Behind the Mirror: Reflective Listening and its Tain in the Work of Carl Rogers

Abstract

Although Rogerian reflective listening is considered a fundamental therapeutic practice, it is widely misunderstood. This article endeavors to dispel myths about Rogers’ reflective approach through detailed readings of his work, while also opening up a central problematic in Rogers’ thinking. Rogers struggled repeatedly with the dilemma of how the therapist can faithfully reflect the client's experience while avoiding insincerity. The metaphor of a mirror and its tain, or back surface, is used to guide a close analysis of how Rogers grappled with the tension between the therapist's reflective listening process and his or her inner experience while reflecting. It is shown that each of Rogers’ revisions of his conceptualization of reflective listening constitutes a dialectical shift that opens a different approach to the problem of the tain, eventually concluding in an interactional formulation of reflection as the provision of tentative therapist understandings designed to be amended in response to client feedback.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Zachary Daniel Arnold, Erica Schiller Freeman, and Banu İbaoğlu Vaughn for their very helpful feedback on aspects of this article.

Notes

¹Some readers may be familiar with the conceptual use of the theme of the tain from Gasche's 1986 book, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection. However, my approach and Gasche's have little in common, with the exception of a shared Hegelian influence.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kyle Arnold

Kyle Arnold, PhD, is a psychologist at Kings County Hospital, and Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, both in Brooklyn, NY. He received his doctorate in clinical psychology from Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus, and his master's degree in psychology from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. He is also a graduate of The Focusing Institute's training program in Focusing-Oriented Therapy. His previous publications include articles on Theodor Reik, the unconscious, psychotherapeutic communication, and psychobiography. He is presently working on a book entitled The Electric Double: The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick, to be published in Oxford University Press's Inner Lives Series.