Person Centred Counselling

We are, fundamentally, language users.  Language users share certain heuristics, certain 'internal models' that express themselves in ways of talking.  I imagine these in terms of (a) what people say about them (b) how they feel to them and (c) what 'mechanism' undelies them (which the speaker may only be partly aware of).  This is not a technical description - it's meant to reflect something like our explanations, our phenomenological condition, and something else - our neurology or subconscious or something similar.


Changing the models and changing the way we talk happen together.  While there may be causal interactions these can in either direction, and sometimes trying to impose a causal account is just misleading.

What is clear is that exploring new ways of talking feels like discovering new models, and discovering new models leads to different ways of talking.  We also learn by talking - to others, and, derivatively, to ourselves.  Our language provides us with 'internal' computational tools as well as with a medium of communication.

But talking is not free - it is action as well as expression;  we do, as well as say, when we talk.  This is most obvious in commercial exchanges, but can be seen in interpersonal interactions as well.  We can't discuss relationship problems with a partner without changing the relationship, and the problems.  And talking to ourselves - setting aside the very limited case of linguistic computation, or 'mental arithmetic' - has severe limitations.  It raises private language issues, for one thing.  But it also just doesn't work - we need an interlocutors perspective to get us out of rat-runs, to see the things we cannot see.

A counselling context should allow experiments with new models and ways of talking in a safe environment.  We can think of the Rogerian core conditions - positive regard, empathy, and congruence - in conversational terms:  I want to talk to you; I am going to understand you; I am going to make sense.  (Or at least I'm going to try very hard, and it's not going to be your fault if I fail.)