人本主义心理学大师Carl R. Rogers的心理学电子书

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Person to Person:
The Problem of Being Human
A New Trend in Psychology

by Carl R. Rogers and Barry Stevens

This is an unusual book, put together by a unique person, and
built around some papers which present an all too uncommon point
of view. Let me explain.
In the first place each paper some of my own, others by Drs.
Gendlin, Shlien, and Van Dusen is set in a context of warm human
reaction to the paper. Barry Stevens regards each of these papers as
a sort of oasis in current professional literature, and has lovingly
placed each of them in a setting composed of her own very personal
associations to the theme of the writer. Her comments are not com-
ments on the paper. They are not a review of the paper. They are the
highly personal feelings and thoughts which the paper triggered off
in her. It is as though a friend told you of many responses set off in
himself by something he had read. So you are stimulated to read the
material yourself to see what you can get out of it. This seems like a
natural approach, but it is certainly not a conventional one. It is
simply not the way books are written or compiled.
2But this is not so surprising when we consider Barry Stevens. She
is not a person easily categorized. Though she knows, and is in cor-
respondence with, many of the great and near-great in our Western
culture she has no position, no status, no professional classification ex-
cept the vague term, \"writer.\" (I think she would prefer the term \"ama-
teur,\" because she deeply believes that the \"amateur\" and the \"pro-
fessional\" complement each other.) She is independent in her thought
and in her life, continually striving to break out of the bonds which
tend to hold all of us. She wrote much of the material for this book
while a guest of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute, and in her
quiet, effortless way became, during that period, an important figure
in the lives of many of the individuals who work there. She has some-
how achieved in her life a wisdom which seems all too rare in these
days when knowledge has become so all-important. Many readers
may find her personal statements more valuable and more rewarding
than the writings they were intended to frame. She often sees through
to the heart of the matter in a most perceptive way. But I believe the

uniqueness of her person shows through in her writing, so I will lei
the reader discover her for himself.
The book is built around seven papers which start from an as-
sumption unusual in psychology today. The assumption is that the
subjective human being has an importance and a value which is basic:
that no matter how he may be labeled or evaluated he is a human per-
son first of all, and most deeply. He is not only a machine, not only
a collection of stimulus-response bonds, not an object, not a pawn.
So while the papers cover a variety of topics, and in at least three in-
stances deal with individuals labeled \"abnormal,\" they are all basically
about persons.
For this reason it is felt that they may appeal to persons - persons
who, like the authors, are seeking for a way in which life can best be
chosen, and most rewardingly lived. It will be obvious that the papers
appealed to one person, Barry Stevens, and her reactions - some-
times charming, sometimes moving, sometimes critical, sometimes
profound - fonn the links between the themes of the authors.
This book would not have been written, compiled, or published,
if it had not been the belief of all concerned that it has a relevance for
human beings today. It seems possible to us that the reader may come
to feel something like this: \"This book helps me to understand my-
self a little better, so now I understand the other a bit better, and to
this degree I am a little less baffled by both of us.\" Or to put it in a
slightly different fashion, it is our hope that the person who reads it
will find in it pennission to be and to become more of himself.