Facilitative Attitudes (and Skills) Can Help A

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.

Each Person Is An Island Unto Himself, In A Very Real Sense; And He Can Only Build Bridges To Other Islands If He Is First Of All Willing To Be Himself And Permitted To Be Himself.

An Empathic Way Of Being Can Be Learned From Empathic Persons. Perhaps The Most Important Statement Of All Is That The Ability To Be Accurately Empathic Is Something Which Can Be Developed By Training. Therapists, Parents And Teachers Can Be Helped To Become Empathic. This Is Especially Likely To Occur If Their Teachers And Supervisors Are Themselves Individuals Of Sensitive Understanding. It Is Most Encouraging To Know That This Subtle, Elusive Quality, Of Utmost Importance In Therapy, Is Not Something One Is "born With", But Can Be Learned, And Learned Most Rapidly In An Empathic Climate.

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.

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.