The degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself.
Carl RogersRead
In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the shift from trying to 'fix' others to fostering supportive relationships that enable personal growth.
Carl Rogers, a prominent psychologist, reflects on the evolution of his approach to helping others. Initially focused on treatment and change, he recognizes that the true value lies in creating meaningful relationships that empower individuals to grow and develop. This perspective highlights the importance of connection and support in the healing and personal development process, advocating for a more collaborative and relational approach to personal growth.
In practice
In a therapy session, to emphasize the need for supportive interactions.
The degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself.
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.
I prize the privilege of being alone.
Though modern Marriage is a tremendous laboratory, its members are often without preparation for the partnership function. How much agony and remorse and failure could have been avoided if there had been at least some rudimentary learning before they entered the partnership.
I have come to think that one of the most satisfying experiences I know β and also one of the most growth-promoting experiences for the other person β is just fully to appreciate this individual in the same way that I appreciate a sunset.
In a person who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system, without being distorted by any process of defensiveness.
The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.
I have learned that a man has the right and obligation to look down at another man, only when that man needs help to get up from the ground.
I tried to be a good wife, but I was lost in my gilded cage.
It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.
When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick,-no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time.
It's kind of crazy to think that I've now been divorced longer than I was married, but I appreciate the journey, because it brought my ex and I back to a friendship that helped us become great co-parents.
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