What is most personal is most general – Another learning

Following is another quote from Carl Rogers. It is an important one as it on the one hand invites people to be more personal and on the other hand demonstrates that many other people can understand us as we seem to speak (often) the same language. This gives hope and it keeps us humble…

“There have been times when in talking with students or staff, or in my writing, I have expressed myself in ways so personal that I have felt I was expressing an attitude which it was probable no one else could understand, because it was so uniquely my own…” “…I have almost invariably found that the very feeling which  has seemed to me most private, most personal, and hence most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be  an expression for which there is a resonance in many other people. It has led me to believe that what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others. This has helped me to understand artists and poets as people who have dared to express the unique in themselves.”

Also see Carl Rogers Carl Rogers, We need you I need you!; Empathy: Rogers & Goleman

Carl R. Rogers, (1961) On becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View on Psychotherapy