Personal growth facilitation

The distinction between personal growth and therapy is blurred in normal usage. Both therapists and growth centres claim to achieve greater effectiveness, heightened awareness, increased self-understanding, and better ways of relating to others. The medical approach is however characterized by a rational-intellectual approach and the view that the individual's problems are in some way pathological. The growth-oriented approach is characterized by an emotional-intuitive approach and a concern for the individual as a fellow human being. Both approaches may be adopted by therapists however, so that growth may take place in therapy sessions.

A more useful distinction is to view the growth facilitation process as one into which the facilitator enters without a preconceived image of human nature in terms of which he wishes to shape the growing individual. The growth facilitator aims to create a phenomenological space for the person within which he can engage in an exploration of ever-deeper levels within himself. In the medical approach, the therapist perceives his task as one of getting the individual to conform to a predetermined image of the ideal human. Genuine growth is not just change, or change for the better; it is a kind of change which involves the emergence and integration of material from the person's inner depths.