On Being There

Rogers’ account of ‘One more characteristic’, from which this is abridged, stirs me greatly. The image here of man’s potential runs close to my deepest values. I find it beautiful in its simplicity. I also know that sculpting one’s growth to develop this capacity requires committed willingness and courage to draw upon one’s full humanness, over a lifetime. I think what Rogers meant by Presence lies along the same continuum as what I am going to call Being There. My is that Presence is an ascendant of Being There (or more correctly of Being There-ness). By this I mean that for the therapist Presence is a developmental refinement of the ability to Be There. However, I shall attempt to define what I mean by Being There. Being There is an elusive something I have glimpsed and I want to use this paper to try to pin it down, and to explore how this way of being — which for me has deep personal significance — fits with the Person-Centred approach.