Theme

“Facilitating Hope – Personal and Societal Challenges”

The power of the person-centered and experiential approaches becomes evident at the brim of hope and despair. An attitude toward our clients, which is characterized by fundamental confidence in actualizing processes, could be equally described as a hopeful source to enable changes and growth. Emancipatory aspects of this approach find expression in the trust in personal growth and development towards social orientation as well as in self-related dimensions.

By offering a person-centered relationship to our clients we provide an atmosphere – could this be named as an atmosphere of hope?

Witnessing present social protests, changes, upheavals and results of value shifts all over the world - does "facilitating hope" increasingly become a personal and societal challenge?

Clients express their states of hope in very different ways. Clients hope to find support in the person of a psychotherapist or counsellor – how can hidden tendencies of forcing pathological dependency and codependency instead of "facilitating hope" be avoided and emancipatory processes be supported?

After a comprehensive process of discussing the theme of "facilitating hope" and finding a Conference structure within a working group, we have developed various topics or dimensions concerning the conference theme.

Structure

In 2015 we started a regular working group meeting and since then we have concerned ourselves with questions regarding the content development of the Conference. It has been and still is important for us to have the keynotes look at the conference theme of „facilitating hope“ from various angles as well as from differentiated viewpoints of the various trends and “tribes” within the person-centered and experiential approaches.

Beside four keynote lectures there will be six semi-plenaries. This means that there will only be two lectures at the same time with the Scientific Committee seeing to it that as many orientations of the PCE world will come up.

A daily, moderated reflection group will offer the opportunity to exchange with keynote speakers. On the last day of the conference the keynote speakers together with the moderators of the reflection group are invited to a final discussion.

The Pre-Conference provides the opportunity to give a wider public an understanding of the person-centered and experiential approaches. An encounter group will allow participants to focus on their own hopes and to facilitate hope in encountering others. Hot Topic Sessions of well-known scientists will facilitate the individual connection to the conference theme, being so relevant in today’s society.

A centerpiece of the World Conference is the encounter group on every day of the conference, facilitated by experienced psychotherapists and counsellors from all over the world. Following the person-centered approach, apart from the scientific frame of the conference, we will create a continuous opportunity to get into direct exchange and encounter with persons from all parts of the globe and from the various sub-orientations of the PCE community.