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It involves the courage to be.
when the individual is inwardly free, he chooses as the good life this process of becoming.
he has to learn the language of feeling and emotion as if he were an infant learning to speak; often even worse, he finds he must unlearn a false language before learning the true one.
one person cannot teach another.
there can be no direct communication of it, or even about it.
create certain conditions which make this type of learning possible. It cannot be compelled.
And even throughout the use of such rigorous and impersonal methods, the important choices are all made subjectively by the scientist. To which of a number of hypotheses shall I devote time? What kind of control group is most suitable for avoiding self-deception in this particular research? How far shall I carry the statistical analysis? How much credence may I place in the findings? Each of these is necessarily a subjective personal judgment, emphasizing that the splendid structure of science rests basically upon its subjective use by persons.
is only when he too agrees to scientific method as a good means of preventing self-deception, that he will be likely to accept its findings.
if in any way I cut off my perception from the full range of its actual sensitivity—then I am likely to be socially destructive, whether I use as tool the knowledge and instruments of science, or the power and emotional strength of a subjective relationship.
The concept of “cure” is entirely inappropriate, since in most of these disorders we are dealing with learned behavior, not with a disease.
The student in the regular university course, and particularly in the required course, is apt to view the course as an experience in which he expects to remain passive or resentful or both, an experience which he certainly does not often see as relevant to his own problems.
These are requirements set, not by the teacher, but by life. The teacher is there to provide the resources which the student can use to learn so as to be able to meet these tests.
natural place of evaluation in life is as a ticket of entrance, not as a club over the recalcitrant.
we may wish to give a trial to ways of facilitating learning which give more promise of freeing the mind.
Our whole culture—through custom, through the law, through the efforts of labor unions and management, through the attitudes of parents and teachers—is deeply committed to keeping young people away
from any touch with real problems. They are not to work, they should not carry responsibility, they have no business in civic or political problems, they have no place in international concerns, they simply should be guarded from any direct contact with the real problems of individual and group living. They are not expected to help about the home, to earn a living, to contribute to science, to deal with moral issues. This is a deep seated trend which has lasted for more than a generation. Could it possibly be reversed?
a relationship can be lived on the basis of the real feelings, rather than on the basis of a defensive pretense.
This concept of trusting the individual to be himself has come to have a great deal of meaning to me.
our very natural tendency to judge, to evaluate, to approve or disapprove, the statement of the other person, or the other group.
the tendency to make evaluations is common in almost all interchange of language, it is very much heightened in those situations where feelings and emotions are deeply involved.
to see the expressed idea and attitude from the other person’s point of view, to sense how it feels to him, to achieve his frame of reference in regard to the thing he is talking about.
it will be of the greatest help to him in altering those very hatreds and fears, and in establishing realistic and harmonious relationships with the very people and situations toward which he has felt hatred and fear.
after he has first restated the ideas and feelings of the previous speaker accurately, and to that speaker’s satisfaction.”
really achieve the other speaker’s frame of reference—to
The great majority of us could not listen; we would find ourselves compelled to evaluate,
courage,
These defensive distortions drop away with astonishing speed as people find that the only intent is to understand, not judge.
generally passive and culture-bound people cannot cope with the multiplying issues and problems. Unless
revise new ways of relating to these complex changes, the lights will go out.
Galileo and Copernicus made creative discoveries which in their own day were evaluated as blasphemous and wicked,
man’s tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities. By
This tendency may become deeply buried under layer after layer of encrusted psychological defenses;
seems clear that no contemporary mortal can satisfactorily evaluate a creative product at the time that it is formed, and this statement is increasingly true the greater the novelty of the creation.
have been motivated by purposes having more to do with personal interest than with social value,
sorry outcome for many of those creations (various Utopias, Prohibition, etc.) which had as their avowed purpose the achievement of the social good.
because it is satisfying to him, because this behavior is felt to...
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the anxiety of separateness.
without wishing to share his creation.
the way the individual perceives the movement of a dim light in a dark room, we can tell a good deal about the degree to which he is a rigid, prejudiced, ethnocentric person.
when supervisors are sensitive to worker attitudes, and when supervision is not suspicious or authoritarian, production and morale increase.
rejected and isolated for a long time,
acceptant toward the prisoner only when the prisoner “cooperates”
which told them that man could not possibly fly in a contraption which was heavier than air.
By a careful design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behave—the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that case the question of freedom never arises.” (12, p. 218)
a person who is spontaneous, who is responsibly free, that is, aware of this freedom to choose who he will be, and aware also of the consequences of his choice.
To me this is a pseudo-form of the good life which includes everything save that which makes it good.
is a value choice.
we would be locked in a colossal rigidity in which no one would be free to question
this goal, because our scientific operations could not transcend themselves to question their guiding purposes. And
very poor record of evolutionary survival.
