EDITORIAL NOTE

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With great pleasure, the editorial team presents this special English Issue of the Humanistic Journal. This effort brought together worldwide counseling and therapy thinkers, researchers, and practitioners. The authors are honoring the humanistic philosophy that imprinted their work for the advancement of 21st-century counseling and therapy.  This Issue is divided into three sections.  The philosophy and practice section comprises two articles. The first article discusses Jose Ingenieros’ philosophy and his potential contributions to counseling philosophy contemporary development. The innovative article invites to rethink the Latin-American counseling field from its original roots and the legacy of regional philosophers, thinkers, and pioneers. The second article discusses the evolution of counseling as a field of knowledge and professional practice. It describes seven breakthroughs events that took the field of counseling to its next challenge to be recognized as independent professional practice, interdisciplinary nurtured, and deeply humanistic. In the Counseling and Therapy Practice section, four articles are included. The first article acutely examines Carl Rogers’ core concepts of self, empathy, genuine, congruence, authenticity, and transparency and how those are related to the healthy practice of counseling and therapy from the perspective of the counselor/therapist’s total experience and awareness. Its insightful discussion utilizes some helpful excerpts from counseling-counselee encounters to illustrate critical thoughts about the deep meanings of Roger’s core concepts.  The second article examines eating disorders treatments and its implications for the practice of counseling. Examples of treatment, challenges, and innovative recommendations for counseling training and practitioners working with this population are discussed. The third article deals with relational depth in counseling and psychotherapy. It provides learning insights experienced with clients across years of practice. Some reflective questions are shared, such as, what is it like to relate deeply to another person? do therapists experience relational depth in their work, and to what extent? This inspirational work reflected ongoing investigation on the understanding of the role of relational depth in therapy. The fourth article discourses the positive-symptom schizophrenic psychosis. This reflective work is encouraged by the situation experienced by the main character in the book Vincere Barbablù (“Defeating Bluebeard”). From the perspective of unitary psychosis,  several aspects of psychosis are described, and a theoretical interpretation of a schizophrenic psychosis case is offered. Several innovative therapy recommendations for the population suffering from this mental illness are offered. The third section, Counseling Policy and Leadership, contains two articles. The first article explains the origins and goals of the International Society for Policy Research and Evaluation in School-Based Counseling (ISPRESC). Views about the existing research gaps and challenges in the school counseling field that are hindering this counseling specialty development are described while explaining the potential contribution to the healthy psychological, emotional, and relational development of children around the world. The Second article elucidates the needs of more international cooperation in school-based research through comparative analysis by which the outcomes have the potential to unite other educators, grow counselors’ interest base, and potentially increase the resources available for counseling within our education systems.

 

Dr. George Davy Vera

Guest Editor