T h e   S t r a t e g i c   F u t u r e   o f   P C A
By Ernest E. Meadows

Person Centered Approach stands at the cusp of its most incredible opportunity.  The tension between "high-tech" and "high touch" is at its highest point in history and getting higher.  People feel the tension.  They feel the alienation and the potential.  We, as practitioners of PCA, are able to make an incredible contribution to our civilization.  This contribution will not be made in therapy or Client-Centered Therapy (CCT)--it will be made in our everyday lives.  It will be made at work, in primary relationships, in seeking peace, and on the Internet.  Let's look at how this is so.

During the fifty thousand or so years of hunting and gathering, there were no assets.  Assets were discouraged.  If Grog brought home an extra mastodon, his peers, affected by the stench, would mention it to him. It wasn't until after three or four centuries of agrarian

culture, that assets became possible.  With these assets came the possibility of someone stealing them and also the notion of protecting those assets--using violence.  There arose specialists in violence who would protect assets, for a fee.  The best specialists became governments, feudal, mostly.  People swore a dependable oath of chivalry to their liege lord.  The entrepreneurs, kings, and lords owned these governments.  It was to their strategic economic advantage to have high taxes and low expenses.  These made for wealth.

Then came the industrial age and the nation-state.  Individual citizens in this time did not have as much power as did the lords negotiating with the king.  During this time citizens swore an oath of citizenship to the nation-state.  This was an age of effectiveness in the use of force, not efficiency.  Wars were met with overwhelming force,

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