50 Psychology Classics (49 page)

Such bizarre cases, because they are easier to form experiments around, can reveal how the normal mind works. We take our representation of the world for granted, yet if our wiring goes slightly wrong, our whole conception of what is real and what is not can fail us. We begin to understand that our sense of reality is really more like an elaborate illusion designed to allow us to make our way in the world and survive. If we had to deal with the act of pure perception every second, we would never accomplish anything. We need to take for granted a basic amount of reality perception, and normally the brain delivers this brilliantly. It is only when things go wrong that we see how finely balanced consciousness is.

The amygdala and the temporal lobes play a vital role in consciousness. Without these, Ramachandran says, we would effectively be robots, unable to sense the meaning of what we are doing. We not only have circuitry in the brain that tells us how to do things, we also have pathways that tell us
why
we do them. He devotes a whole chapter to the link between increased religious
feeling and temporal lobe epilepsy; when this part of the brain has a seizure, the person can suddenly see everything in an intense spiritual way. Establishing the different meanings of things, including the ability to discuss the fact that we are conscious, is what separates humans from all other animals, but if this facility is damaged or altered it is possible for people to experience
too much
meaning.

Ramachandran says that the greatest revolution in the history of the human race will be when we really begin to understand
ourselves
. He has called for more funding of research into the brain, not simply to satisfy our curiosities, but because this is where “all the nasty stuff”—war, violence, terrorism—originates.

Neurology provides knowledge of the brain's anatomy and circuitry, and we need this as a starter. But the larger task is to understand the relationship between a mass of gray cells and the sense we have of being free-willed individuals. Even if, as Ramachandran suggests, the sense of self is an elaborate illusion created by our brain to ensure that our bodies survive, it is also how we interact with the universe at a philosophical or spiritual level. This is unique in the animal world, therefore we should treat it as precious and deserving of much further study.

Vilayanur Ramachandran grew up in India and obtained his MD at Stanley Medical College in Chennai (Madras) and his PhD at Cambridge University. He is currently director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego, and adjunct professor in biology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Awards include the Ariens-Kappers Medal from the Netherlands, a Gold Medal from the Australian National University, and a fellowship from All Souls College, Oxford
.

Ramachandran has presented major lecture series around the world, including the 2003 Reith lectures in Britain and the Decade of the Brain lecture for the US National Institute for Mental Health
. Phantoms in the Brain
was made into a two-part documentary shown on Channel Four in the UK and PBS in the US. Other books include
Encyclopaedia of the Human Brain
(2002),
The Emerging Mind
(2003), and
A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness
(2005)
.

Co-author
Sandra Blakeslee
is a science writer for
The New York Times,
specializing in cognitive neuroscience
.

“If I can provide a certain type of relationship, the other person will discover within himself the capacity to use that relationship for growth, and change and personal development will occur.”

“It seems that gradually, painfully, the individual explores what is behind the masks he presents to the world, and even behind the masks with which he has been deceiving himself… Thus to an increasing degree he becomes himself—not a façade of conformity to others, not a cynical denial of all feeling, nor a front of intellectual rationality, but a living, breathing, feeling, fluctuating process—in short, he becomes a person.”

In a nutshell

A genuine relationship or interaction is one in which you are comfortable to be yourself, and in which the other person clearly sees your potential.

In a similar vein
Robert Bolton
People Skills
(p 32)
Milton Erickson
My Voice Will Go With You
(p 78)
Abraham Maslow
The Farther Reaches of Human Nature
(p 192)
Fritz Perls
Gestalt Therapy
(p 216)
Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, & Sheila Heen
Difficult Conversations
(p 272)

Have you ever felt “healed” by a long conversation with someone? Has a particular relationship made you feel normal or good about yourself again? Chances are that these interactions happened in an environment that was trusting, open, and frank, and in which you were given full attention and really listened to without judgment.

Carl Rogers took these features of a good relationship and applied them to his work as a psychologist and counselor. The result was a revolutionary overturning of the traditional psychologist–patient model, which has had broader implications for successful human interaction.

Rogers came to his profession with the assumption that he would be the superior practitioner “solving” the problems of whoever came to see him. But he began to realize that this model was rarely effective, and that progress depended more on the depth of understanding and openness between the two people sitting in the consulting room. He was strongly influenced by existential philosopher Martin Buber and his notion of “confirming the other.” This meant fully affirming a person's potential, the ability to see what he or she “has been created to become.” Such a shift in emphasis toward the possible (as opposed to merely the problematic) made Rogers, along with Abraham Maslow, a major figure in the new humanistic psychology, with its notions that we take for granted today about personal growth and human potential.

On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy
is not a single piece of writing but a collection of pieces that Rogers wrote over a decade. It is the accumulated wisdom of a career in psychotherapy spanning over 30 years, and while not an easy read, once you get to grips with the ideas it can be very inspiring.

In his training as a psychologist, Rogers naturally absorbed the idea that he controlled the relationship with the client, and that it was his job to analyze and treat patients as if they were objects. But he came to the conclusion that it was more effective to let patients (or clients) guide the direction of the process. This was the beginning of his famous
client
-centered (or person-centered) form of therapy.

Rather than trying to “fix” clients, Rogers felt it was much more important to listen absolutely to what they were saying, even if it seemed wrong, weak, strange, stupid, or bad. This stance allowed people to be accepting of all their thoughts, and after a number of sessions they would heal themselves. Rogers summed up his philosophy as “simply to be myself and to let another person be himself.” As this was a time when the study of psychology revolved around the behavior of rats in laboratories, his belief in letting “crazy” patients set the direction was a big challenge to the profession, and many denounced his ideas.

If this were not enough, Rogers also shattered the idea of the calm and collected therapist who objectively listened to clients' issues. He asserted the right of therapists to have a personality, to express emotions themselves. If, for instance, in the course of the session he felt hostile or annoyed, he would not pretend to be a pleasant, detached doctor. If he did not have an answer, he would not claim he did. If the psychologist–client relationship was to rest on truth, he felt, it had to include the moods and feelings of the practitioner.

At the heart of Rogers' work was the view that life is a flowing process. The fulfilled person, he believed, should come to accept themselves “as a stream of becoming, not a finished product.” The mistake people made was to try to control all aspects of their experience, with the result that their personality was not grounded in reality.

Rogers observed that when people first came to see a counselor for treatment, they usually gave a reason, such as issues with a wife or husband, or an employer, or their own uncontrollable behavior. Invariably, these “reasons” were not the real problem. There was in fact just
one
problem with all the people he saw: They were desperate to become their real selves, to be allowed to drop the false roles or masks with which they had approached life to date. They were usually very concerned with what others thought of them and what they
ought
to be doing in given situations. Therapy brought them back to their immediate experience of life and situations. They became a
person
, not just a reflection of society.

One aspect of this transformation was that people began to “own” all aspects of their selves, to allow totally contradictory feelings (one client admitted that she both loved and hated her parents). Rogers' dictum was “the facts are always friendly” when it comes to sorting out one's emotions and feelings; the real danger is in denying what we feel. As each feeling we are ashamed of comes to the surface, we realize it will not kill us to allow it to exist.

Rogers' impact was felt way beyond his own field of counseling psychology. His emphasis on people needing to see themselves more as a fluid process of
creation rather than a fixed entity was part of the climate of ideas that led to the 1960s counter-cultural revolution, and it is easy to see his influence on today's self-help writers. For instance, one of Stephen Covey's “7 habits of highly effective people” is
Seek first to understand, then to be understood
, a very Rogerian notion that progress in relationships is never made unless the people within them feel safe to speak their mind and be heard. And the rallying cry to “live your passion” can also in part be traced back to Rogers' focus on living a life that expresses who we truly are.

Rogers felt that psychologists had the most important job in the world, because ultimately it was not the physical sciences that would save us, but better interactions between human beings. The climate of openness and transparency he created in his sessions, if replicated within the family, the corporation, or in politics, would result in less angst and more constructive outcomes. But the key was a desire to really feel what the other person or party wanted and felt. Such a willingness, although never easy, could transform those involved.

Born in 1902 in Chicago into a strict religious household, Rogers was the fourth of six children. At the University of Wisconsin he studied agriculture, then history, but his aim was to enter the Christian ministry. In 1924 he enrolled at the liberal Union Theological Seminary in New York City, but after two years felt hemmed in by doctrinal beliefs and began taking courses in psychology at Columbia University's Teachers College. There he obtained his MA in 1928 and his PhD in 1931
.

With doctoral work in child psychology, Rogers obtained a post as a psychologist at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in Rochester, New York, working with troubled or delinquent children. Though not academically prestigious, the post enabled him to support his young family, and he stayed there for 12 years. In 1940, on the strength of his book
Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child,
he was offered a professorship at Ohio State University. His influential
Counselling and Psychotherapy
was published in 1942, and in 1945 he began a 12-year posting at the University of Chicago, where he established a counseling center
.

Client-Centered Therapy
(1951) further heightened Rogers' profile, and in 1954 he received the American Psychological Association's first Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award. In 1964 he moved to La Jolla, California, for a position at the Western Behavioral Studies Institute, and remained in California until his death in 1987. He was also well known for his work on encounter groups, for his contribution to theories of experiential learning for adults, and for his impact in the area of conflict resolution
.

“Neurology and psychology, curiously, although they talk of everything else, almost never talk of ‘judgment'—and yet it is precisely the downfall of judgment… which constitutes the essence of so many neuropsychological disorders.”

“The super-Touretter, then, is compelled to fight, as no one else is, simply to survive—to become an individual, and survive as one, in face of constant impulse… The miracle is that, in most cases, he succeeds—for the powers of survival, the will to survive, and to survive as a unique inalienable individual are, absolutely, the strongest in our being; stronger than any impulses, stronger than disease. Health, health militant, is usually the victor.”

In a nutshell

The genius of the human brain is its continual creation of a sense of self, which persists even in the face of terrible neurological disease.

In a similar vein
Viktor Frankl
The Will to Meaning
(p 100)
William James
The Principles of Psychology
(p 162)
V. S. Ramachandran
Phantoms in the Brain
(p 232)