What It Means to Become a Person
This chapter was first presented as a talk at a meeting at Oberlin College in 1954. I was attempting to consolidate, in a more organized form, some of the conceptions of therapy that had been developing in me. I have made slight revisions to the original text.
As is my practice, I aimed to keep my thinking grounded in the actual experiences of therapeutic interviews, drawing heavily on recorded interviews as the source for the generalizations I make.
The Diversity of Problems
In my work at the Counseling Center of the University of Chicago, I have the opportunity to work with individuals presenting a wide variety of personal problems. These include the student concerned about failing in college; the housewife disturbed about her marriage; the individual who feels on the brink of a complete breakdown or psychosis; the responsible professional man who spends much of his time in sexual fantasies and functions inefficiently in his work; the brilliant student, at the top of his class, paralyzed by the conviction that he is hopelessly inadequate; the parent distressed by their child's behavior; the popular girl who finds herself inexplicably overtaken by sharp spells of depression; the woman who fears that life and love are passing her by, and that her good graduate record is poor compensation; the man convinced that powerful or sinister forces are plotting against him. I could go on, as the problems people bring are as varied as life itself.
Yet, there is no satisfaction in merely cataloging these issues, for, as a counselor, I know that the problem as stated in the first interview will not be the same by the second or third hour, and by the tenth interview, it will be an entirely different problem or series of problems.
I have come to believe that, despite this bewildering horizontal multiplicity and the layer upon layer of vertical complexity, there is perhaps only one central problem. As I follow the experiences of many clients in the therapeutic relationship we endeavor to create, it seems that each one is asking the same fundamental question. Beneath the surface-level complaints—whether about studies, a spouse, an employer, uncontrollable behavior, or frightening feelings—lies a central search. At its core, each person is asking, "Who am I, really? How can I get in touch with this real self, underlying all my surface behavior? How can I become myself?"
The Process of Becoming
Getting Behind the Mask
Let me explain what I mean when I say that the goal the individual most wishes to achieve, knowingly or unknowingly, is to become themselves.
When a person comes to me, troubled by their unique combination of difficulties, I have found it most worthwhile to create a relationship in which they feel safe and free. My purpose is to understand how they feel in their inner world, to accept them as they are, and to create an atmosphere of freedom in which they can move in their thinking, feeling, and being, in any direction they desire.
How do they use this freedom? In my experience, they use it to become more and more themselves. They begin to drop the false fronts, masks, or roles with which they have faced life. They seem to be trying to discover something more basic, something more truly themselves. At first, they lay aside masks they are somewhat aware of using. One young woman student described in a counseling interview one of the masks she had been using and her uncertainty about whether there was any real self with convictions beneath this appeasing, ingratiating front:
I was thinking about this business of standards. I somehow developed a sort of knack, I guess, of—well—habit—of trying to make people feel at ease around me, or to make things go along smoothly. There always had to be some appeaser around, being sort of the oil that soothed the waters. At a small meeting, or a little party, or something—I could help things go along nicely and appear to be having a good time. And sometimes I'd surprise myself by arguing against what I really thought when I saw that the person in charge would be quite unhappy about it if I didn't. In other words, I just wasn't ever—I mean, I didn't find myself ever being set and definite about things. Now the reason why I did it probably was I'd been doing it around home so much, I just didn't stand up for my own convictions, until I don't know whether I have any convictions to stand up for. I haven't been really honestly being myself, or actually knowing what my real self is, and I've been just playing a sort of false role.
In this excerpt, you can see her examining the mask she has been using, recognizing her dissatisfaction with it, and wondering how to get to the real self underneath, if such a self exists.
In this attempt to discover their own self, the client typically uses the relationship to explore and examine various aspects of their own experience, recognizing and facing the deep contradictions they often discover. They learn how much of their behavior, and even their feelings, is not real, not something that flows from the genuine reactions of their organism, but is a facade, a front, behind which they have been hiding. They discover how much of their life is guided by what they think they should be, not by what they are. Often, they find that they exist only in response to the demands of others, that they seem to have no self of their own, and that they are only trying to think, feel, and behave in the way others believe they ought to.
In this connection, I have been astonished to find how accurately the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard described this dilemma more than a century ago, with keen psychological insight. He points out that the most common despair is to be in despair at not choosing, or willing, to be oneself; but the deepest form of despair is to choose "to be another than himself. " On the other hand, "to will to be that self which one truly is, is indeed the opposite of despair," and this choice is the deepest responsibility of man. As I read some of his writings, I almost feel that he must have listened to the statements made by our clients as they search and explore for the reality of self—often a painful and troubling search.
This exploration becomes even more disturbing when clients find themselves removing false faces they had not known were false. They begin the frightening task of exploring the turbulent and sometimes violent feelings within themselves. To remove a mask they thought was part of their real self can be a deeply disturbing experience, yet in the freedom to think, feel, and be, the individual moves toward this goal. A client who had completed a series of psychotherapeutic interviews illustrates this process using metaphors to describe her struggle to reach the core of herself:
As I look at it now, I was peeling off layer after layer of defenses. I'd build them up, try them, and then discard them when you remained the same. I didn't know what was at the bottom, and I was very much afraid to find out, but I had to keep on trying. At first, I felt there was nothing within me—just a great emptiness where I needed and wanted a solid core. Then I began to feel that I was facing a solid brick wall, too high to get over and too thick to go through. One day, the wall became translucent rather than solid. After this, the wall seemed to disappear, but beyond it, I discovered a dam holding back violent, churning waters. I felt as if I were holding back the force of these waters, and if I opened even a tiny hole, I and all about me would be destroyed in the ensuing torrent of feelings represented by the water. Finally, I could stand the strain no longer, and I let go. All I did, actually, was to succumb to complete and utter self-pity, then hate, then love. After this experience, I felt as if I had leaped a brink and was safely on the other side, though still tottering a bit on the edge. I don't know what I was searching for or where I was going, but I felt then, as I have always felt whenever I really lived, that I was moving forward.
This represents the feelings of many individuals: if the false front, the wall, or the dam is not maintained, everything will be swept away in the violence of the feelings pent up in their private world. Yet, it also illustrates the compelling necessity they feel to search for and become themselves. It begins to indicate how individuals determine the reality in themselves—that when they fully experience the feelings they are at an organic level, as this client experienced her self-pity, hatred, and love, they feel an assurance that they are being a part of their real self.
The Experiencing of Feeling
I would like to say more about this experiencing of feeling, which is really the discovery of unknown elements of self. This phenomenon is difficult to convey meaningfully. In our daily lives, there are countless reasons for not letting ourselves experience our attitudes fully—reasons from our past and present, reasons residing within the social situation. It seems too dangerous, too potentially damaging, to experience them freely and fully. But in the safety and freedom of the therapeutic relationship, they can be experienced fully, to the limit of what they are. They can be experienced in what I like to think of as a "pure culture," so that for the moment, the person is their fear, their anger, their tenderness, or whatever.
To clarify, here is an example from a client, a young graduate student deep in therapy, puzzling over a vague feeling he senses in himself. He gradually identifies it as a frightened feeling, a fear of failing or not getting his Ph.D. The recorded interview follows:
Client: I was kinda letting it seep through. But I also tied it in with you and with my relationship with you. And that's one thing I feel about it is kind of a fear of it going away; or that's another thing—it's so hard to get hold of—there's kind of two pulling feelings about it. Or two "me's" somehow. One is the scared one that wants to hold on to things, and that one I guess I can feel pretty clearly right now. You know, I kinda need things to hold on to—and I feel kinda scared.
Therapist: M-hm. That's something you can feel right this minute, and have been feeling and perhaps are feeling in regard to our relationship, too.
Client: Won't you let me have this, because, you know, I kinda need it. I can be so lonely and scared without it.
Therapist: M-hm, m-hm. Let me hang on to this because I'd be terribly scared if I didn't. Let me hold on to it. (Pause)
Client: It's kinda the same thing—Won't you let me have my thesis or my Ph.D so then... 'Cause I kinda need that little world. I mean...
Therapist: In both cases it's kind of a pleading thing too, isn't it? Let me have this because I need it badly. I'd be awfully frightened without it. (Long pause.)
Client: I get a sense of... I can't somehow get much further... It's this kind of pleading little boy, somehow, even... What's this gesture of begging? (Putting his hands together as if in prayer) Isn't it funny? 'Cause that...
Therapist: You put your hands in sort of a supplication.
Client: Ya, that's right! Won't you do this for me, kinda... Oh, that's terrible! Who, me, beg?
This excerpt conveys the experiencing of a feeling to its limit. For a moment, he is nothing but a pleading little boy, supplicating, begging, dependent. He almost immediately backs away from this by saying, "Who, me, beg?" but it has left its mark. As he says later, "It's such a wondrous thing to have these new things come out of me. It amazes me so much each time, and then again there's that same feeling, kind of feeling scared that I've so much of this that I'm keeping back or something. " He realizes that this has bubbled through, and for that moment, he is his dependency, in a way that astonishes him.
It is not only dependency that is experienced in this all-out fashion. It may be hurt, sorrow, jealousy, destructive anger, deep desire, confidence, pride, sensitive tenderness, or outgoing love—any emotion of which a person is capable.
What I have learned from such experiences is that in such a moment, the individual is coming to be what they are. When a person has, throughout therapy, experienced all the emotions that organismically arise in them in this knowing and open manner, they have experienced themselves in all the richness that exists within. They have become what they are.
The Discovery of Self in Experience
Let us pursue further what it means to become one's self. This is a perplexing question, and I will draw from a client's statement, written between interviews, to suggest an answer. She describes how the facades she had been living by crumbled, bringing confusion but also relief:
You know, it seems as if all the energy that went into holding the arbitrary pattern together was quite unnecessary—a waste. You think you have to make the pattern yourself; but there are so many pieces, and it's so hard to see where they fit. Sometimes you put them in the wrong place, and the more pieces misfitted, the more effort it takes to hold them in place, until at last you are so tired that even that awful confusion is better than holding on any longer. Then you discover that left to themselves the jumbled pieces fall quite naturally into their own places, and a living pattern emerges without any effort at all on your part. Your job is just to discover it, and in the course of that, you will find yourself and your own place. You must even let your own experience tell you its own meaning; the minute you tell it what it means, you are at war with yourself.
I interpret this poetic expression to mean that being oneself involves finding the pattern, the underlying order, in the ceaselessly changing flow of one's experience. Rather than forcing experience into the form of a mask or a structure it is not, being oneself means discovering the unity and harmony in one's actual feelings and reactions. The real self is comfortably discovered in one's experiences, not imposed upon them.
Through these client excerpts, I have tried to suggest what happens in the warmth and understanding of a facilitating therapeutic relationship. Gradually, painfully, the individual explores what lies behind the masks they present to the world and even those they have used to deceive themselves. They vividly experience the hidden elements of themselves, becoming, to an increasing degree, not a facade of conformity, not a cynical denial of feeling, nor a front of intellectual rationality, but a living, breathing, feeling, fluctuating process—in short, a person.
The Person Who Emerges
I imagine some of you are asking, "But what kind of person do they become? It isn't enough to say they drop the facade—what lies underneath?" Since each individual becomes a separate, distinct, and unique person, the answer is not simple. However, I will point out some characteristic trends I observe, based on therapeutic relationships with many clients. No single person fully exemplifies these characteristics, but certain generalizations can be drawn.
Openness to Experience
First, the individual becomes more open to their experience. This phrase has come to hold great meaning for me, as it is the opposite of defensiveness. Psychological research shows that if sensory evidence contradicts our self-image, we distort it, seeing only what fits our preconceived picture.
In the safe relationship I have described, this defensiveness or rigidity is replaced by increasing openness to experience. The individual becomes more aware of their organic-level feelings and attitudes, as I have described. They also become more aware of external reality as it is, rather than perceiving it through preconceived categories. They see that not all trees are green, not all men are stern fathers, not all women are rejecting, and not all failures prove they are worthless. They can take in the evidence of a new situation as it is, without distorting it to fit a preconceived pattern. This increasing openness makes them far more realistic in dealing with new people, situations, and problems. They can tolerate ambiguity and receive conflicting evidence without forcing closure.
To illustrate, here is an excerpt from a recorded interview with a young professional man in his 48th session, describing how he has become more open to his bodily sensations and feelings:
Client: It doesn't seem to me that it would be possible for anybody to relate all the changes that you feel. But I certainly have felt recently that I have more respect for, more objectivity toward my physical makeup. I mean I don't expect too much of myself. This is how it works out: It feels to me that in the past I used to fight a certain tiredness that I felt after supper. Well, now I feel pretty sure that I really am tired—that I am not making myself tired—that I am just physiologically lower. It seemed that I was just constantly criticizing my tiredness.
Therapist: So you can let yourself be tired, instead of feeling along with it a kind of criticism of it.
Client: Yes, that I shouldn't be tired or something. And it seems in a way to be pretty profound that I can just not fight this tiredness, and along with it goes a real feeling of I've got to slow down, too, so that being tired isn't such an awful thing. I think I can also kind of pick up a thread here of why I should be that way in the way my father is and the way he looks at some of these things. For instance, say that I was sick, and I would report this, and it would seem that overtly he would want to do something about it but he would also communicate, "Oh, my gosh, more trouble." You know, something like that.
Therapist: As though there were something quite annoying really about being physically ill.
Client: Yeah, I'm sure that my father has the same disrespect for his own physiology that I have had. Now last summer I twisted my back. I wrenched it, I heard it snap and everything. There was real pain there all the time at first, real sharp. And I had the doctor look at it and he said it wasn't serious, it should heal by itself as long as I didn't bend too much. Well this was months ago—and I have been noticing recently that—hell, this is a real pain and it's still there—and it's not my fault.
Therapist: It doesn't prove something bad about you—
Client: No—and one of the reasons I seem to get more tired than I should maybe is because of this constant strain, and so—I have already made an appointment with one of the doctors at the hospital that he would look at it and take an X-ray or something. In a way I guess you could say that I am just more accurately sensitive—or objectively sensitive to this kind of thing... And this is really a profound change as I say, and of course my relationship with my wife and the two children is—well, you just wouldn't recognize it if you could see me inside—as you have—I mean—there just doesn't seem to be anything more wonderful than really and genuinely—really feeling love for your own children and at the same time receiving it. I don't know how to put this. We have such an increased respect—both of us—for Judy and we've noticed just—as we participated in this—we have noticed such a tremendous change in her—it seems to be a pretty deep kind of thing.
Therapist: It seems to me you are saying that you can listen more accurately to yourself. If your body says it's tired, you listen to it and believe it, instead of criticizing it; if it's in pain, you can listen to that; if the feeling is really loving your wife or children, you can feel that, and it seems to show up in the differences in them too.
This excerpt illustrates openness to experience. Previously, he could not freely feel pain or illness, as being ill meant being unacceptable. Nor could he feel tenderness and love for his child, as such feelings meant weakness, and he had to maintain a facade of strength. Now, he can be genuinely open to his organism's experiences—he can be tired when tired, feel pain when in pain, and experience love for his daughter, as well as annoyance toward her, as he later expresses. He can fully live the experiences of his total organism, rather than shutting them out of awareness.
Trust in One's Organism
A second characteristic is difficult to describe: the person increasingly discovers that their own organism is trustworthy, a suitable instrument for discovering the most satisfying behavior in each immediate situation.
To clarify, consider an individual facing an existential choice: "Shall I go home to my family during vacation, or strike out on my own? " "Shall I drink this third cocktail being offered? " "Is this the person I would like as my partner in love and life?" For someone who has emerged from therapy, being open to all their experiences gives them access to all available data in the situation. They know their complex and often contradictory feelings and impulses. They can sense social demands, from rigid social "laws" to the desires of friends and family. They have access to memories of similar situations and their consequences. They perceive the external situation accurately in its complexity. Their total organism, with conscious thought participating, can weigh and balance each stimulus, need, and demand, discovering the course of action that best satisfies all their needs, both immediate and long-term.
This weighing and balancing is not infallible; mistakes can be made. But because they are open to their experience, they are more immediately aware of unsatisfying consequences and can correct errors more quickly.
For example, defects in this process often arise when we include things not part of our experience or exclude those that are. An individual might persist in believing "I can handle liquor," despite evidence to the contrary, or a young woman might see only the good qualities of a prospective mate, ignoring their faults. When a client is open to their experience, they come to find their organism more trustworthy, feeling less fear of their emotional reactions and developing trust in, even affection for, the complex, rich, varied assortment of feelings and tendencies within them.
An Internal Locus of Evaluation
Another trend is that the individual increasingly feels that the locus of evaluation lies within themselves. They rely less on others for approval, disapproval, standards, or decisions. They recognize that it rests within them to choose, asking, "Am I living in a way that is deeply satisfying to me and truly expresses me?" This is perhaps the most important question for the creative individual.
To illustrate, consider a recorded interview with a young woman, a graduate student who had been deeply disturbed, contemplating suicide, and critical of others for not providing enough guidance. She began to realize her lack of initiative in her education. In a later interview, she says:
Client: Well now, I wonder if I've been going around doing that, getting smatterings of things, and not getting hold, not really getting down to things.
Therapist: Maybe you've been getting just spoonfuls here and there rather than really digging in somewhere rather deeply.
Client: M-hm. That's why I say—(slowly and very thoughtfully) well, with that sort of a foundation, well, it's really up to me. I mean, it seems to be really apparent to me that I can't depend on someone else to give me an education. (Very softly) I'll really have to get it myself.
Therapist: It really begins to come home—there's only one person that can educate you—a realization that perhaps nobody else can give you an education.
Client: M-hm. (Long pause—while she sits thinking) I have all the symptoms of fright. (Laughs softly)
Therapist: Fright? That this is a scary thing, is that what you mean?
Client: M-hm. (Very long pause—obviously struggling with feelings in herself).
Therapist: Do you want to say any more about what you mean by that? That it really does give you the symptoms of fright?
Client: (Laughs) I, uh—I don't know whether I quite know. I mean—well it really seems like I'm cut loose (pause), and seems that I'm very—I don't know—in a vulnerable position, but I, uh, I brought this up and it, uh, somehow it almost came out without my saying it. It seems to be—it's something I let out.
Therapist: Hardly a part of you.
Client: Well, I felt surprised.
Therapist: As though, "Well for goodness sake, did I say that?" (Both chuckle.)
Client: Really, I don't think I've had that feeling before. I've—uh, well, this really feels like I'm saying something that, uh, is a part of me really. (Pause) Or, uh, (quite perplexed) it feels like I sort of have, uh, I don't know. I have a feeling of strength, and yet, I have a feeling of—realizing it's so sort of fearful, of fright.
Therapist: That is, do you mean that saying something of that sort gives you at the same time a feeling of, of strength in saying it, and yet at the same time a frightened feeling of what you have said, is that it?
Client: M-hm. I am feeling that. For instance, I'm feeling it internally now—a sort of surging up, or force or outlet. As if that's something really big and strong. And yet, uh, well at first it was almost a physical feeling of just being out alone, and sort of cut off from a—a support I had been carrying around.
Therapist: You feel that it's something deep and strong, and surging forth, and at the same time, you just feel as though you'd cut yourself loose from any support when you say it.
Client: M-hm. Maybe that's—I don't know—it's a disturbance of a kind of pattern I've been carrying around, I think.
Therapist: It sort of shakes a rather significant pattern, jars it loose.
Client: M-hm. (Pause, then cautiously, but with conviction) I think—I don't know, but I have the feeling that then I am going to begin to do more things that I know I should do... There are so many things that I need to do. It seems in so many avenues of my living I have to work out new ways of behavior, but—maybe I can see myself doing a little better in some things.
This excerpt illustrates the strength experienced in being a unique person, responsible for oneself, and the uneasiness that accompanies this assumption of responsibility. Recognizing "I am the one who chooses" and "I am the one who determines the value of an experience for me" is both invigorating and frightening.
Willingness to Be a Process
A final characteristic is that the individual becomes more content to be a process rather than a product. When entering therapy, the client often wishes to achieve a fixed state: solving their problems, being effective in work, or having a satisfactory marriage. In the freedom of the therapeutic relationship, they drop such fixed goals, accepting the more satisfying realization that they are not a fixed entity but a process of becoming.
One client, at the conclusion of therapy, says in a puzzled fashion:
I haven't finished the job of integrating and reorganizing myself, but that's only confusing, not discouraging, now that I realize this is a continuing process... It's exciting, sometimes upsetting, but deeply encouraging to feel yourself in action, apparently knowing where you are going even though you don't always consciously know where that is.
This expresses both trust in the organism and the realization of self as a process. It means being a fluid process, not a fixed entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.
Another client describes this fluidity:
This whole train of experiencing, and the meanings that I have thus far discovered in it, seem to have launched me on a process which is both fascinating and at times a little frightening. It seems to mean letting my experiences carry me on, in a direction which appears to be forward, towards goals that I can but dimly define, as I try to understand at least the current meaning of that experience. The sensation is that of floating with a complex stream of experience, with the fascinating possibility of trying to comprehend its ever-changing complexity.
Conclusion
I have tried to describe what occurs in the lives of people with whom I have had the privilege of being in a relationship as they strive to become themselves. I have endeavored to convey, as accurately as possible, the meanings involved in this process of becoming a person. I am certain this process is not unique to therapy, and I am equally sure that my understanding of it is incomplete, as it continues to evolve.
I stress the tentative nature of this description to clarify that I am not prescribing a goal for others to follow. Rather, I am sharing the meanings I see in the experiences my clients and I have shared. Perhaps this picture will illuminate or give more meaning to your own experiences.
I have noted that each individual seems to ask, "Who am I? " and "How may I become myself?" In a favorable psychological climate, a process of becoming takes place, where the individual drops defensive masks, fully experiences hidden aspects of themselves, and discovers the stranger who is their true self. The person who emerges is more open to their organic experiences, develops trust in their organism as an instrument of sensitive living, accepts the locus of evaluation within themselves, and learns to live as a participant in a fluid, ongoing process, continually discovering new aspects of themselves in the flow of experience. These are some of the elements involved in becoming a person.