Snakes & Ladders

Today, reaching into the back of the lawn mower and retrieving a snake minus its head reminded me of John K Wood, a psychologist who deserved more recognition than he received.

John was a professor of psychology at the University of California not long after the days of Tim Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) were making waves at Harvard University.

John worked with Carl Rogers at UCA. Carl was a purist who invested hugely in research to support his theories. The focus of Carl’s work was basically that people would develop in a psychologically positive direction in an environment of empathy and respect.

John was interested more in groups, in what he called the wisdom of the group. The tendency for groups to make decisions wiser than the individuals within them.

John later moved to Brazil and wrote to me about an encounter with a snake in a wood pile on his farm.

Ram Dass (Dr Richard Alpert of Harvard) wote a book with Daniel Goleman of Emotional Intelligence fame. These truths persist and find their evolution and expression over time. Goleman and others are of the view that EQ is about twice as important to organisational and personal success than is IQ.

Psychotherapy lost it’s way in the 1990’s as the theories of Freud, Jung, and their many followers whithered under the spotlight of anthropology and brain science. The various schools of psychotherapy were propped up by the universities for far longer than they should have been because of the business interests involved in running training courses and selling books.

Rogers never received the recognition he deserved. It was hard to sell as special a theory that just about all schools of psychotherapy accepted as a basic prerequisite to working therapeutically.

Rogers simply argued that this basic foundation was all that was needed. What he termed neccessary and sufficient.

This wasn’t well received by the other schools which had potions and spells to market.

What brings this all together is that it is generally accepted in the newly emerging field of Coaching is that EQ (emotional intelligence) and being person centred (Carl Rogers – The Person Centred Approach) are core practice values.

Many NHS mental health services are now also promoting what is termed the Recovery Model and this too is essentially Carl Rogers Person Centred Approach. I am glad the zeitgist seems to be catching up.