foreign [Music] [Music] foreign very first element in that is that I find that when I'm of the most help those are the times when I'm I am genuine when I'm real one word that I like to describe it is when I'm transparent when it seems as though there is nothing nothing hidden from this person that I'm working with now what I mean by that is that whatever I'm experiencing is really known to me it's open to me I know what I'm feeling and I would like for any feelings of mine that I really relevant to
this relationship to be transparent in the relationship and to be known to the person I'm working with what are some of the feelings that I'm likely to have well as I work with individuals gradually I come to care I really come to care in regard to this person and I'd like for that to show another feeling that certainly is very often real in me is one of compassion because sometimes individuals have had lives of terrible loneliness and real real torment and I do feel compassion towards them and I'd like that to show and then one
thing that is almost certain to be present in me is interest people are fascinating and I and I am interested in them as individuals and I'd like that to show and then I feel a desire to to really understand to understand understand them in a way that that seems to catch their point of view and I'd like that to show but then suppose I have other feelings suppose I feel somewhat bored with this individual well I'm not proud of it but I'd like that to show too or suppose I feel resentment I don't very often
present my clients but if I do or when I do I would want that to be evident to the person too the point is that I don't believe a therapist can be helpful to another person unless he can really be himself and being himself means letting any of his real feelings be present in the relationship now it doesn't mean that I'm going to talk a lot about these feelings that I have mentioned as a matter of fact I'm I'm pretty quiet in an interview I don't really play a great deal but I would like it
for my feelings to really be visible and evident to this other individual I want to be real and open Within Myself so that I communicate just one message now that may sound a little strange but often we communicate more than one message and that's very confusing suppose I resent the facts that a client of mine is taking too much time but I cover it up well then he hears one message but he's actually receiving another message too because he may sense my resentment I think we sense lots of things if we don't really understand easily
or suppose I really care about this person but I cover that up by trying to take a strictly professional cool attitude and I don't let it show well then two the client is getting two messages on the one hand there's this coolness on the other hand perhaps he does sense a a warmth in me I I would like it to be just one message [Music] thank you Rogers considerations now the second thing that I find of a great deal of help in working with my clients is if I prize the individual if I feel a
real liking and acceptance and warmth toward this person here's a wife let's say who's full of bitterness toward her husband making all kinds of complaints some of them pretty extreme complaints can I really be accepting to this individual can I really accept her as she is with all her bitterness and Hate or here's a man who's obviously bright and yet he sits there telling me that how completely inadequate he is that he really can't do a thing that he is utterly impotent to to meet life on any reasonable terms can I accept a person like
that can I accept him as he is or here's a man who's stepping out with a woman not his wife uh going against the morals of the community can I accept that person as he is it's that kind of question which continually comes to mind do I accept the person in the way in which he really presents himself or do I form a judgment about him I think that acceptance means a willingness for a person to be separate now it's very very hard for most of us to let another individual be separate we want him
to be someone like me we want to um we continually try to see them through our eyes instead of letting him be a separate individual with his own feelings his own attitudes and his own behavior and if there's one thing that I've learned in my experience it is that I want to Value him as he is with the potentialities he has to be sure but I want to value and prize and accept him as he is a separate person with the right to his own feelings and his own behavior and his own way of seeing
things [Music] is Rogers can I understand this person sensitively accurately can I understand it with empathy which means getting inside his world and seeing his world from his own point of view can I really sense the flavor of his feelings and the attitudes that he's talking about here's a bright attractive married woman who tells me that she finds life so hopeless that she often considers suicide can I really understand how with all her good qualities nevertheless life can seem that way to her that's that's what I mean by really uh understanding from within can I
see how remote and alone and hopeless she feels in spite of what all the rest of us might think of as very positive elements in her life it's simply incredibly difficult for most of us to Simply understand without judging do you see the other person's point of view without making judgments about it we have absolutely no experience of that kind in our social conversation or in our ordinary life when you listen to this talk or when you listen to your friends speak you immediately begin to form judgments about it you don't listen to try to
get the other person's point of view you try to make judgments of it from your point of view that's why I find that in training counselors It's terribly difficult to get them simply to be willing to understand from within and to stop at that point I think people who do listen and understand and who don't judge are deeply valued in any Community where they live they get to be known as people who help people ask why does this help why does this that if you just understand the person doesn't that confirm him and what he's
doing doesn't it make him settled in his problems no that's not so if I understand a mother who's rejecting her child or an errant husband or someone of that sort and can understand him accurately and accept him completely then that creates in him the most positive basis for change that I know that's the kind of climate which permits a person to change and makes it likely that he will change whereas without any understanding and without any acceptance individuals are often frozen into the very Behavior patterns which they wish they could leave behind so I would
like to be a very sensitive instrument in uh understanding and sensing just the flavor and meaning of what this person is trying to tell me and letting him know that I do understand that and that I sense how it how it feels to him foreign both from my clinical experience and from our research investigations we found that if uh attitudes of the cert that I've described are present quite a number of things will happen she'll explore some of her feelings and attitudes more deeply she's likely to discover some hidden aspects of herself that she wasn't
aware of previously feeling herself prized by me it's quite possible she'll come to praise herself more feeling that some of her meetings are understood by me don't she can more readily perhaps listen to herself listen to what's going on within her own experience listen to some of the meanings she hasn't been able to catch before and perhaps if she senses a realness in me she'll be able to be a little more real within herself I suspect there will be a change in the manner of her expression at least this has been my experience in other
instances from being rather remote from her experiencing remote from what's going on within her it's possible that she'll move toward more immediacy of experiencing that she will be able to send Express what's going on in her in the immediate moment from being disapproving of herself it's quite possible she will move toward a greater degree of acceptance of herself from somewhat of a fear of relating she may move toward being able to relate more directly and to encounter me more directly from construing life in somewhat rigid black and white pattern she may move toward more tentative
ways of construing her experience and of seeing the meanings in it from a locus of evaluation which is outside of herself it's quite possible she will move toward recognizing a greater capacity within herself for making judgments and and drawing conclusions so those are the some of those are some of the changes that we have tended to find and I think that they're all of them changes that are characteristic of the process of therapy or therapeutic movement foreign [Music] Rogers [Music]
