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1. Applications of Carl Rogers’ theory and practice to
couple and family therapy: a response to Harlene
Anderson and David Bott
Maryhelen Snydera
Recent articles by Harlene Anderson and David Bott in the Journal of Family
Therapy (Volume 23) are a gratifying examination of the contribution of
Carl Rogers’ philosophy and practice to family therapy. However, in my
view, an already existing highly effective application of Rogers’ approach
to couple and family therapy was omitted from Bott’s review of the litera-
ture. My reading of the two articles has inspired the following response
given in the spirit of dialogue with the hope of furthering a conversation
on this subject.
Introduction
Harlene Anderson writes in her recent article in this journal
(Anderson, 2001) that she guesses were Carl Rogers alive today that
‘his passion for alternatives to traditional scientific inquiry’ (p. 356)
would have led him in a postmodern, social constructionist direc-
tion. I fully concur with this and feel considerable gratitude for the
thoroughness with which Anderson has studied Carl Rogers’ work.
A similarly thorough examination of Carl Rogers from a postmod-
ern perspective is accomplished in a recent article by Michael
Walker (2001). David Bott (2001) throws light on the applications
of Rogers’ work to family therapy by reviewing much of the relevant
literature and formulating the critical task: ‘to define and outline
the concrete form that a family therapy characterized by Rogers’
core conditions might take’ (p. 375). Unfortunately, his review of
the literature omits several highly relevant references that reveal the
application of a Rogerian approach in couple and family work. This
 2002 The Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice
 The Association for Family Therapy 2002. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley
Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Journal of Family Therapy (2002) 24: 317–325
0163–4445
a Private Practice (individual and family therapy), Albuquerque, NM, Adjunct
Professor, Psychiatry Department, University of New Mexico Medical School,
Director, NM Relationship Enhancement Institute, 422 Camino del Bosque NW,
Albuquerque, NM 87114, USA. E-mail: mel@abq.com

2. article is written in the spirit of forwarding further conversation on
this subject.
The concrete form that a family therapy characterized by Rogers’
core conditions might take
The insight that inspired Bernard Guerney’s development of the
relationship enhancement approach to couple and family therapy
(Guerney, 1977; Snyder and Guerney, 1993) was that Carl Rogers’
three interrelated therapist characteristics (congruence, uncondi-
tional positive regard and empathic understanding) could effec-
tively be placed in the hands of family members who could then
become ‘therapeutic agents’ for each other. This model has guided
by own practice since 1985. Very specifically, the model includes
what Mearnes (1994) describes as ‘conducting individual
[Rogerian] therapy with each of the clients in the presence of the
other’ (pp. 57, 58). It then goes beyond that to systematically assist
the clients in the development of the ability to listen to each other
with unconditional positive regard and accurate empathic under-
standing. The clients are also taught to express their own perspec-
tives with genuineness (congruence), subjectivity (a non-expert,
unknowing stance) and dialogic compassion and curiosity. The
therapist guides the clients in mutually empathic, problem-solving,
problem-dissolving and mutually transforming dialogue until they
are able to engage in this kind of dialogue on their own. The
process is very similar to how I assume Carl Rogers trained people
in the person-centred approach through a combination of philo-
sophical and practical overview, the experience of observing him at
work and experiencing his ways of relating to them, practice and
supervision.
Guerney’s immense contribution to the field of family therapy by
developing a methodology for transmitting Rogers’ core conditions
to family members cannot, in my view, be overestimated. It is not
within the scope of this article to describe Guerney’s methodology
and the postmodern variations on it in detail. Other articles do that
satisfactorily (Snyder, 1989, 1991a, 1992b, 1999, 2000a). I suspect
that Guerney’s formulation of his approach as psychoeducational
and skills-based, his inclusion of contradictory methods from the
behaviorist school, and his absence of understanding and including
the contribution of postmodern therapy to his model has damaged
the receptivity that it deserves. Nevertheless, Bernard Guerney
318 Maryhelen Snyder
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3. himself and the RE model allow for the dialogic movement that is
necessary as theory and practice evolve.
The relevance of ‘skills’
I have been concerned about the negative response frequently
given by postmodern and social constructionist therapists to the
idea of teaching and learning skills as one aspect of psychotherapy.
Whereas research reveals that the therapeutic relationship is far
more significant and basic to effective therapy than any particular
school, approach, model, technique or skill, this does not contra-
dict the widespread experience that therapy and relationship in
general require certain skills, just as the playing of a musical instru-
ment does. The skill alone is not sufficient for the artistry to take
place, but neither can the artistry emerge from insight alone (see
Snyder, 1991b). One can see clearly in watching Harlene Anderson
at work, for example, how much skill she has developed in empathic
understanding and collaborative conversation. In my application of
the two primary skills of the RE model (empathic understanding
and subjective expression), I have found that the philosophical and
‘spiritual’ (to borrow Rogers’ term for the mental state required of
the listener; see Anderson, 2001: 342) underpinnings must be
continually conveyed or the skills cannot be mastered. Conversely,
it is in the mastery of the skills that the actual felt experience of
empathy and collaborative dialogue occurs. The skills of RE are
meant to be rigorously but not rigidly applied. Much of what I have
learned from my study of postmodern and post-structuralist thera-
pies I have now integrated into my own use of empathic listening
and subjective expression. After one has more or less mastered the
philosophical stance of postmodernism, it becomes increasingly
natural to empathize with attention to the separation of problem
and person, the effect of cultural discourse on meaning-making and
the essential tentativeness of our conceptual formulations.
Likewise, subjective expression becomes more cognizant of the
distinction between language and the ‘reality’ it describes, and an
understanding of how language constructs reality is incorporated
more readily into dialogue.
It is important to distinguish relationship skills from communica-
tion skills. Relationship enhancement therapy has shared with
Rogerian therapy the dismissal, misunderstanding and misuse of
empathy that occurs when it is thought of simply as reflective listening.
A response to Anderson and Bott 319
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4. Similarly, when genuine and subjective speaking is thought of
primarily as a communication skill in which ‘I messages’ are used,
what it means to speak in the context of collaborative, co-creative
dialogue is underestimated at best and occluded at worst.
The relevance of postmodern thinking
In his recent article on the ‘Practical applications of the Rogerian
perspective in postmodern psychotherapy’, Michael Walker (2001)
does both postmodern and Rogerian therapy a great service. His
thorough study of transcriptions of Rogers’ therapy sessions has
enabled him to view Rogers’ contributions as perspectives that can
be applied in practice, while avoiding potential conflicts with the
modernistic descriptions of that historical period which are found
in Rogers’ writings and in the person-centred literature. Walker
illustrates how the postmodern and Rogerian perspectives support
each other in ‘powerful and synergistic ways’ (p. 41).
Several of my articles address the interface between the Rogerian
model as it is applied to relationship therapy and the perspectives
found in the philosophy and practices of postmodern thinkers,
especially Anderson and Goolishian (1988), and Michael White
(1986, 1992) (see especially Snyder, 1995). I fell in love (there is no
better way to say this) with postmodern (and the related social
constructionist and post-structuralist) thinking when I became
familiar with the work of its forerunners. George Herbert Mead
(1932, 1934), for example, describes the essentially social nature of
intelligence. Lev Vygotsky (1986) clarified the way in which
language and thought occur from the very beginning of history and
of each human life in a dialogic context. In an article on ‘The devel-
opment of social intelligence in psychotherapy’ (1994), I apply the
work of these philosophers to the relationship enhancement model
and the Rogerian concepts that undergird it. In another article
(Snyder, 1989), I show the way in which the ‘core skills’ of RE inte-
grate the insights of Carl Rogers with those of Gregory Bateson
(1972), especially in regard to double description and to mind (and
self) as immanent in relational existence.
I want to cite two other philosophically oriented therapists who
deserve mention in any discussion of the applications of the
Rogerian perspective to family therapy: Kaethe Weingarten (1992)
who has defined intimacy as the ‘co-creation of meaning’ and writ-
ten extensively about the listening and speaking practices that allow
320 Maryhelen Snyder
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5. for this co-creation, and Mona Fishbane (1998) who has written
about the contributions of Martin Buber’s thinking to ‘a dialogic
approach to couples therapy.’ In addition, although the Stone
Centre theorists initially gathered by Jean Baker Miller (1992) do
not specifically identify themselves as postmodern, their definition
of self as ‘movement-in-relation’ is clearly similar to that of
Anderson and Goolishian (1988), who speak of change as the evolu-
tion of new meaning in dialogue.
In my experience, people are naturally drawn to postmodern
thinking once they understand it. It simply makes experiential sense
to us that we are in an actual condition of not knowing, and that no
one outside ourselves can be an expert on our lived experience. We
also generally experience that, when we are participants in a certain
quality of dialogue which involves a profound level of listening and
a way of speaking that invites us into further speaking and further
listening, we are literally a ‘movement-in-relation’ that is free of
defensiveness and rigidity. This is why I share Anderson’s conviction
that were he alive, Rogers would align himself with this way of look-
ing at human meaning-making.
Buber and Rogers: the radical meaning of empathy
Martin Buber and Carl Rogers (see Rogers, 1965) engaged in a
significant dialogue on the meaning of empathy which I often wish
could have been continued. Buber (1957, 1988) preferred his word
‘inclusion’ to Rogers’ word ‘empathy’. In my view, Buber was
describing how radical and brave the actual act of empathic attune-
ment is. This is particularly evident as one attempts to impart the
practice of empathy to clients in the context of their closest rela-
tionships. By ‘inclusion’ Buber meant that listening requires a ‘bold
swinging’ into the consciousness of another person while at the
same time being grounded in one’s own consciousness. The
‘I–Thou’ nature of a close relationship requires the meeting of an
‘I’ and a ‘Thou’. In delineating what he means by ‘bold swinging’,
Buber writes that the act of inclusion is ‘this way of frightened
pause, of unfrightened reflection, of personal involvement, of rejec-
tion of security, of unreserved stepping into relationship, of the
bursting of psychologism, this way of vision and of risk’ (Buber,
1957: 96).
In my own work with couples and other family dyads, I have
repeatedly noticed how difficult it was for clients to take the radical
A response to Anderson and Bott 321
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6. leap that heart-felt and accurate empathy require (see Snyder,
1992a, 1996a,b, 2000a,b,c). The relationship enhancement
approach, when it is first introduced, invites the clients to speak
‘as’ each other as a way of experiencing that empathy is the capa-
city to ‘be in the shoes of the other’. I discovered that this
approach to empathic listening was extraordinarily powerful one
afternoon when I was working with a particularly challenging
relationship. The woman had spoken at some length about her
feelings and thoughts in regard to a conflict the couple had expe-
rienced during the week. As her husband listened, his face
became red and the tendons in his neck became increasingly visi-
ble. When she had finished speaking he turned to me with a look
that scarcely required his explanation that he was angry.
Thinking it would be impossible for him to empathize from a
position of unconditional positive regard, I asked him whether he
would like me to empathize instead. Much to my amazement, he
said that he thought he could empathize if he spoke ‘as’ his wife.
As he spoke to her as though he were her, he quite literally
appeared to enter her life world in regard to the issue she had
been addressing. His face and neck relaxed, and she kept
nodding in agreement as he clearly understood her perspective
(at moments carrying her meaning as Rogers might have into a
somewhat expanded depth of feeling or meaning). In the RE
model, the listener to the empathy can interrupt at any point that
the empathy is not experienced as accurate; facial expressions
generally also reveal this. When he had finished and she had indi-
cated that the empathy was accurate, he told us both that some-
thing extraordinary had happened to him. He said that he had
never understood her perspective about this issue until this
moment when it suddenly became clear in the act of becoming
her. This was the starting point of my increasing use of what I
have called the ‘becoming’ approach to empathy, an approach I
now always teach to couples and other family members, and use
frequently in individual therapy and supervision, as well as in
couple and family therapy (see Snyder, 1994). In my imagination,
were either Buber or Rogers to watch ‘becoming’ in action, they
would not be concerned with whether the appropriate word is
‘empathy’ or ‘inclusion’, but would note with agreement the
capacity of one human being to be fully present to another, to
open up space for consciousness and for dialogue.
322 Maryhelen Snyder
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7. Mutuality
I tend to think that were Rogers alive today, he would also align
himself with the thinking about the significance of mutuality in effec-
tive therapy. There are ten remarkable pages in Rogers’ Client-centered
Therapy (1951: 160ff.) in which his colleague, Oliver Bown, describes
how he learned over time the critical significance of actively receiving
the love his clients wanted to give him. He examines in depth his felt
resistance to receiving this love, and concludes that it is not concern
with the transference issues he had been cautioned about in graduate
school, but rather a heretofore unexamined assumption he had that
his clients were not capable of truly loving him. When he saw this, he
realized immediately that this reflected an attitude not congruent with
unconditional positive regard. As Anderson points out (2001: 353), a
major contribution of postmodern thinking is its awareness of the
mutuality of human meaning-making and transformation. The Stone
Center has given much attention to ‘mutual empathy’ in therapeutic
process (see Miller, 1992). Michael White (2001) has written exten-
sively on the two-way nature of the therapeutic relationship. Harlene
Anderson writes in the article to which I am responding here of the
usefulness of thinking ‘with’ (p. 348) the client, of engaging in the
dialogue. Michael Walker (2001) relates a session in which Rogers
broke from his own practice of virtually never sharing a feeling or
perspective of his own to tell a suicidal client that his life mattered to
him (p. 54). This simple act of sharing himself with his client caused
the client to cry and to show the first sign of questioning his suicidal
resolve. As I read Michael Walker’s recent article, however, I was
reminded of the extraordinary effectiveness of those sessions in which
I focus almost exclusively on empathy. One client described her expe-
rience of this as two minds joining inside her mind.
Finally . . . what is a Rogerian approach to family therapy?
Anderson (2001) writes at the conclusion of her article that she
does not think applying Rogerian insights and practices to family
therapy is a ‘matter of translating Rogers’ individual approach to
working with families’ (pp. 358, 359). Instead she suggests our focus
be on the ethical matter of reflecting on the beliefs, values and
theories we hold about human beings and human relationships. In
her book about working with the young child from a Rogerian
perspective, Martha Snyder (see Snyder, et al., 1985) writes that
A response to Anderson and Bott 323
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8. there are three assumptions we can make about children: that they
want to be in a relationship, that they want to be fully functioning,
and that they experience the world as exciting to explore. It is these
characteristics of human beings that I both assume and observe
when I take the philosophical stance of unconditional positive
regard, and apply the practices of congruence and empathy. In my
view the latter are practices, and as such they require practise. They
can be modelled, taught, and both rigorously and flexibly applied.
They can be effectively placed in the hands of family members who
are thereby assisted in experiencing each other with the respect and
empathy that they have received and have learned to apply.
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