A Miracle of “We!”

By Patrick Howley

Reflections on Carl Rogers’ Interview of a teenager (Elaine) on a Psychiatric Ward (1959)

Some thoughts and feelings of Patrick Howley, a person-centered  counselor from  Rhode Island, after reading the interview of Elaine.

(Recently, when I was at the Center for the Studies of the Person I had the opportunity to go through our files and I randomly pulled out a folder with a transcript of Carl Rogers interviewing Elaine. I started to scan it. My intent was to just get a quick sense of a counseling session that Carl might have had back then.  Despite not always being able to follow the dialogue I got pulled into it. There is Elaine and I picture her as a young teen in this psychiatric ward, confused, alone and scared.  The time just slipped by and I read all 22 pages of the interview. What follows are small snippets’ of the conversation and some of my reactions.

 

Session Starts:

Carl Rogers (CR): “I just thought l’d like to talk with you. What I would be interested in would be if you would tell me anything you’re willing to tell me about yourself and your situation.”

My thoughts & feelings:

Carl reaches out to her so gently and honestly.

I am  touched by his use of the word “if.” It is her choice. And by the words, “anything” and  “willing.” Carl is saying to her that she has choices. She is in charge. That he is not. He is conveying to her that she has autonomy and can make choices He invites her but she can turn down the invitation. It is Okay.

These are words that are so deeply respectful of her. It is her choice and she can say anything if she is willing.

            CR: Do you want to tell me a little bit about it?

Elaine(E) :“Well its mostly at home and with my parents. Its up to the other kid’s parents and the car. I don’t know exactly what happened. But it’s serious.

CR: “It is. Its that it’s all disruptive at home”.

CR: But it’s hard to tell about.

E: “Its hard to tell about,” she says. Then she says, “Could we just drop it, is’t possible”?

CR: That’s one possibility is to just drop it.

E: “Just forget about it”

CR: Ah . . . if you could just put it out of your mind”.

E: “Yes”.

CR: “Mhm, hmm. And maybe sometimes that seems like a .  .  .

Elaine: “An impossible thing to do.

CR: Ah, hm. An impossible thing to do

 

My thoughts & feelings:

And Carl again listens so deeply, by saying back to her , “if you could just kind of put it out of mind”.

So then Elaine says that it is an impossible thing to do. And now as a result of that response from Carl, she goes on to say more. She shares in a disjointed way so that Carl does not know who she is referring to and he has to ask “. . . and this is your parents you’re speaking of?”

It becomes clear after a while that she does not want to say any more about that.

And Carl says, “I guess that settles that part of it. But I was thinking that if there was anything that you were willing to tell me that would help me to know you better. . . “

He again respects so deeply Elaine’s wish not to say more about what she was talking about but he also invites her to continue talking if she wishes to.

She starts to talk about another person and it is not clear to me what she is talking about or where she is going with this sharing.  But Carl stays with her through this ambiguity without interrupting. It allows him to hear information or details that would clear up for her in what appears to me at first as rambling. He continues to say back to her what he thinks she is trying to say to him. And then a little later he seems to gently say, “I’m not sure that I quite understand that.”

My thoughts & feelings:

Sometimes there have been moments when I feel like I have been at my Carl Rogers’ best.  A metaphor comes to mind. I liken it to someone who I have been listening to who is leading me through a deep forest and don’t seem like they know where they are going, but at the same time they move forward, cutting down the brush in a certain direction, of which I am not sure about. And yet I follow anyway, not asking questions but just staying right behind them every step of the way. Sometimes I have done that, I have followed a client into their forest. Many times I have not and wish I did.

Elaine tends to be sharing incoherent thoughts and feelings and Carl is consistent in  staying with her.

When there was another opportunity he gently invites her again:

CR: “Are there any other things you could tell me that would help me to know you a little better? Cause I don’t know anything of your record or . . .”

Elaine responds “You mean you actually know me.

You probably actually know me.”

“No”, Rogers says, “I really don’t.”

E: “You really don’t know me?”

R: “ No I really don’t know you. Just what you’ve told me now is what I know

 of you.”

And now she responds with:

E “Hmm. I guess it takes lots of expense and lot”sa money.

My thoughts & feelings:

And Carl again follows her own train of thought as she begins to talk eventually about her Dad.

Elaine goes back and forth talking about others and then talking about herself.

E: “I’m strictly a Conn and not a Catholic.”

A few seconds later Rogers says in response to something she says,

CR: “I see. So you’re the kind of person that feels, ‘This is my property and don’t come in unless I invite you to.”

Just a few seconds later, I believe, she says:

E: “It was changed. It’s natural for me to be this way. I am a human being. I’d like to have you know. And I’m no baby. I don’t like to be considered as a baby. I’d considered to be as a higher girl, as a higher woman, as a higher boy.

CR:  And you feel that if anybody feels that you’re just a baby, by gosh, you don’t like that.

E: “No, I don’t.”

Elaine eventually goes on to talk about wanting to have a husband, men, drinking, and her father.

And then Elaine and Carl get to the following interchange, which was a very touching moment for me. It is the miracle of a deeply spiritual moment.

CR: “I’m not sure that I’m putting this together right. But you feel a man can’t be perfect all the time. But on the other hand, you can only take so much too”.

E: “Yes, does that make sense now?”

CR: “I think so. I guess the sense I make out it is that uh . . . You felt that someone, I don’t know just who, wasn’t perfect and you tried to put up with them as long as you could. But, boy! There was a limit to what you could take.”

E: “Yes. You’re saying what I, it is I couldn’t say.” *(See below)

My thoughts & feelings:

As I read the transcript of this interview for the second time I am realizing that it is this point in the interview that touched me so very deeply.

Here is a young person reluctantly struggling to express her internal needs, pain, confusions, angst, needs and desires. A person who seems to have difficulty staying focused and coherently expressing herself, and yet she expresses so well to Carl in this moment that, “Yes. You’re saying what I, it is I couldn’t say.” ; that is, yes Carl, you are saying back to me in your own words what I could not find the words to say and you got it exactly right.  I put myself in her place at the moment as I was reading the transcript and screamed, YES! YES! YES! I am heard! I am understood! I am understood better than I even understand myself!

The consistent, “staying with”, by Carl, and “being with” her, brought me to tears

(my eyes moistened-see below) even after the second time and third time reading the interview! Carl’s efforts to understand her world of meaning in such a gentle and respectful manner, felt like he was saying to her:

“You are a person I value and respect. I want to know you in any way you wish me to know you.  If you want me to know you, I am here right now, at this moment wishing to know you.”

He does not push her to open up. He does not lead her in any way. He does not go farther than she goes in her opening up or expressing herself. He so delicately responds to her, saying when he might be lost, saying to her what he thinks she is conveying to him. He meets her where she is and goes with her where she goes, asking for guidance from her as they speak to one another. He is as open, raw and vulnerable as she is.   It is as beautiful as watching a sunset, a rainbow, and as beautiful as observing a crystal clear drop of water on a leaf! I feel deeply the spirituality of the person-centered approach in moments like this. It is a “stunning, staggering miracle”* and it is absolutely beautiful to witness! Thus my tears.

 *For me, Ken Wilber captures the essence of this moment of understanding between Carl and Elaine by describing it as “a miracle called ‘we.’

 “When you and I come together, and we begin talking, resonating, sharing, and understanding each other a “we” forms.

. . . this we does exist, and you and I do come together, and we do understand each other, and we can’t help but understand each other at least on occasion.

Interesting, isn’t it?

The richness and complexity of this “we” is simply staggering . . .

.  .  . and yet it exists. And we can understand each other—you and I can understand each other! But how on earth do you get in my mind, and I get in your mind, enough that we are in each other to the point that we both agree that we can each see what the other sees? However this happens, it is a miracle, an absolute, stunning staggering miracle . . .”

And yet it does indeed exist. If we defined God as “the nexus of a we,” right there we would have proof of God’s existence”.

 Ken Wilber, Chapter 7, p.153, Integral Spirituality,2006

I think this “we” is a miracle. It is healing. A healing process has begun for Elaine because a person, (Carl) has entered her life and sees her as a person and authentically wants to hear her and her experience.

“I have often noticed that the more deeply I hear the meanings of this person, the more there is that happens. Almost always, when a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, “Thank God, somebody heard me Someone knows what it’s like to be me.” In such moments I have had the fantasy of a prisoner in a dungeon, tapping out day after day a Morse code message, “Does anybody hear me? Is anybody there?” And finally one day he hears some faint tappings which spell out “Yes.” By that one simple response he is released from his loneliness; he has become a human being again.” Carl Rogers, p. 10,  A Way of Being