자기 수용이 변화의 조건: Rogers(1995), On Becoming a Person

Rogers, C. R. (1995). On becoming a person: A therapist's view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (2nd Ed. -- 1판은 1961)
(국역본 있는데 읽어보지는 못함. 그리고 로저스 문장들의 독특한 느낌을 원문으로 느껴볼 것을 추천함.)
 

... the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change. I believe that I have learned this from my clients as well as within my own experience—that we cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed. (17)

 
1. 변화를 촉진하는 관계의 조건

상담사가 다음의 조건을 갖춘 관계를 제공하면, 상대는 반드시 변한다.

 

(1) 자기일치(congruence): 자신이 인식하는 바와 실제 경험하는 바가 일치하는 것. 거짓 겉모습(façade)이 없고, 자신이 현재 경험하는 것을 있는 그대로 인지하고, 표현할 수 있는 것. -- 진솔함(genuineness), 투명함. 자기 자신이 되기(be what you are, be the feelings you are experiencing). 그래야 진실한(real) 관계가 형성됨. 

"In my relationships with persons I have found that it does not help, in the long run, to act as though I were something that I am not. It does not help to act calm and pleasant when actually I am angry and critical. It does not help to act as though I know the answers when I do not. It does not help to act as though I were a loving person if actually, at the moment, I am hostile. It does not help for me to act as though I were full of assurance, if actually I am frightened and unsure."(16)

"It has been found that personal change is facilitated when the psychotherapist is what he is, when in the relationship with his client he is genuine and without “front” or façade, openly being the feelings and attitudes which at that moment are flowing in him. We have coined the term “congruence” to try to describe this condition. By this we mean that the feelings the therapist is experiencing are available to him, available to his awareness, and he is able to live these feelings, be them, and able to communicate them if appropriate. No one fully achieves this condition, yet the more the therapist is able to listen acceptantly to what is going on within himself, and the more he is able to be the complexity of his feelings, without fear, the higher the degree of his congruence."(61)

 

(2) 무조건적 긍정적 태도(unconditional positive regard) 또는 수용(acceptance): 상대가 지금 무엇을 느끼고 있든 상대가 바로 그것이라는 사실을 진정으로 승인하는 것.

"When the therapist is experiencing a warm, positive and acceptant attitude toward what is in the client, this facilitates change. It involves the therapist’s genuine willingness for the client to be whatever feeling is going on in him at that moment,—fear, confusion, pain, pride, anger, hatred, love, courage, or awe. It means that the therapist cares for the client, in a nonpossessive way. It means that he prizes the client in a total rather than a conditional way. By this I mean that he does not simply accept the client when he is behaving in certain ways, and disapprove of him when he behaves in other ways. It means an outgoing positive feeling without reservations, without evaluations. The term we have come to use for this is unconditional positive regard. Again research studies show that the more this attitude is experienced by the therapist, the more likelihood there is that therapy will be successful."(62) 

 

(3) 공감적 이해(empathic understanding): 외부로부터 평가하고 분석하는 대신에, 상대의 경험을 상대의 관점에서 이해하는 것. 

"Our first reaction to most of the statements which we hear from other people is an immediate evaluation, or judgment, rather than an understanding of it. When someone expresses some feeling or attitude or belief, our tendency is, almost immediately, to feel “That’s right”; or “That’s stupid”; “That’s abnormal”; “That’s unreasonable”; “That’s incorrect”; “That’s not nice.” Very rarely do we permit ourselves to understand precisely what the meaning of his statement is to him. I believe this is because understanding is risky. If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding. And we all fear change. So as I say, it is not an easy thing to permit oneself to understand an individual, to enter thoroughly and completely and empathically into his frame of reference. It is also a rare thing."(18)

"The third condition we may call empathic understanding. When the therapist is sensing the feelings and personal meanings which the client is experiencing in each moment, when he can perceive these from “inside,” as they seem to the client, and when he can successfully communicate something of that understanding to his client, then this third condition is fulfilled.
  "I suspect each of us has discovered that this kind of understanding is extremely rare. We neither receive it nor offer it with any great frequency. Instead we offer another type of understanding which is very different. “I understand what is wrong with you”; “I understand what makes you act that way”; or “I too have experienced your trouble and I reacted very differently”; these are the types of understanding which we usually offer and receive, an evaluative understanding from the outside. But when someone understands how it feels and seems to be me, without wanting to analyze me or judge me, then I can blossom and grow in that climate."(62) 

"Studies with a variety of clients show that when these three conditions occur in the therapist, and when they are to some degree perceived by the client, therapeutic movement ensues, the client finds himself painfully but definitely learning and growing, and both he and his therapist regard the outcome as successful. It seems from our studies that it is attitudes such as these rather than the therapist’s technical knowledge and skill, which are primarily responsible for therapeutic change."(63) 

 
2. 관련된 요소들

- 변화의 원리: 상담자가 내담자의 감정을 수용적으로 들어주면, 내담자 자신도 점차 자신의 감정을 열린 마음으로 듣고 자신을 있는 그대로 수용할 수 있게 됨. -- 가면과 방어 행동을 내려놓고, 자기 자신이 됨.

"The reactions of the client who experiences for a time the kind of therapeutic relationship which I have described are a reciprocal of the therapist’s attitudes. In the first place, as he finds someone else listening acceptantly to his feelings, he little by little becomes able to listen to himself. He begins to receive the communications from within himself—to realize that he is angry, to recognize when he is frightened, even to realize when he is feeling courageous. As he becomes more open to what is going on within him he becomes able to listen to feelings which he has always denied and repressed. He can listen to feelings which have seemed to him so terrible, or so disorganizing, or so abnormal, or so shameful, that he has never been able to recognize their existence in himself. 
  "While he is learning to listen to himself he also becomes more acceptant of himself. As he expresses more and more of the hidden and awful aspects of himself, he finds the therapist showing a consistent and unconditional positive regard for him and his feelings. Slowly he moves toward taking the same attitude toward himself, accepting himself as he is, and therefore ready to move forward in the process of becoming."(63) 
  "And finally as he listens more accurately to the feelings within, and becomes less evaluative and more acceptant toward himself, he also moves toward greater congruence. He finds it possible to move out from behind the façades he has used, to drop his defensive behaviors, and more openly to be what he truly is. As these changes occur, as he becomes more self-aware, more self-acceptant, less defensive and more open, he finds that he is at last free to change and grow in the directions natural to the human organism."(63-64)  

 

- 자기 자신이 되기(being what one is): 자신의 경험을 온전히, 왜곡 없이 인지하는 것. 자신이라는 유기체의 기본적인 경험으로 돌아가는 것. 'Being one's organism, one's experience'.

"The thread which runs through much of the foregoing material of this chapter is that psychotherapy (at least client-centered therapy) is a process whereby man becomes his organism—without self-deception, without distortion. What does this mean? 
...
"Therapy seems to mean a getting back to basic sensory and visceral experience. Prior to therapy the person is prone to ask himself, often unwittingly, “What do others think I should do in this situation?” “What would my parents or my culture want me to do?” “What do I think ought to be done?” He is thus continually acting in terms of the form which should be imposed upon his behavior. This does not necessarily mean that he always acts in accord with the opinions of others. He may indeed endeavor to act so as to contradict the expectations of others. He is nevertheless acting in terms of the expectations (often introjected expectations) of others. During the process of therapy the individual comes to ask himself, in regard to ever-widening areas of his life-space, “How do I experience this?” “What does it mean to me?” ... "(103)
...
"In therapy the person adds to ordinary experience the full and undistorted awareness of his experiencing—of his sensory and visceral reactions. He ceases, or at least decreases, the distortions of experience in awareness. He can be aware of what he is actually experiencing, not simply what he can permit himself to experience after a thorough screening through a conceptual filter. In this sense the person becomes for the first time the full potential of the human organism, with the enriching element of awareness freely added to the basic aspect of sensory and visceral reaction. The person comes to be what he is, as clients so frequently say in therapy. What this seems to mean is that the individual comes to be—in awareness—what he is—in experience. He is, in other words, a complete and fully functioning human organism. (104-105)

 

- 정확하고 유연한 인식: 자신에 대해서뿐 아니라 바깥 세상에 대해서도, 현실을 있는 그대로 인지하게 됨.

"Now in a safe relationship of the sort I have described, this defensiveness or rigidity, tends to be replaced by an increasing openness to experience. The individual becomes more openly aware of his own feelings and attitudes as they exist in him at an organic level, in the way I tried to describe. He also becomes more aware of reality as it exists outside of himself, instead of perceiving it in preconceived categories. He sees that not all trees are green, not all men are stern fathers, not all women are rejecting, not all failure experiences prove that he is no good, and the like. He is able to take in the evidence in a new situation, as it is, rather than distorting it to fit a pattern which he already holds. As you might expect, this increasing ability to be open to experience makes him far more realistic in dealing with new people, new situations, new problems. It means that his beliefs are not rigid, that he can tolerate ambiguity. He can receive much conflicting evidence without forcing closure upon the situation. This openness of awareness to what exists at this moment in oneself and in the situation is, I believe, an important element in the description of the person who emerges from therapy."(115-116) 

 

- 평가의 내적 기반: 평가적 판단의 유일한 기준은 자기 자신에게 진실되느냐 여부.

"Another trend which is evident in this process of becoming a person relates to the source or locus of choices and decisions, or evaluative judgments. The individual increasingly comes to feel that this locus of evaluation lies within himself. Less and less does he look to others for approval or disapproval; for standards to live by; for decisions and choices. He recognizes that it rests within himself to choose; that the only question which matters is, “Am I living in a way which is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?” This I think is perhaps the most important question for the creative individual.(119)

 
[생각]
- 진짜로 좀 해보자. 당위, 평가, 타인의 기대 등에 앞서 내가 실제로 경험하는 일차적 경험들을 있는 그대로 인지하기. 그러려면 일단 그 경험들이 나라는 것을 수용하는 자세가 필요하다 -- 내가 지금 이런 경험들을 하고 있다는 사실을 괜찮다고 여기는 자세. 물론 나의 경험들은 괜찮지 않고, 나는 더 나아져야 하고, 나는 내 경험들이라기보다는 더 잘 발휘되기를 기다리는 나의 이성이라고 생각한다. 하지만 그러한 당위적 믿음이 참인지와 무관하게, 그런 당위적 믿음이 내 안에서 나의 정확한 자기인식을 방해하는 방식으로 작동하고 있다면 그건 문제다. 당위적 믿음은 자기회피, 기만, 방어의 기능을 한다. 내가 추구하는 이상을 생각함으로써 나는 현실의 나를 직면하기를 거부하고 있을 수 있다. 자기수용적 태도를 가져야 정확한 자기인식이 가능해지고, 변화가 가능해진다. 그리고 자기수용은 누구에게나 가능하다. 자기수용은 자신이 훌륭한 사람이라고 생각하는 상태가 아니라, 인식의 장애물들을 걷어낸 상태인 듯하다. 
- 평가의 기반이 각자의 내부에 있어야 한다는 것도 궁극적으로 참이고, 상대주의와는 다른 차원의 문제인 것 같다. (보완 예정)