Counsellor presence: bridging the gap between wisdom and new knowledge

Presence is the counsellor's way of being with clients as distinguished from the application of technique and it involves a meeting between counsellor and client. Presence fits intuitively in the realm of the therapeutic relationship and master therapists from different therapeutic traditions have described how their presence with clients contributes to the success of counselling, yet the topic is virtually absent from the research literature. We examine the reasons for this disparity, provide a critical examination of the literature on the therapeutic relationship and on presence, and suggest that emerging scientific paradigms offer new strategies for studying such complex, holistic phenomena as presence.