The Courage to Be, to Become – and to Belong: A Person-Centered Understanding

Abstract

This article offers a person-centered understanding of courage, based on the classical, organismic-relational perspective in person-centered psychology. Drawing on literature (Shakespeare) and philosophy (especially Aristotle and Tillich), it discusses both the courage to be (and become)–and to belong. It considers courage as a virtue which in its deficiency is fear but in its excess is over-confidence, and elaborates four ways of understanding and working with this therapeutically: in terms of being (in terms of regard and self-regard), process (from fixity to fluidity), encounter (with self and others), and communities (influence and impact). At a meta-perspective, the article also offers a commentary on the issue of belonging in a world of psychology and/or psychotherapy that tends to discount person-centered psychology.