I have come to recognize that the reason I devote myself to research, and to the building of theory, is to satisfy a need for perceiving order and me… - Carl Rogers

I find that this desire to be all of oneself in each moment — all the richness and complexity, with nothing hidden from oneself, and nothing feared in oneself — this is a common desire in those who have seemed to show much movement in therapy. I do not need to say that this is a difficult, and in its absolute sense an impossible goal. Yet one of the most evident trends in clients is to move toward becoming all of the complexity of one’s changing self in each significant moment.

Thus they [the clients] often follow the schematic pattern, “I am thus and so, but I experience this feeling which is very inconsistent with what I am”; “I love my parents, but I experience some surprising bitterness toward them at times”; “I am really no good, but sometimes I seem to feel that I’m better than everyone else.” Thus at first the expression is that “I am a self which is different from a part of my experience.” Later this changes to the tentative pattern, “Perhaps I am several quite different selves, or perhaps my self contains more contradictions than I had dreamed.” Still later the pattern changes to some such pattern as this: “I was sure that I could not be my experience — it was too contradictory — but now I am beginning to believe that I can be all of my experience.

"To recognize that "I am the one who chooses" and "I am the one who determines the value of an experience for me" is both an invigoraring and a frightening realization."