On Becoming a Person

Product Information

So as to help a patient (or a lover or a child or a friend), it is the job of a psychotherapist (or a partner or a parent or a colleague) to create a safe environment.

Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person (1961) - Panarchy Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person (1961) - Panarchy

It’s still hard for me to understand why accepting yourself as you are is about the last thing many of us can do. Finding your voice and using it without fear – you’ve gotten right to the heart of it there.Didn’t I tell you Rogers had the capability to be beautiful? I love that this “birthing process” is such a wonderful way of describing what happens when a person starts to change as a result of the therapeutic process. I also find it sweet that Rogers still remains in ‘awe’ of this. I have learned to become more adequate in listening to myself; so that I know…what I am feeling at any given moment – to be able to realize I am angry, or that I do feel rejecting toward this person; or that I feel very full of warmth and affection for this individual; … or that I am anxious and fearful in my relationship to this person. … One way of putting this is that I feel I have become more adequate in letting myself be what I am. I believe that I have learned this from my clients as well as within my own experience – that we cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed. Carl Rogers took these features of a good relationship and applied them to his work as a psychologist and counselor. The result was a revolutionary way of dealing with a person's issues that overturned the traditional psychologist-patient model, and which had broader implications for successful human interaction. A person learns significantly only those things that are perceived as being involved in the maintenance of or enhancement of the structure of self” (Rogers, 1951). Therefore, relevancy to the student is essential for learning. The students' experiences become the core of the course.

On Becoming a Person by Carl Rogers, Frances Fuchs - Waterstones

Creativity – it follows that they will feel more free to be creative. They will also be more creative in the way they adapt to their own circumstances without feeling a need to conform.Emotion accompanies and in general facilitates such goal-directed behaviour, the kind of emotion being related to the seeking versus the consummatory aspects of the behaviour, and the intensity of the emotion being related to the perceived significance of the behaviour for the maintenance and enhancement of the organism. Feelings are associated with, and help us to get, satisfaction and fulfilment. Generally speaking, pleasant feelings arise when we are satisfied, unpleasant feelings when we are not satisfied. The more important the situation, the stronger the feelings. Depression can be a life of moments, days, years, of a present that is tense, changing, recurring, empty, full, ugly and beautiful. This ebook is now available in most common ebook formats at major retailers. When the individual perceives and accepts into one consistent and integrated system all his sensory and visceral experiences, then he is necessarily more understanding of others and is more accepting of others as separate individuals. When we see ourselves more clearly and accept ourselves more for what we are than as how others would like us to be, we can understand that others are equal to us, sharing basic human qualities, yet distinct as individuals.

On becoming a person. - APA PsycNet

If that sounds like something every psychotherapist ever has said to you at least a couple of times, consider it Rogers’ fault. I get defeated sometimes, I get hurt sometimes, but I’m learning that these experiences are not fatal.” The values attached to experiences, and the values which are part of the self structure, in some instances are values experienced directly by the organism, and in some instances are values introjected or taken over from others, but perceived in a distorted fashion, as if they had been experienced directly. As we go about our everyday life, we build up a picture of ourselves, called the self-concept, from relating to and being with others and by interacting with the world around us. Sometimes we believe other people’s version of reality and we absorb them into our self-concept as though they were our own. If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding. And we all fear change. So as I say, it is not an easy thing to permit oneself to understand an individual, to enter thoroughly and completely and empathically into his frame of reference. It is also a rare thing.Certain ideas that Rogers championed,” writes Kramer, “have become so widely accepted that it is difficult to recall how fresh, even revolutionary, they were in their time.” Rogers’ Influences: Humanist Psychology Is Existentialist Psychology This doesn’t mean that he didn’t consider psychotherapists to be people; on the contrary, in fact. And that is one of the main ideas of this book. Rogers’ prose is often so dry that reading it is a pure chore, but that’s not the most frustrating part about it. This means, among other things, not acting, listening attentively, refrain from judging, being as honest as possible; or, in a sentence, it means being yourself and letting the others be themselves as well.

On becoming a person by Rogers, Carl R. | Open Library

In other words, we are “condemned to be free” (we can be whatever we want to), but we cage ourselves to exist according to certain principles (usually thrown at us by others), and we cage others by thinking that we know how they should live their lives. To cease evaluating another is not to cease having reactions. It may, as a matter of fact, free one to react. ‘I don’t like your idea’ (or painting, or invention, or writing), is not an evaluation but a reaction. It is subtly but sharply different from a judgement which says, ‘what you are doing is bad (or good), and this quality is assigned to you from some external source.’ The first statement permits the individual to maintain his own locus of evaluation. It holds the possibility that I am unable to appreciate something which is actually very good. The second statement, whether it praises or condemns, tends to put the person at the mercy of outside forces. He is being told that he cannot simply ask himself whether this product is a valid expression of himself. he must be concerned with what others think. He is being led away from creativity.”I have come to feel that the more fully the individual is understood and accepted, the more he tends to drop the false fronts with which he has been meeting life, and the more he tends to move in a direction which is forward.” Psychological adjustment exists when the concept of the self is such that all the sensory and visceral experiences of the organism are, or may be, assimilated on a symbolic level into a consistent relationship with the concept of the self. We feel relaxed and in control when the things we do and the experiences we have all fit in with the picture we have of ourselves. Rogers quotes two authors – Abraham Maslow and Ashley Montagu – as the “solitary voices” of protest against the widely accepted notion that “man is irrational, unsocialized, destructive of others and self.”