Discursive Empathy in a Person-Centered Approach Article Summary
Velez, Carmin
Ottawa University
Dr. Bob Bohanske PH.D
April 21, 2015
Discursive Empathy in a Person-centered Approach Article Summary
Empathy is considered to be an essential principal therapist offered condition. Discursive empathy helps to develop an awareness of the discourses and positions of the therapist and client. The person-centered approach tied into emphasizing empathy will stress the good in human behavior along with consideration of cultural norms, values, beliefs and ideas of the client. This paper will use scholarly journals to explain the understanding of being a humanistic therapist who uses person-centered discursive empathy as a foundation. Give meaning to person-centered approach meaning to understanding and how the two together give incredible powers to see the world as another person sees it. Person-Centered Approach
Carl Rogers created a theory and humanistic theory and person-centered therapy in 1950. , Rogers says our society applies to us with conditions of worth. .Rogers, “has traditionally identified the individual as the central agent of all social phenomena, and has celebrated the self as independent, stable, and knowable, emphasizing and individuals’ capacity for choice, freedom, and self-development” (Sinclair & Monk, 2015, p. 335). Allowing the therapist to focus on the unconscious process of internal conflicts, they can see the here and now, not the past. Person-centered therapy is nondirective, allowing the client to lead the treatment not the therapist. The therapist should use four different basic qualities or learned techniques such as unconditional positive regard, genuineness, congruence, and empathy. Discursive Empathy
Therapists who display empathy can mirror or reflect accurately their client’s experiences and feelings. The therapist is setting aside their judgments, values, morals, and interpretations of events to see through the clients eyes. When one shows empathy, they encourage the client to get in touch with the feelings. When clients are talking, there are these sets of meanings or concepts called discourses. Due to the discourses of cultural ideas, norms, values and beliefs this makes it harder for a person in counseling. They live in a world where this is how things should be, so they take that to the sessions with them. With a new approach to discursive empathy, it re-examines the role of empathy in sessions. “A discursive approach to empathy as [described] involves demonstrating sensitivity to the larger cultural backdrop of our client’s lives” (Sinclair & Monk, 2015, p. 334). This process helps the clients open up to even newer possibilities or self-understand and clarification of their beliefs and worldviews. Counselors should believe that empathy and understanding are present if he or she can connect with his or her humanity, only if empathy is the universal human condition. Discursive empathy invites therapist to develop on a constant basis reviewing the dominant cultural discourses that are helping shape the relationship with the working clients. This kind of empathy helps to not assume or understand their clients’ experiences but rather help them unpack the cultural feelings that each client carries. Though, it is known that many clients do not know or share their discourses because they do not understand them themselves. However “It would be a challenge for a therapist who has spent much of his or her life positioned in discourses that are predominantly racist, classist, or sexist to be empathetic with clients who have been directly targeted by those very discourses” (Sinclair & Monk, 2015, p. 343). Person-Centered Approach and Discursive Empathy Together
When the person-centered approach and discursive empathy are intertwined, it creates a win-win situation. So, the
