about how these mind-sets operate, what they look like, or what they do?
It is important to recognize that, from Foucault’s perspective, such questions, perplexing though they seem, are not an occasion for nondirective psychotherapists to dismiss the possibility of nondirective psychotherapy. A discourse lives or dies, for Foucault, not on the basis of its conceptual clarity or external validity, but on the basis of the interests it serves: “Thus, selfish interest is radically posed as coming before knowledge, which it subordinates to its needs as a simple instrument . . . ”(Foucault, 1977, p. 203). While nondirective psychotherapy is seemingly formulated as a scientific proposition, for those who live by it, it operates as an “incorrigible proposition,” a set of ideas which no evidence can prove false (Gasking, 1965). This explains why, when scholars such as Truax (1966), Bowen (1996), and Kahn (1999) offer evidence which conflicts with its central premises, that evidence is not taken as an occasion to dismiss, modify, or even test the principles of nondirective psychotherapy. It is taken as an occasion to reaffirm its underlying coherency and logic, as evidenced by the responses to Kahn’s (1999) critique which accused him of failing to understand what he was writing about. As Bozarth (2002, pp. 78-79) put it, Kahn’s “arguments ignore the person-centered therapist’s dedication to the self-determination and self-authority of the client while he confounded person-centered theory with other theoretical frames of reference.” Similarly, for Merry and Brodley (2002),
Kahn has provided a critique of client/person-centered therapy that reveals significant misunderstandings of the theory and principles of this approach. The nondirective attitude is implied by client-centered principles and made explicit through its practice. It is an attitude that fundamentally respects a person’s capacity for change in an environment that provides freedom through understanding, acceptance, and authenticity. (pp. 75-76)
In what follows, I attempt to portray nondirective, client-centered therapy as fundamentally ironic. Guided by Foucault’s (1977, pp. 202-203) argument that “knowledge is an ‘invention’ behind which lies something completely different from itself: the play of instincts, impulses, desires, fear, and the will to appropriate,” I consider the possibility that “nondirectivity” operates as a trope for wielding influence. This is not to say that the therapist, whether Rogers or anyone else, knowingly uses nondirectivity in this way. Indeed, what the nondirective therapist explicitly wants to avoid, above all else, is to impose himself or herself on the client. Rather, it is to say that the nondirective approach, which assumes that a therapist can read the client the way one reads a map, may make nondirective therapists less mindful of their own fallibility than other therapists, less wary of their capacity to influence clients, and therefore, less prepared to interrogate the ways they might actually be influencing them (see Kahn, 1999). Nondirective, client-centered therapists, in short, may be less likely to have doubts about their comments and interventions, and thus more likely to exercise influence. In the following, I show how Rogers did just this in his famous session with Gloria, how—without telling Gloria about his personal and theoretical biases, without first discussing them with her to see if and how they fit her goals—he continually pushed her to view herself through the lens of those biases.
The Gloria Therapy Session
The recording of the Gloria session (Shostrum, 1965) begins with Rogers, alone, looking into the camera and stating his goals, which were, first, to satisfy the core conditions of congruence/genuineness, empathy, and acceptance, and second, to help his client self-actualize. I quote Rogers at some length so readers can see how his goals for himself bear a striking similarity to his goals for Gloria.
First of all, one question is, can I be real in the relationship? This has come to have an increasing amount of importance to me over the years. I feel that genuineness is another way of describing the quality I would like to have. I like the term “congruent,” by which I mean that what I am describing inside is present in my awareness and comes out through my communication. I am all in one piece in the relationship. There is a word that describes it for me. I feel that in the relationship, I would like to have “transparency.” I would be willing for my client to see all the way through me, that there would be nothing hidden. And when I am real in this fashion that I’m trying to describe, then know that my own feelings will often bubble up into awareness and be expressed, but be expressed in a way that won’t impose themselves on my client.
In addition to hoping to feel “real in the relationship” with Gloria, Rogers described how he hoped to accept Gloria during the session—to “prize” her—and see her inner world empathically through her eyes. Then, he explained why success in bringing about these attitudinal shifts in himself mattered for Gloria’s sake. If he had the correct attitude, he would be in a better position to help her become the person she truly is:
From being rather remote from her experiencing, remote from what is going on within her, it’s possible that she’ll move toward more immediacy of experiencing, that she will be able to sense and explore what is going on in her in the immediate moment. From being disapproving of herself, it is quite possible she’ll move toward greater degree of acceptance of herself. From somewhat of a fear of relating, she may move toward being able to relate more directly and to encounter me more directly. From construing life in somewhat rigid black and white patterns, she may move toward more tentative ways of construing her experience and of seeing meanings in it. From a locus of evaluation which is outside of herself, it is quite possible she will move toward recognizing a greater capacity within herself for making judgments and drawing conclusions.
Rogers’ prefatory comments show that even before meeting Gloria, his session with her had become overladen with irony: first, in the sense that the founder of nondirective, client-centered therapy came to the session with a set of highly developed goals for his client without first consulting her. Second, in the sense that Rogers shared these goals with his video audience, particularly his wish to be fully transparent with Gloria, so she could “see all the way through” him, so that “there would be nothing hidden” from her, yet did not share these goals with Gloria. Third, in the sense that, despite Rogers’ stated wish to eliminate personal bias from therapy, the goals he prioritized for himself in conducting the session—to feel genuine/congruent/“all in one piece”—were almost indistinguishable from the treatment goals he prioritized for Gloria.
When Gloria arrived, Rogers began by offering that although they only had a ½ hour, he would be glad to know whatever concerns her. Gloria replied that what bothers her most is lying to her 9-year-old daughter about her sex life.
She asked me if I had ever made love to a man since I left her daddy and I lied to her. And ever since that, it keeps coming up to my mind because I feel so guilty lying to her because I never lie and I want her to trust me.
She then asked Rogers whether being untruthful in this way would damage her daughter (“I want you to tell me if it would affect her wrong if I told her the truth, or what?”), but Rogers declined to answer, saying with a smile, “I sure wish I could give you the answer as to what to tell her . . . because what you really want is an answer.”
For the next couple of minutes, Gloria continued to share her fear that she might be harming her daughter and their relationship by bringing men home (“I don’t want her to turn away from me”), but she also implied that she did not want to stop bringing men home (“I’m real leery about it, and yet I also know that I have these desires”). Rogers’ response is significant: “And so it’s quite clear it isn’t only her problem [her daughter’s problem] or the relationship with her, it’s in you as well.” It is significant because Gloria, to this point (4 minutes into the session), had not said the problem is in her. It is also significant that Rogers did not introduce this idea as a question. He did not ask Gloria if she felt the problem is in her. He told her that it is. True, Gloria did say that she feels guilty and ashamed of the way she has been handling her sexual encounters, but she had not described those bad feelings as an internal conflict so much as a relational one: apprehension over whether her daughter might be damaged by her lies and her sexual behavior. She gave voice to this view by repeatedly pressing Rogers for advice on what she should do: “I want to especially know if it would affect her if I was completely honest and open or if it would affect her if I lied.” Gloria, in other words, was not seeking advice on how to feel about herself, but on how to behave with her daughter. Nonetheless, when Rogers suggested that the problem is in her, Gloria went along—emphatically: “And my guilt. Yeah. Yeah. I feel guilty so often,” an exchange which reveals how, following Rogers’ lead, the conversation had begun to shift away from Gloria’s agenda and onto Rogers’: from the question of how to manage Gloria’s 9-year-old daughter and onto the question of how to manage Gloria’s lack of genuineness or congruence—her failure to accept herself as she really is.
Another irony is that Gloria seemed to welcome this shift. “I want to be honest,” she said, “and yet I feel there are some areas I don’t even accept,” to which Rogers responded encouragingly, “And if you can’t accept them in yourself, how could you possibly be comfortable in telling them to her.” The Foucauldian irony here is that Rogers’ influence was not perceived as an imposition. It was perceived as helpful, friendly, and productive, a mode of interpretation which made Rogers’ influence all the more effective. 1
The next exchange, now about 5 minutes into the session, is also highly significant, not only in terms of staying on the topic of Gloria’s genuineness/congruence, but in the ways in which Gloria and Rogers had begun to position themselves in a mutually reinforcing feedback loop focused on genuineness/congruence: with Gloria supporting Rogers’ own sense of genuineness/congruence, Rogers emphasizing Gloria’s need to improve her genuineness/congruence, and Gloria, in turn, recognizing the correctness of Rogers’ observations.
I want you to help me get rid of my guilt feeling. If I can get rid of my guilt feeling about lying or going to be with a single man, any of that, just so I can feel comfortable. (Gloria) And I’d like to say, “No, I don’t want to let you stew in your feelings,” but on the other hand, I, I also feel that this is the kind of very private thing that I couldn’t possibly answer for you. But I sure as anything will try to help you work toward your own answer. I don’t know whether that makes sense to you, but I mean it. (Rogers)
Two of Rogers’ phrases stand out here: “I sure as anything will try,” and “I mean it.” They stand out because, while they do not change Rogers’ core message, namely that he intends to help Gloria work toward her own answer, they add a message about Rogers’ attitude toward this work. He is saying that his words are not just words but represent his deep conviction. “I mean it.” He is affirming his genuineness. He is saying he is “all in one piece,” his innermost feelings congruent with his awareness, a claim which immediately resonated with Gloria. First cocking her head, looking at Rogers quizzically, as if to say, “I can’t believe you’re actually saying that,” then breaking into a broad toothy smile, she replied, “Well, I appreciate you saying that. You sound like you mean it,” mirroring and affirming his language, in effect saying, “I recognize your genuineness.”
Gloria went on to say that she feels especially guilty because her sexual encounters are mostly about satisfying a physical need. She is not in love with the men she is involved with. Rogers’ response was,
I guess I hear you saying, “If what I was doing, when I went to bed with a man was really genuine and full of love and respect and so on, I wouldn’t feel guilty . . . I really would be comfortable about the situation.”
What Rogers is doing here is imputing a concern over genuineness to her. Gloria had not used the term, but he claimed he heard her use it (“I guess I heard you saying . . . ”), as if one of her primary goals, much like Rogers’ goal for the session, is to feel “all in one piece.” It is important to note that Rogers did not merely claim that he heard Gloria say that she would not feel guilty if what she was doing was “genuine,” he claimed he heard her say “really genuine.” In fact, he used the adverb “really” twice, a conversational move which, if taken literally, conveys no information whatsoever. If everything that exists is real, what is gained by adding the modifier “really,” particularly adding it to the word “genuine” which is much like saying “genuinely genuine?” What is the point of making a distinction between things happening and things really happening, between having feelings, and really have them? To answer these questions, we should note that Rogers made this sort of distinction almost continually during his ½-hour session with Gloria, a total of 33 times, in effect infusing the conversational atmosphere with the centrality of psychological genuineness/congruence—the centrality of feeling real. At one point, for example, when he was interpreting Gloria’s desire to achieve greater harmony between her behavior and her values, Rogers used the very same words he used in his prefatory comments to describe his goal to achieve genuineness during the session: “I sense that in those utopian moments, you really feel kind of whole. You feel all in one piece.”
As the session progressed, Gloria increasingly picked up on Rogers’ tendency to say “really.” While she did not use the word at all during the session’s first 5 minutes (Rogers used it seven times during the same interval), by the end of the session, she had used it 18 times, mostly in the closing minutes. Even more significant than the frequency is the context with which this word was injected into the conversation. When Rogers said “really,” he was not asking Gloria a question, nor was he commenting about himself. He was almost always attributing a thought, feeling, or identity to Gloria. These attributions were posited as objective reality. “What you really want is . . . ” “You really feel badly . . . ” “One of the things you really deeply want . . . ” “You really aren’t . . . ”
The mode of influence where one word or idea evokes another through association without the mediation of overt argument can be called suggestion (Lundh, 1998). But Rogers also repeatedly communicated in the most overt, transparent language that what Gloria needed, more than anything else, was to feel “real,” “genuine,” “all in one piece.” He did this in three ways: (a) By pointing to the incongruence between her real self and her behavior (“You want to approve of you, but what you do somehow won’t let you approve of yourself.” “But you feel, really that at times you’re acting in ways that are not in accord with your own inner standards.” “What you’d like to do is to feel more accepting toward yourself when you do things that you feel are wrong.” “You know very well what you’d like to do in the relationship [with your daughter]. You would like to be yourself.” “You don’t like yourself or don’t approve of it when you do something against yourself.”); (b) By pointing to the incongruence between Gloria’s real self and the ways she presents herself to others, particularly to her daughter: (“If her love and acceptance of you is based on a false picture of you, what the hell is the good of that?” “To take the responsibility for being the person you would like to be with her is a hell of a responsibility.” “You sort of feel, ‘I want them to have as nice a picture of me as they have with their dad and if his is a little phony, then maybe mine will have to be too.’” “Sounds like you really find it quite hard to believe that they [her children] would really love you if they knew you”; and (c) By pointing to the incongruence between her real self and the ways she communicates with that self: (“It seems to me that the person you are not being honest with is you.” “It’s no damn good you’re doing something that you haven’t chosen to do. That’s why I am trying to help you find out what your own inner choices are.”)
Rogers’ conviction that Gloria has a determinate, noncontradictory, coherent and stable “genuine” self—which she is not sufficiently honoring or understanding—underlies the entire session. The central and most cunning feature of this conviction is that it is taken-for-granted. While Foucault (1972, p. 55) believed that the self is a discursive effect, a construction defined and produced through social interaction, Rogers saw it as an entity that exists prior to and independent of people’s understanding and awareness (Geller, 1982). His belief in the a priori facticity of a “real” or “true” self, Gloria’s, his own, and everyone else’s, was so deeply engrained that he felt no compulsion to discuss it with Gloria or to seek out confirming evidence. He simply asserted its existence over and over with such heartfelt conviction that within minutes Gloria was affirming its existence too. The most ironical aspect of this dynamic is Roger’s innocence, benevolence, and good intentions. According to Foucault (1980, p. 157), this kind of power is not exercised consciously. “It’s a machine in which everyone is caught, those who exercise power just as much as those over whom it is exercised.”
Concluding Remarks
Michel Foucault was a cynic; of this, there can be no doubt. He only used irony to reveal the errors of humanist thinking, and took little interest in liberal or progressive achievements of any kind. His most generous assessment of psychotherapy consisted of remarking that he saw “nothing wrong in the practice of a person who, knowing more than others in a specific game of truth, tells those others what to do, teaches them, and transmits knowledge and techniques to them” (Foucault, 1980, quoted in Fish, 1999, p. 67).
Why then should client-centered therapists take an interest in his critique? Foucault’s (1989) answer is that his kind of criticism is needed “to show that things are not as self-evident as one believed, to see that what is accepted as self-evident will no longer be accepted as such. Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult” (p. 154). His contribution to Rogerian psychotherapy, and to psychotherapy, in general, is to show that the notion of a client-therapist relationship without coercive effects is utopian. This does not imply the futility of this kind of relationship. It does not imply that people cannot perform effectively as psychotherapists. It means rather that psychotherapy, in particular, Rogerian psychotherapy, should be practiced more realistically. Only when therapists recognize that power will inevitably enter into therapy, only when they recognize their own “fallibility,” as Kahn (1999) suggested, will they be in a position to notice how power works its way into the client–therapist relationship, and only then will they be able discuss (and strategize) its implications with clients. The goal, for Foucault, is not to abolish power. The goal is to manage it—to adopt the techniques, the ethos, the skills, and the vigilance, to make the effects of power as transparent and reasonable as possible.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.