{"author":"Carl R. Rogers","author_id":"Carl+R.+Rogers","total_quotes":26,"quotes":[{"text":"We live by a perceptual 'map' which is never reality itself.","author":"Carl R. Rogers","tags":["perception","phenomenology","reality"],"id":8285,"author_id":"Carl+R.+Rogers"},{"text":"When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard. I have deeply appreciated the times that I have experienced this sensitive, empathic, concentrated listening.","author":"Carl R. Rogers","tags":["listening"],"id":25332,"author_id":"Carl+R.+Rogers"},{"text":"I am willing for the participant to commit or not commit himself to the group. If a person wishes to remain psychologically on the sidelines, he has my implicit permission to do so. The group itself may or may not be willing for him to remain in this stance but personally I am willing. One skeptical college administrator said that the main things he had learned was that he could withdraw from personal participation, be comfortable about it, and realize that he would not be coerced. To me, this seemed a valuable learning and one that would make it much more possible for him actually to participate at the next opportunity. Recent reports on his behavior, a full year later, suggest that he gained and changed from his seeming nonparticipation.","author":"Carl R. Rogers","tags":["change","group","group-work","participation","psychotherapy","therapy"],"id":28416,"author_id":"Carl+R.+Rogers"},{"text":"The third facilitative aspect of the relationship is empathic understanding. This means that the therapist senses accurately the feelings and personal meanings that the client is experiencing and communicates this understanding to the client. When functioning best, the therapist is so much inside the private world of the other that he or she can clarify not only the meanings of which the client is aware but even those just below the level of awareness. This kind of sensitive, active listening is exceedingly rare in our lives. We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.","author":"Carl R. Rogers","tags":["empathy"],"id":53776,"author_id":"Carl+R.+Rogers"},{"text":"There is no doubt that I am selective in my listening, hence 'directive' if people wish to accuse me of this. I am centered in the group member who is speaking, and am unquestionably much less interested in the details of his quarrel with his wife, or of his difficulties on the job, or his disagreement with what has just been said, than in the meaning these experience have for him now and the feeling they arouse in him. It is to these meanings and feelings that I try to respond.","author":"Carl R. Rogers","tags":["change","group","learning","listening","therapy"],"id":66955,"author_id":"Carl+R.+Rogers"},{"text":"To be with another in this [empathic] way means that for the time being, you lay aside your own views and values in order to enter another's world without prejudice. In some sense it means that you lay aside your self; this can only be done by persons who are secure enough in themselves that they know they will not get lost in what may turn out to be the strange or bizarre world of the other, and that they can comfortably return to their own world when they wish.Perhaps this description makes clear that being empathic is a complex, demanding, and strong - yet subtle and gentle - way of being.","author":"Carl R. Rogers","tags":["empathy"],"id":72926,"author_id":"Carl+R.+Rogers"},{"text":"The intolerant 'true believer' is a menace to any field, yet I suspect each one of us finds traces of that person in ourself.","author":"Carl R. Rogers","tags":["intolerance","self-awareness"],"id":112988,"author_id":"Carl+R.+Rogers"},{"text":"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.","author":"Carl R. Rogers","tags":["counselling","paradox","self-awareness","self-improvement"],"id":155241,"author_id":"Carl+R.+Rogers"},{"text":"I am well aware that certain exercises, tasks setup by the facilitator, can practically force the group to more of a here-and-now communication or more of a feeling level. There are leaders who do these very skillfully, and with good effect at the time. However, I am enough of a scientist-clinician to make many casual follow-up inquiries, and I know that frequently the lasting result of such procedures is not nearly as satisfying as the immediate effect. At it's best it may lead to discipleship (which I happen not to like): 'What a marvelous leader he is to have made me open up when I had no intention of doing it!' It can also lead to a rejection of the whole experience. 'Why did I do those silly things he asked me to?' At worst, it can make the person feel that his private self has been in some way violated, and he will be careful never to expose himself to a group again. From my experience I know that if I attempt to push a group to a deeper level it is not, in the long run, going to work.","author":"Carl R. Rogers","tags":["change","group-work","psychotherapy","therapy"],"id":198039,"author_id":"Carl+R.+Rogers"},{"text":"Whether we are speaking of a flower or an oak tree, of an earthworm or a beautiful bird, of an ape or a person, we will do well, I believe, to recognize that life is an active process, not a passive one. Whether the stimulus arises from within or without, whether the environment is favorable or unfavorable, the behaviors of an organism can be counted on to be in the direction of maintaining, enhancing, and reproducing itself. This is the very nature of the process we call life. This tendency is operative at all times. Indeed, only the presence or absence of this total directional process enables us to tell whether a given organism is alive or dead. The actualizing tendency can, of course, be thwarted or warped, but it cannot be destroyed without destroying the organism. I remember that in my boyhood, the bin in which we stored our winter's supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small window. The conditions were unfavorable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout—pale white sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. But these sad, spindly sprouts would grow 2 or 3 feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. The sprouts were, in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency I have been describing. They would never become plants, never mature, never fulfill their real potential. But under the most adverse circumstances, they were striving to become. Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with men and women on the back wards of state hospitals, I often think of those potato sprouts. So unfavorable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet, the directional tendency in them can be trusted. The clue to understanding their behavior is that they are striving, in the only ways that they perceive as available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. To healthy persons, the results may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life's desperate attempt to become itself. This potent constructive tendency is an underlying basis of the person-centered approach.","author":"Carl R. Rogers","tags":["emotional-intelligence","growth","psychology","psychology-spirituality","trauma","traumatic-experiences"],"id":220390,"author_id":"Carl+R.+Rogers"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":26,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}