To understand another person's thoughts and feelings thoroughly, with the meanings they have for him, and to be thoroughly understood by this other p… - Carl Rogers

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. So I find that when I can accept another person, which means specifically accepting the feelings and attitudes and beliefs that he has as a real and vital part of him, then I am assisting him to become a person: and there seems to me great value in this.

When I am thus able to be in process, it is clear that there can be no closed system of beliefs, no unchanging set of principles which I hold. Life is guided by a changing understanding of and interpretation of my experience. It is always in process of becoming.

I observe first that characteristically the client shows a tendency to move away, hesitantly and fearfully, from a self that he is not. In other words even though there maybe no recognition of what he might be moving toward, he is moving away from something. And of course in so doing he is beginning to define, however negatively, what he is.