I prize the privilege of being alone.
I believe I know why it is satisfying to me to hear someone. When I can really hear someone, it puts me in touch with him; it enriches my life. It is through hearing people that I have learned all that I know about individuals, about personality, about interpersonal relationships.
The basic idea behind teaching is to teach people what they need to know.
When a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, “Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it’s like to be me”.
Experience is the highest authority.
Am I living in a way which is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?
Most of us consist of two separated parts, trying desperately to bring themselves together into an integrated soma, where the distinctions between mind and body, feelings and intellect, would be obliterated.
The state of empathy, or being empathic, is to perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person.
Don’t be a damned ammunition wagon. Be a rifle!
Although the client-centered approach had its origin purely within the limits of the psychological clinic, it is proving to have implications, often of a startling nature, for very diverse fields of effort.
Allowance of the freedom of choices in direction, either for the group or individuals particularly in the near future.
Openness to all attitudes no matter how extreme or unrealistic they may seem.
I was forced to stretch my thinking, to realize that sincere and honest people could believe in very divergent religious doctrines.
Don’t be the ammunition wagon, be the rifle knowledge exists primarily for use.
We can choose to use our growing knowledge to enslave people in ways never dreamed of before, depersonalizing them, controlling them by means so carefully selected that they will perhaps never be aware of their loss of personhood.
It is the client who knows what hurts, what directions to go, what problems are crucial, what experiences have been deeply buried.
Unless man can make new and original adaptations to his environment as rapidly as his science can change the environment, our culture will perish.
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.
Neurotic behavior is quite predictable. Healthy behavior is unpredictable.
I believe that the testing of the student’s achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning.