What is it about?
Ong, Murphy and Joseph argued that Cooper and McLeod’s exposition of pluralistic practice embraces specific ontological ‘positions’ for different schools of psychotherapy which equates to an ‘ontological eclecticism’ that is antithetical to person-centered and experiential psychotherapies. I argued that the ontology underlying all schools of psychotherapy is universal and invariant; and that it is intertwined with the ontic (contingent and changeable) mode of psychotherapy. Regarding the latter, I suggest ways in which therapists may respond to, and co-experience, the client’s personal experience of his or her particular racial/ethnic cultural milieu. I will conclude by discussing the ontologically relational stance that is inherent in both person-centered and pluralistic practice.
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Why is it important?
I refer to the ontological dimension of psychotherapy based on several existential perspectives (Craig, 2015a, 2015b; Hersch, 2015; Schneider, 2014; Tratter, 2015) and the process philosophy of Whitehead (1978) that is consistent with Rogers’ (1961) process conception of person-centered psychotherapy and Gendlin’s process model (cf., Neville, 2007, 2012). I will argue that it is intertwined with the ontic dimension of psychotherapy, that is, the contingent and changeable nature of the therapeutic relationship. By way of illustration, I will refer to the ways that therapists may respond to, and co-experience, the client’s personal experience of his or her racial/ethnic cultural milieu. In the final section of this article, an ‘ontological relational stance’ (Hersch, 2015, p.119) that is compatible with both person-centered and pluralistic practice will be discussed in relation to the philosophical perspectives of, for example, Levinas, Buber and Merleau-Ponty.
Perspectives
I argued that the ontology underlying all psychotherapies is universal and invariant, and encompasses process and relationship. Both therapist and client engage in a process of organismic re-organization, of self-development, and of a co-created process of relationship development. They participate in each other’s ongoing process of becoming. There is no boundary between self and other and in their being-in-the-world. Their relationship is characterized by intersubjectivity and their interconnection within a broader social context. The ontological is intertwined with the ontic (the contingent and changeable) mode of the therapeutic relationship. The quality of this relationship may depend on a range of therapist and client factors; for example, the extent to which the therapist empathically understands, and co-experiences, the client’s personal experience of his or her racial/ethnic cultural milieu. Such practice entails a necessarily more ambiguous and holistic understanding of lived experience than the objectivist, diagnostically oriented and manualized components of several contemporary psychotherapies.
Dr Ross Crisp
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This page is a summary of: Ontology, culture, person-centered and pluralistic practice: reply to Ong, Murphy and Joseph, Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, July 2022, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/14779757.2022.2100814.
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