Persons-in-Relation and Q Methodology

Abstract

We know ourselves through our actions in the world in relation to others.
This philosophy as developed by John Macmurray is the ground on which my
colleague and I are basing our work as educational researchers in the
field of counseling. We are working collaboratively to develop new
approaches to learning and discovering more about the process by which
persons gain self-knowledge as well as knowledge about other persons in
the helping relationship. Our questions focus on what it means to be a
person and persons for each other particularly in the experience of a
guide, counselor or therapist and a client who meet in a helping
relationship. We deeply believe that for real self-knowledge to develop
we must go beyond mere professionality in the helping relation and dare
to meet each other as persons. Q methodology attracts us as a philosophy
and approach which seems to provide a way to discover and uncover some
important aspects of self-knowledge. It is congruent with our philosophy
as in its method the person is in action, operating on or communication
with a series of self-referential statements; thus becoming and agent
in the world.