It Is That The Individual Has Within

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.

This Process Of The Good Life Is Not, I Am Convinced, A Life For The Faint-hearted. It Involves The Stretching And Growing Of Becoming More And More Of One's Potentialities. It Involves The Courage To Be. It Means Launching Oneself Fully Into The Stream Of Life.

I Realize That If I Were Stable, Prudent And Static; I'd Live In Death. Therefore I Accept Confusion, Uncertainty, Fear And Emotional Ups And Downs; Because That's The Price I'm Willing To Pay For A Fluid, Perplexed And Exciting Life.

There Is Another Peculiar Satisfaction In Really Hearing Someone: It Is Like Listening To The Music Of The Spheres, Because Beyond The Immediate Message Of The Person, No Matter What That Might Be, There Is The Universal. Hidden In All Of The Personal Communications Which I Really Hear There Seem To Be Orderly Psychological Laws, Aspects Of The Same Order We Find In The Universe As A Whole. So There Is Both The Satisfaction Of Hearing This Person And Also The Satisfaction Of Feeling One's Self In Touch With What Is Universally True.

The Kind Of Caring That The Client-centered Therapist Desires To Achieve Is A Gullible Caring, In Which Clients Are Accepted As They Say They Are, Not With A Lurking Suspicion In The Therapist's Mind That They May, In Fact, Be Otherwise. This Attitude Is Not Stupidity On The Therapist's Part; It Is The Kind Of Attitude That Is Most Likely To Lead To Trust.