Carl Rogers was a founder of the human potential movement, and he was vitally concerned with human growth. About his career he once said, "…without knowing it I had expressed an idea whose time had come."

   For people who want to change their life, he had a message. Move away from facades, move away from "oughts," move away from meeting expectations. Trust yourself. Be open to experience. The facts are friendly.

   The strength of his writing is in his voice--warm, honest, and compassionate. As he tells of his experience, many people in distress find themselves believing that change is not only desirable, but possible.

   His strength lies not so much in providing answers as in introducing people to the attitudes they will need to make change possible.

   From On Becoming a Person, Wayne and Tamara Mitchell recommend four chapters which contain the essence of Carl Rogers' message. The chapters are: This Is Me, What It Means To Become A Person, To Be That Self Which One Truly Is, and The Fully Functioning Person.

   As Tamara often says, "When you aren't honest, you just get more of what you don't want."

   A favorite example Tamara uses is oatmeal cookies. When you pretend to like oatmeal cookies, don't be surprised when people keep baking you oatmeal cookies. When you pretend to like someone or something you don't like, don't be surprised when get more of what you didn't want in the first place.

   The book is a classic in its field. Carl Rogers died in 1987.

From On Becoming a Person

-- "Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience."

-- "It has been my experience that persons have a basically positive direction. In my deepest contacts with individuals in therapy, even those whose troubles are most disturbing, whose behavior has been most anti-social, whose feelings seem most abnormal, I find this to be true."

-- "Man's behavior is exquisitely rational, moving with subtle and ordered complexity toward the goals his organism is endeavoring to achieve. The tragedy for most of us is that our defenses keep us from being aware of this rationality, so that consciously we are moving in one direction, while organismically we are moving in another."