To be with another in this [empathic] way means that for the time being, you lay aside your own views and values in order to enter another's world wi… - Carl Rogers

To discover that it is not devastating to accept the positive feeling from another, that it does not necessarily end in hurt, that it actually “feels good” to have another person with you in your struggles to meet life — this may be one of the most profound learnings encountered by the individual whether in therapy or not.

evaluation by others is not a guide for me. The judgments of others, while they are to be listened to, and taken into account for what they are, can never be a guide for me. This has been a hard thing to learn.

In psychology, Freud and his followers have presented convincing arguments that the id, man’s basic and unconscious nature, is primarily made up of instincts which would, if permitted expression, result in incest, murder, and other crimes. The whole problem of therapy, as seen by this group, is how to hold these untamed forces in check in a wholesome and constructive manner, rather than in the costly fashion of the neurotic... As I look back over my years of clinical experience and research, it seems to me that I have been very slow to recognize the falseness of this popular and professional concept. The reason, I believe, lies in the fact that in therapy there are continually being uncovered hostile and anti-social feelings, so that it is easy to assume that this indicates the deeper and therefore the basic nature of man. Only slowly has it become evident that these untamed and unsocial feelings are neither the deepest nor the strongest, and that the inner core of man’s personality is the organism itself, which is essentially both self-preserving and social.