Reflexivity and Personcentered Counseling

This article is organized around the claim that reflexivity, defined asself-awareness and agency within that self-awareness, isfundamental to being a self. Carl Rogers’s concept of the person is examined inthe light of this claim. It is argued that his notion of the person hasmore to do with ethics than ontology and that his lack of distinctionbetween self and self-concept obscures agency, his tacit recognitionof it in his practice of counseling notwithstanding. HarryFrankfurt’s and Charles Taylor’s writings are drawn on to support this. Itis suggested that the humanistic prizing of the dignity of the client,making up the ethic of person-centered counseling, is both protectedand enhanced once the approach is revised in the light of reflexivity.Implications of this revision for the durability of person-centeredcounseling in a climate of increasing endorsement of manualized,technical approaches to counseling and psychotherapy arediscussed.