Book Review: The Client-Centred Therapist in Psychiatric Contexts


Leslie A. McCulloch


In my experience supervising graduate students in internships, I have observed that students who are humanistically-oriented, particularly those who are Person-Centered, struggle to integrate their theoretical approach into their internship work. They struggle with the predominance of the medical model in the field, the prevalence of cognitivebehavioral approaches in the research literature, and the dominance of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder-IV Text Revision. They struggle with the idea that for each disorder there is a prescribed approach that is most effective. They struggle with how to interface with professionals with other orientations and within a system that seems biased away from their approach. They struggle with being taken seriously. And as the students struggle, so do professors, supervisors, fellow interns, staff, and other mental health colleagues...