The Discovery of Being

by Rollo May

If one goes out too far, one will lose one’s identity. But if he is so afraid of losing his own conflicted center—which at least has made possible some partial integration and meaning in his experience—that he refuses to go out at all but holds back in rigidity and lives in narrowed and shrunken world space, his growth and development are blocked.

Encounter in human beings is always to a greater or lesser extent anxiety-creating as well as joy-creating. I think these effects arise out of the fact that genuine encounter with another person always shakes our self-world relationship: our comfortable temporary security of the moment before is thrown into question, we are opened, made tentative for an instant—shall we risk ourselves, take the chance to be enriched by this new relationship (and even if it is a friend or loved one of long standing, this particular moment of relationship is still new) or shall we brace ourselves, throw up a stockade, block out the other person and miss the nuances of his perceptions, feelings, intentions? Encounter is always a potentially creative experience; it normally should ensue in the expanding of consciousness, the enrichment of the self.

C. C. Jung has pointed out rightly that in effective therapy a change occurs in both the therapist and the patient; unless the therapist is open to change the patient will not be either.