Person-centered & Experiential Psychotherapy & Counselling Conference, Auckland/online

Welcome!

E ngā matawaka, e ngā mana, e ngā reo, e rau rangatira mā, tēnā koutou.
E ngā hau e whā, ngā mihi nui ki a koutou me ō koutou whānau hoki.

Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

To our esteemed colleagues, propelled together by the four winds from near and afar, we greet you and your families.

On behalf of the conference organising committee, we extend a warm welcome to PCE2021, the 14th International Conference of the World Association for Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy & Counseling, to be held at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, only the second the time that the WAPCPEC Conference has been held in the Southern hemisphere.

In light of the ongoing uncertainties with regard to international travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have restructured this conference to be a hybrid event allowing international delegates to attend and present remotely. We are grateful that there is now a travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand and hope that we might be welcoming some Australian delegates to attend in person.

The theme of our conference is “Tihei mauri ora: Contact, culture, and context”. The Māori phrase, “Tihei mauri ora” is generally interpreted as “Behold the breath of life” and is a traditional way of beginning a speech or, indeed, a conference, especially one about health – and we see PCE therapies as contributing to the health of the clients, and the person-centred approach (PCA) as contributing more generally to the health of families, communities and, indeed, our world. The whole conference is designed to provide opportunities – experiential, theoretical, social, and virtual – to explore person-centred and experiential psychotherapy and counselling in relation to this overall theme.

Keynote speakers