Unnecessary and incompatible: a critical response to Cooper and McLeod’s conceptualization of a pluralistic framework for person-centered therapy

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to critically examine the axiom of Cooper and McLeod that the person-centered approach should incorporate pluralistic practices based on clients’ goals and wants. First, we examine Cooper and McLeod’s argument that the uniqueness of clients means that therapeutic work should orientate around helping clients to identify what they want and how to achieve it. Second, we examine their position that the theories that the therapist may hold about therapeutic change should be subordinate to the client’s specific wants and needs. Finally, we consider their assertion that there is a need to reconceptualize person-centered theory with a pluralistic framework. The person-centered approach has its own unique ontological position based on a trust in the actualizing tendency of all organisms. If by pluralism Cooper and McLeod are proposing ontological eclecticism, then this is fundamentally incompatible with the person-centered approach. In terms of method, the person-centered approach was already pluralistic; if this is what Cooper and McLeod mean by pluralistic, then what they are proposing is simply old wine in a new bottle.