University of Strathclyde, Glasgow Meeting at Relational Depth Elke Lambers, John McLeod, Charles O'Leary, Peter F Schmid, Brian Thorne

18th May 2006.
A one day conference to honour the work of Professor Dave Mearns

Conference on relational depth to honour the work of Professor Dave Mearns
& Mary Kilborn Lecture*

Charles O’Leary, In dialogue with Carl Rogers: Past and present
Brian Thorne, The bishops and the poacher: Spiritual and existential challenges of intimacy
John McLeod, Relational depth from the point of view of the client
Peter F Schmid, The challenge of the Other: Towards dialogic psychotherapy and counselling
Elke Lambers, Relational depth and supervision

*Dave Mearns, The Humanity of the Counsellor

Jordanhill Campus, Faculty of Education, University of Strathclyde,
Glasgow, Scotland

The DVD of the event

Peter F Schmid
The challenge of the Other: Towards dialogic psychotherapy and counselling

In therapy and counselling we are confronted with two contradictory phenomena at one and the same time: an essential togetherness and an essential separateness, the fundamental We and the fundamental Not-I. We experience heartening comprehension, sympathy and interrelatedness and we experience an unbridgeable lack of understanding and existential disconnectedness.

It is diversity, the resistance of the Not-I, which is the challenge and the chance in any person-to-person relationship, all the more so in person-centred relationships. Dialogue out of encounter and out of meeting at relational depth is the only way to mutually meet the provocation of the otherness of the Other. For the person-centred practitioner this means to face the question: what does it mean to be called to respond to the existential disclosure of a person in the very moment of meeting?

Publication (revised version) in Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies 4 (2006)