On Becoming A Person: A Therapist's View on Psychotherapy, Humanistic Psychology, and the Path to Personal Growth

by Carl R. Rogers

The more I am open to the realities in me and in the other person, the less do I find myself wishing to rush in to “fix things.”

If I can provide a certain type of relationship, the other person will discover within himself the capacity to use that relationship for growth, and change and personal development will occur.

The therapist procedure which they had found most helpful was that the therapist clarified and openly stated feelings which the client had been approaching hazily and hesitantly.

She hypothesized that there would be a significant relationship between the extent of constructive personality change in the client and four counselor variables: (a) the degree of empathic understanding of the client manifested by the counselor; (b) the degree of positive affective attitude (unconditional positive regard) manifested by the counselor toward the client; (c) the extent to which the counselor is genuine, his words matching his own internal feeling; and (d) the extent to which the counselor’s response matches the client’s expression in the intensity of affective expression.