The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Carl R. Rogers

The intolerant “true believer” is a menace to any field, yet I suspect each one of us finds traces of that person in ourself.

intolerance, self-awareness

I regret it when I suppress my feelings too long and they burst forth in ways that are distorted or attacking or hurtful.

regret, repression, self-awareness, self-understanding

If awareness and conscious thought are seen as a part of life – not its master nor its opponent but an illumination of the developing process within the individual – then our total life can be the unified and unifying experience that is characteristic in nature.

actualising-tendency, consciousness, unconsciousness

I would prefer my experiences in communication to have a growth-promoting effect, both on me and on the other, and I should like to avoid those communication experiences in which both I and the other person feel diminished.

communication, growth

I believe that individuals nowadays are probably more aware of their inner loneliness than has ever been true before in history.

existential, loneliness, person-centred

I am isolated. I sit in a glass ball, I see people through a glass wall. I scream, but they do not hear me.- Ellen West

alienation, isolation, loneliness, longing, separation

When the locus of evaluation is seen as residing in the expert, it would appear that the long-range social implications are in the direction of the social control of the many by the few.

abuse-of-power, authority, interpretation

The paradigm of Western culture is that the essence of persons is dangerous; thus, they must be taught, guided and controlled by those with superior authority.

oppression, trustworthiness

I believe it will have become evident why, for me, adjectives such as happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable, do not seem quite appropriate to any general description of this process I have called the good life, even though the person in this process would experience each one of these at the appropriate times. But adjectives which seem more generally fitting are adjectives such as enriching, exciting, rewarding, challenging, meaningful. This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-fainthearted. 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. Yet the deeply exciting thing about human beings is that when the individual is inwardly free, he chooses as the good life this process of becoming.

humanism, inspirational, life

When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard. I have deeply appreciated the times that I have experienced this sensitive, empathic, concentrated listening.

The right wing has a large proportion of authoritarian personalities. They tend to believe man is, by nature, basically evil. Surrounded as all of us are by the bigness of impersonal forces which seem beyond our power to control, they look for the ‘enemy’, so that they can hate him. At different times in history ‘the enemy’ has been the witch, the demon, the Communist (remember Joe McCarthy?), and now sex education, sensitivity training, ‘non-religious humanism’, and other current d

authoritarianism, fear, prejudice, right-wing-politics

The third facilitative aspect of the relationship is empathic understanding. This means that the therapist senses accurately the feelings and personal meanings that the client is experiencing and communicates this understanding to the client. When functioning best, the therapist is so much inside the private world of the other that he or she can clarify not only the meanings of which the client is aware but even those just below the level of awareness. This kind of sensitive, active listening is exceedingly rare in our lives. We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.