Dinner Party

Sometimes I wish that I could have a handy app that can translate humanistic therapeutic principles. I can get really frustrated when trying to explain how the magic and mystery of therapy is grounded in theory and empirical evidence. I think that is why I am drawn to reading authors who explain humanistic psychology in their own way.

I’ve been asked who I’d invite to dinner if I could invite anyone in the world. The guests could be anyone who’s ever lived – they might not even be alive now. Anyone. It’s a tough thought experiment. When I imagine myself sitting at the table with The Beatles, or members of my family, died long ago, who I love so much, it just feels as though it’s too overwhelming to be enjoyable. I wondered if I’d be able to cope meeting Carl Rogers face-to-face – I’m not sure I could handle the awe.

But last week, while listening to Brené Brown’s latest book Strong Ground (2025) and thinking about how much I’d like to be her friend, it seemed to me that it might be wonderful to invite her to dinner, with Susan Cain and Elizabeth Gilbert. I’d like to hear what they talk about.

These three women’s writings meander through well-worn paths in my mind. They write about theories, research findings and spiritual pathways that resonate with my thinking and relate learning to their own lives in a way that I relate my own life-learnings to mine.

Brown’s book is about leadership – not my field at all. However, it is about how to lead people relationally. Within her words I saw so much of person-centred theory and practice. She’s taken the foundational principles of therapy and moved them out of the therapy room into the corporate and organisational world. She also relates them to her own family life and talks about how she uses these skills to manage herself in relationships.

Brown’s book is dripping with a humanistic approach to leadership and self-governance. I’m thinking of Rogers’ term “quiet revolutionary”. For those who are new to my blog – I write a lot about Rogers - an American psychologist and a leading figure in the humanistic movement, best known for developing the kind of therapy I practice. The Person-Centred approach to therapy is founded on the belief in the client’s innate capacity for growth and self-actualisation.

Rogers hoped that with the quietness of internal personal change, as opposed to the bluster of external and imposed change, that this could lead to greater peace and understanding globally. He was one of the first to lead many along the beginnings of the path of humanistic psychology, and no wonder he was excited about the societal changes that this could lead to.

“I believe we are witnessing a quiet revolution in the way we view the human being, a revolution that could transform our society in the most profound ways.”
(Carl Rogers, “A Way of Being,” 1980)

Imagine transitioning from a society led by people being more open to their authentic self, less led by fear and defence and more by the truth of genuineness. Imagine shifting from needing to compete with another to learning to deeply listen to others. Moving away from having power ‘over’ to collaborating, empowering each other. Creating conditions that promote growth, trusting and believing in the constructive nature of humans.

Rogers’ language can be quite academic, idiosyncratically concise and precise whilst also being somewhat inaccessible for those who haven’t had a training in all the terms. I’ve learnt to appreciate its poetry and elegance; however, I know it is also a barrier to understanding. The language Brown uses is not mystical nor confusing, and she clearly explains, drawing from research, just how effective and strong ‘soft skills’ can be out there in the world.

I wondered if Brown’s writing was easier to understand for readers, especially readers who are motivated to make fundamental changes to how they work in this time of rapid change and anxiety.

She uses pithy terms – here are some I jotted down… spot the humanistic psychology in this…

· Relational Leaders vs. Transactional Leaders

· Transactional leaders can demand lots of action with no real impact

· Co-active Power

· Creativity involves ‘error embracing’

· Action Bias (an urge to ‘fix’ rather than be creative with uncertainty)

· Get it right rather than be right

· Discipline is not about compliance, but about commitment

· Above the line thinking – below the line thinking (the line is fear – if you respond from above the line you are feeling fear yet still incorporate it into your responses and thinking with integrity and wisdom. If you respond from below the line, you are thinking and acting from fear – being led by it.

She wove examples of daily living to back up her research findings, making the approach to leadership and living convincing. In Chris Hoff’s recent Substack newsletter he says:

She recognized that vulnerability, empathy, and courage, the so-called “soft skills” of therapy, have become strategic assets in an economy built on fragmentation, acceleration and burnout. What she’s really done is export therapeutic wisdom into the public sphere, where it can reach millions who might never set foot in a therapist’s office.

In some ways, she’s done what many of us secretly want to do: she’s left the therapy room behind to build a much larger one.

Why Therapists Should Pay Attention to the Brené Brown Rebrand

If notable global change is to happen, might it happen with business models? As if the corporate world meets Rogers’ 6th condition of being “incongruent” (anxious or vulnerable) - a corporate client that needs therapy?

Unlike large groups, no one sees what happens in a therapy room other than the therapist and the client. I believe that this keeps the process of change within the therapy room to be mystifying to most.

Recently this comedy sketch came to my attention. Trigger warning – it is really bad therapy! The sketch is called “Bad Therapist”

I appreciate that it is designed to be funny and know that my response was personal to me – but I did not find it funny. I found it almost unbearable. Perhaps it is because the integrity of what happens in the therapeutic relationship is so precious to me. I feel like the princess in The Princess and the Pea – the therapist’s responses were so near … yet so far from offering empathy, congruence and real valuing of the client. The clip leaves me metaphorically black and blue.

There is a Freudian rule that says ‘there are no such things as jokes in therapy’ – the idea being that within each joke is a kernel of truth – and that is what makes it funny – we are addressing truths that are uncomfortable in a way that gets through our defences, and it is like a delicious relief. I guess what bruises me here is knowing the kernels of truth are:-

1. People expect the therapist to have the answers

2. People don’t understand how therapy works

3. There are some ‘bad therapists’ out there

4. It’s hard to explain what happens in good therapy

I’ve heard that the definition of magic is anything that you don’t understand – the logic of Arthur C. Clarke says, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Good therapy can feel like magic to me. It’s hard to explain what happens in therapy – how a client can feel better without being ‘fixed’ by a therapist.

I also think that this sketch exposed how terrible therapy would look if the magic was drained from the process.

What is the magic? By definition there is no explaining…

I am left thinking of heart-felt listening, a kind of listening that is connection; the antidote to shame and fear, that enables the other to fully experience themselves. This asks of the counsellor not to ‘know best’ what is right for the client. This asks of the counsellor to be an expert in relating, not in living the client’s life.

The sketch asks for a therapist to know what is right for the client, and present solutions. This is like the client being thirsty and the therapist drinking a glass of water (I got this great metaphor from my dear peer supervisor – thank you for that!)

Brown’s metaphors work too – the whole premise is based on ‘strong ground’ – being grounded – in wisdom, courage, authenticity and creativity. She uses sports metaphors that imagine a client learning to have the metaphorical ‘core strength’ to improve their ‘game’ in life, to be able to use their connection to the ground to fully enable their personal power – to be great at the ‘Tush Push’.

Brown dwells in concepts that have felt magical to me – hard to understand but also beautiful and exciting. She draws on Keats’ concept of “Negative Capability”. This is the ability to remain comfortable with uncertainty, doubt, and ambiguity without seeking quick resolution or definite answers.

Keats’ describes what makes a great poet in a letter “...when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason...” (1817).

I believe that is what Lyra does when she empties her mind to read the alethiometer. The alethiometer, in Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series, is a truth-telling instrument. The only way Lyra can read it is to empty her mind and let her intuition and imagination receive the truth. If she tries to do this through systemic, dogmatic and rational control it doesn’t work.

When Brown talks of Grounded Confidence, I see that if someone has Negative Capability they are less likely to be destabilised from their secure base when encountering ambiguity and the unknown within the change process. If one can stay with ambiguity, and paradox, one can reflect deeper.

Paradox is something that Brown shows as a tenacious constant in living. And if we cannot learn from what paradoxes teach us, and reach for certainty, we only find half the truth. One needs to stand on strong ground to tolerate two opposites both being true at the same time. Examples of paradox that I encounter as a constant in my therapy room, and Brown explores within the book, are: -

· We wish for freedom, and yet need commitment

· We need to be vulnerable, and we need boundaries

· We need to belong, and we need to be individual

· We need to rest, and we need to produce

A Strong Ground enables us to hear what these paradoxes have to teach us so that we might learn to

· Find freedom through commitment, as committing to what matters most allows us to find ease.

· Be open and vulnerable only when safe boundaries can contain us within self-respect and trust in others

· Find true belonging by being who we authentically are, rather than moulding ourselves to try to belong where we don’t

· Incorporate rest and self-care into all our productivity to enhance what we offer the world

The two opposites define each other and if contradictions can be tolerated, this stops us collapsing into one extreme.

I think good therapy can result in a client being able to have this ‘Strong Ground’. How the client gets there is through relating deeply with another, and therefore themselves. This is so hard to explain to someone who expects the therapist to have the answers. So much of life seems to me to be about magic and mystery – which I can relish – until I hit the frustration of having to justify what I do in that therapy room. Brown’s book gave me hope that her language and explanation of what constitutes real change in the corporate world might start de-mystifying this change process, whilst paradoxically celebrating the magic of being with the unknown.

Thinking about that dinner party again - Perhaps what I really want at dinner is the shared presence that is cultivated in good therapy - the groundedness, curiosity and courage.

I would be very curious to know your response to the comedy sketch. Do comment below…