This article sketches, by way of Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995), a general ethical framework for a client-centered psychotherapy, without, however, entering into the specific problems of this therapy. The central attention paid by Levinas to the I-other or face-to-face relationship forms the starting point. Client-centered psychotherapy, just like every form of therapy and counselling, for that matter, likewise takes place as a relationship between the therapist as an I and the client as an other (without being reduced to those roles). This relationship manifests itself essentially as an ethical relationship insofar as the encounter with the client implies an appeal to the therapist for responsibility. The asymmetry of this responsibility, however, is balanced insofar as the therapy implies a responsibility for the responsibility of the other at the same time. Client-centered psychotherapy, in other words, only becomes fully ethical when it not only helps the client to assume once again, or to assume in a better way, responsibility for oneself and thus to function more fully as a person (subject-directed responsibility), but also to assume responsibility for others in a real way (object-directed responsibility).
The tPeP (Journal Person-centered experiential Psychotherapy) is the scientific journal for Dutch and Flemish psychotherapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, that work from, or are interested in a client-centered perspective.
