Person centered psychotherapy: an encounter with oneself or a confrontation with the other?

Abstract

The paper discusses the possibilities of host of alterity in the therapeutic process of the Person Centered Approach. The debate is based on the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, for whom subjectivity would be formed from the relationship with the absolute other. The therapeutic change process that aims to further integrate the experience by the self is questioned. On the other hand, from a reading of a Rogerian clinical case, it is pointed out the externality of experience as an estrangement that allows one to recreate themselves. This research shows the interiority eroded by the organism that arises as other-of-self, sieve for the experience. It is conclude that the person-centered psychotherapy, beyond an encounter with oneself, seems to point as one of its purposes the clash with the radically different. Such discussion alludes to a political repositioning of the Person Centered Approach in its ways to deal with the difference.