Client‐centred therapy for severe childhood abuse: A case study

Abstract

Aims: This case study demonstrates the experience of client change in non-directive client-centred therapy for a client ('Mac') who had experienced severe and repeated childhood abuse within an institutional care setting and shows how complex posttraumatic stress involving difficulties in identity, problems forming and maintaining non-abusive interpersonal relationships were encountered within the therapy. Method: The data were taken from the detailed notes of 160 sessions of client-centred therapy. Following detailed reading and re-reading a phenomenological analysis of the data produced four emergent themes. Results: The four themes were labelled: post-traumatic distress, acceptance and understanding, new meaning-accurate symbolisation and growth and relationship. Conclusion: The findings suggest that following severe trauma the experience of being in a client-centred therapeutic relationship was related to a reduction in post-traumatic distress. In turn, new meaning was created through accurate symbolisation of previously denied and/or distorted traumatic experience. Additionally, the client displayed growth in the development of a small number of non-abusive relationships that improved his quality of life. It is proposed that client-centred therapy can help client adjustment to the consequences of severe and traumatic childhood abuse.

Learning to Heal from Those Who Know! The “Lived” Experience of a Peer Support Program for Adult Survivors of Childhood Trauma

“…Accordingly, Wilson, Becker, & Tinker (1995) observe that posttraumatic stresstargeted treatments tend to have little effect on overall psychological functioning for adult survivors of childhood trauma as the complex presentation of survivors requires comprehensive treatment approaches across a range of psychosocial functioning. As survivors experience a complex presentation of disturbances (Clemans, 2004;Paivio & Nieuwenhuis, 2001) including changes to consciousness, emotional control, self-perception, perception of others, and systems of meaning (Freyd, 1996), cognitive or behavioural treatment approaches are limited (Murphy, 2009). Currently, a void exists both in the literature and therefore in practice concerning treatment options for adult survivors of childhood trauma.…”

Identifying and developing therapeutic principles for trauma‐focused work in person‐centred and emotion‐focused therapies

“…There is a small but growing body of evidence in support of trauma‐focused work within person‐centred therapy. Some of this evidence is based on qualitative case studies (Murphy, ; Tickle & Murphy, ) showing the benefits of person‐centred therapy with clients traumatised through childhood abuse and domestic abuse. Added to this, research in the field of Focusing‐Oriented Therapy (Coffeng, ; Rappaport, ; Santen, ) showed how a person‐centred and experiential approach worked with traumatised young people.…”

Researcher–client and participant–therapist reflecting relationally on a research conversation

“…Therapist researchers have researched the therapy experiences of clients who are also survivors of CSA (e.g. Dale, Allen & Measor, 1998;Etherington, 2000Etherington, , 2001bHirakata, 2009;Murphy, 2009;Wosket, 1999). These writers, and many others, have provided a background for our shared understanding of the project of writing reflectively about our research conversation.…”