« Cher Carl, regardez ce colibri ! Ne symbolise-t-il pas l'attitude souple qui caractérise votre Approche ? Ce colibri a la possibilité, non seulement de la marche avant comme les autres oiseaux, mais aussi de la marche arrière. Il s'arrange pour s'approcher des fleurs, juste ce qu'il faut pour reculer s'il est trop près, ré-avancer s'il est trop loin. A chaque instant il peut régler sa présence /distance, à la fine pointe des fleurs (ou des choses) pour ne pas les abîmer mais pour bénéficier du nectar, pour être dans une présence qui ne soit pas pression, ni dans une distance qui serait aussi pression par défaut. »
Interpellation d’André de Peretti avec Carl Rogers, dans son jardin de Californie
The Person-Centred Research and Training Lab was created in order to promote research and training collaborations in the humanistic, person-centred and experiential approach. In a world where human beings should remain at the center of our concerns regarding their personal, social, institutional, organisational and political developments, it is most useful to gather expertises allowing to study the person in her relationships with what is experienced in her life and to develop trainings for future helping professionals that are empirically tested and validated.
In the PCLab, we are looking for understanding why people react in one or another manner when facing adversity. We are also studying how people adjust to these situations. One needs to understand the conditions of efficacy and effectiveness of people’s personal and interpersonal resources, such as social support, emotional sharing, but also of professional interventions such as those of psychologists in dealing with clients facing adverse life events. In other words, we are researching how people who experience such situations can effectively be helped and how helping professionals can be better trained to become more adequate and effective, unconditionally respectful, empathic, authentic and warm helpers.
Six research axes are more specifically investigated: (1) Person-centred therapies and trainings and their facilitative, relational conditions to therapeutic change; (2) Psychology of death, dying and grief ; (3) Adjustment and interventions when facing cancer; (4) Predictors and mediators of burnout among informal caregivers; (5) Effects of emotional expression; (6) Adjustment and interventions when facing traumatic (critical) events.