Readings for Week 4
PERMA -- Seligman et.al.
Authentic Happiness
Martin E.P. Seligman, April 2011
Happiness Is Not Enough
When I started my work in Positive Psychology, my original view was closest to Aristotle's - that everything we do is done in order to make us happy - but I actually detest the word happiness, which is so overused that it has become almost meaningless. It is an unworkable term for science, or for any practical goal such as education, therapy, public policy, or just changing your personal life. Moreover, the modern ear immediately hears "happy" to mean buoyant mood, merriment, good cheer, and smiling. "Happiness" historically is not closely tied to such hedonics - feeling cheerful or merry is a far cry from what Thomas Jefferson declared that we have the right to pursue - and it is an even further cry from my intentions for a positive psychology.
To understand what "happiness" is really about, the first step is to dissolve "happiness" into more workable terms. When I wrote Authentic Happiness a decade ago, I thought that happiness could be analyzed into three different elements that we choose for their own sakes: positive emotion, engagement, and meaning. Positive emotion refers to what we feel: pleasure, rapture, ecstasy, warmth, comfort, and other such emotions that contribute to the "pleasant life." Engagement is about flow: being one with the music, time stopping, and the loss of self-consciousness during an absorbing activity, experiences which contribute to the "engaged life." The third element is meaning. I go into flow while playing bridge, but after a long tournament, when I look in the mirror, I worry that I am fidgeting until I die. Human beings, ineluctably, want the "meaningful life": belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than you are. Happiness and life satisfaction, I thought, could be increased by building positive emotion, engagement, and a sense of meaning in life.
This is not enough.
I no longer think that positive psychology is about happiness, or about a quest for increasing life satisfaction through positive emotion, engagement, and meaning. It turns out that how much life satisfaction people report is itself determined by how good we feel at the very moment we are asked the question. Averaged over many people, the mood you are in determines more than 70 percent of how much life satisfaction you report. If positive psychology is to be more than a "happiology" of cheerful mood, we need to shift our focus to well-being. I believe the gold standard for measuring well-being is flourishing, and that the goal of positive psychology is to increase flourishing. Flourishing rests on five pillars, each of which we value for its own sake, not merely as a means to some other end. Positive emotion, engagement, and meaning are three of the pillars, but they cannot do the "heavy lifting" of supporting human flourishing by themselves.
The Need to Achieve
Accomplishment (or achievement) is often pursued for its own sake, even when it brings no positive emotion, no meaning, and nothing in the way of positive relationships. Here is what ultimately convinced me: I play a lot of serious duplicate bridge. I have played with and against many of the greatest players. Some expert bridge players play to improve, to solve problems, to be in flow, or to experience outright joy. Other experts play only to win. For them, losing is devastating no matter how well they played. Some will even cheat to win. It does not seem that winning for them reduces to positive emotion (many of the stonier experts deny feeling anything at all when they win and quickly rush on to the next game), nor does the pursuit reduce to engagement, since defeat nullifies the experience so easily. Nor is it about meaning; bridge is not about anything remotely larger than the self.
Winning only for winning's sake can also be seen in the pursuit of wealth. In contrast to philanthropic millionaires, there are "accumulators" who believe that the person who dies with the most toys wins. Their lives are built around winning, and they do not give away their toys except in the service of winning more toys. So well-being theory requires a third element: the "achieving life," dedicated to accomplishment for the sake of accomplishment.
Other People Matter
Near the Portuguese island of Madeira, there lies a small island shaped like an enormous cylinder. At the top is a several-acre plateau on which are grown the most prized grapes that go into Madeira wine. On this plateau lives only one large animal: an ox whose job is to plow the field. There is only one way up to the top, a winding and narrow path. How in the world does a new ox get up there when the old ox dies? A baby ox is carried on the back of a worker up the mountain, where it spends the next forty years plowing the field alone. If you are moved by this story, ask yourself why.
Very little that is positive is solitary. When was the last time you laughed uproariously? The last time you felt indescribable joy? The last time you sensed profound meaning and purpose? The last time you felt enormously proud of an accomplishment? Even without knowing the particulars of these high points of your life, I know their form: all of them took place around other people. When asked what, in two words or fewer, positive psychology is about, Christopher Peterson, one of its founders, replies, "Other people." Other people is the best antidote to the downs of life and the single most reliable up.
Recent streams of argument about human evolution point to the importance of positive relationships in their own right and for their own sake. Studies of the big social brain, the hive emotions, and group selection persuade me that positive relationships - key to "the connected life" - are a basic element of well-being.
Well-Being Theory: PERMA
In the new well-being theory, human flourishing rests on five pillars, denoted by the handy mnemonic PERMA:
Positive Emotion
Engagement
Relationships
Meaning
Accomplishment
These elements, which we choose for their own sake in our efforts to flourish, are the rock-bottom fundamentals to human well-being. What is the good life? It is pleasant, engaged, meaningful, achieving, and connected.
This excerpt is edited from chapter one of Martin E.P. Seligman's Flourish . Published April 5, 2011. Simon and Schuster.
Happiness Is Not Enough
When I started my work in Positive Psychology, my original view was closest to Aristotle's - that everything we do is done in order to make us happy - but I actually detest the word happiness, which is so overused that it has become almost meaningless. It is an unworkable term for science, or for any practical goal such as education, therapy, public policy, or just changing your personal life. Moreover, the modern ear immediately hears "happy" to mean buoyant mood, merriment, good cheer, and smiling. "Happiness" historically is not closely tied to such hedonics - feeling cheerful or merry is a far cry from what Thomas Jefferson declared that we have the right to pursue - and it is an even further cry from my intentions for a positive psychology.
To understand what "happiness" is really about, the first step is to dissolve "happiness" into more workable terms. When I wrote Authentic Happiness a decade ago, I thought that happiness could be analyzed into three different elements that we choose for their own sakes: positive emotion, engagement, and meaning. Positive emotion refers to what we feel: pleasure, rapture, ecstasy, warmth, comfort, and other such emotions that contribute to the "pleasant life." Engagement is about flow: being one with the music, time stopping, and the loss of self-consciousness during an absorbing activity, experiences which contribute to the "engaged life." The third element is meaning. I go into flow while playing bridge, but after a long tournament, when I look in the mirror, I worry that I am fidgeting until I die. Human beings, ineluctably, want the "meaningful life": belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than you are. Happiness and life satisfaction, I thought, could be increased by building positive emotion, engagement, and a sense of meaning in life.
This is not enough.
I no longer think that positive psychology is about happiness, or about a quest for increasing life satisfaction through positive emotion, engagement, and meaning. It turns out that how much life satisfaction people report is itself determined by how good we feel at the very moment we are asked the question. Averaged over many people, the mood you are in determines more than 70 percent of how much life satisfaction you report. If positive psychology is to be more than a "happiology" of cheerful mood, we need to shift our focus to well-being. I believe the gold standard for measuring well-being is flourishing, and that the goal of positive psychology is to increase flourishing. Flourishing rests on five pillars, each of which we value for its own sake, not merely as a means to some other end. Positive emotion, engagement, and meaning are three of the pillars, but they cannot do the "heavy lifting" of supporting human flourishing by themselves.
The Need to Achieve
Accomplishment (or achievement) is often pursued for its own sake, even when it brings no positive emotion, no meaning, and nothing in the way of positive relationships. Here is what ultimately convinced me: I play a lot of serious duplicate bridge. I have played with and against many of the greatest players. Some expert bridge players play to improve, to solve problems, to be in flow, or to experience outright joy. Other experts play only to win. For them, losing is devastating no matter how well they played. Some will even cheat to win. It does not seem that winning for them reduces to positive emotion (many of the stonier experts deny feeling anything at all when they win and quickly rush on to the next game), nor does the pursuit reduce to engagement, since defeat nullifies the experience so easily. Nor is it about meaning; bridge is not about anything remotely larger than the self.
Winning only for winning's sake can also be seen in the pursuit of wealth. In contrast to philanthropic millionaires, there are "accumulators" who believe that the person who dies with the most toys wins. Their lives are built around winning, and they do not give away their toys except in the service of winning more toys. So well-being theory requires a third element: the "achieving life," dedicated to accomplishment for the sake of accomplishment.
Other People Matter
Near the Portuguese island of Madeira, there lies a small island shaped like an enormous cylinder. At the top is a several-acre plateau on which are grown the most prized grapes that go into Madeira wine. On this plateau lives only one large animal: an ox whose job is to plow the field. There is only one way up to the top, a winding and narrow path. How in the world does a new ox get up there when the old ox dies? A baby ox is carried on the back of a worker up the mountain, where it spends the next forty years plowing the field alone. If you are moved by this story, ask yourself why.
Very little that is positive is solitary. When was the last time you laughed uproariously? The last time you felt indescribable joy? The last time you sensed profound meaning and purpose? The last time you felt enormously proud of an accomplishment? Even without knowing the particulars of these high points of your life, I know their form: all of them took place around other people. When asked what, in two words or fewer, positive psychology is about, Christopher Peterson, one of its founders, replies, "Other people." Other people is the best antidote to the downs of life and the single most reliable up.
Recent streams of argument about human evolution point to the importance of positive relationships in their own right and for their own sake. Studies of the big social brain, the hive emotions, and group selection persuade me that positive relationships - key to "the connected life" - are a basic element of well-being.
Well-Being Theory: PERMA
In the new well-being theory, human flourishing rests on five pillars, denoted by the handy mnemonic PERMA:
Positive Emotion
Engagement
Relationships
Meaning
Accomplishment
These elements, which we choose for their own sake in our efforts to flourish, are the rock-bottom fundamentals to human well-being. What is the good life? It is pleasant, engaged, meaningful, achieving, and connected.
This excerpt is edited from chapter one of Martin E.P. Seligman's Flourish . Published April 5, 2011. Simon and Schuster.
and a little more on that...
by Martin Seligman Ph.D., April 2011
This an excerpt from Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being
The Original Theory: Authentic Happiness
Positive psychology, as I intend it, is about what we choose for its own sake. I chose to have a back rub in the Minneapolis airport recently because it made me feel good. I chose the back rub for its own sake, not because it gave my life more meaning or for any other reason. We often choose what makes us feel good, but it is very important to realize that often our choices are not made for the sake of how we will feel. I chose to listen to my six-year-old’s excruciating piano recital last night, not because it made me feel good but because it is my parental duty and part of what gives my life meaning.
The theory in Authentic Happiness is that happiness could be analyzed into three different elements that we choose for their own sakes: positive emotion, engagement, and meaning. And each of these elements is better defined and more measurable than happiness. The first is positive emotion; what we feel: pleasure, rapture, ecstasy, warmth, comfort, and the like. An entire life led successfully around this element, I call the “pleasant life.”
The second element, engagement, is about flow: being one with the music, time stopping, and the loss of self-consciousness during an absorbing activity. I refer to a life lived with these aims as the “engaged life.” Engagement is different, even opposite, from positive emotion; for if you ask people who are in flow what they are thinking and feeling, they usually say, “nothing.” In flow we merge with the object. I believe that the concentrated attention that flow requires uses up all the cognitive and emotional resources that make up thought and feeling.
There are no shortcuts to flow. On the contrary, you need to deploy your highest strengths and talents to meet the world in flow. There are effortless shortcuts to feeling positive emotion, which is another difference between engagement and positive emotion. You can masturbate, go shopping, take drugs, or watch television. Hence, the importance of identifying your highest strengths and learning to use them more often in order to go into flow.
There is yet a third element of happiness, which is meaning. I go into flow playing bridge, but after a long tournament, when I look in the mirror, I worry that I am fidgeting until I die. The pursuit of engagement and the pursuit of pleasure are often solitary, solipsistic endeavors. Human beings, ineluctably, want meaning and purpose in life. The Meaningful Life consists in belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than the self, and humanity creates all the positive institutions to allow this: religion, political party, being Green, the Boy Scouts, or the family.
“Your 2002 theory can’t be right, Marty,” said Senia Maymin when we were discussing my previous theory in my Introduction to Positive Psychology for the inaugural class of the Master of Applied Positive Psychology in 2005. A thirty-two-year-old Harvard University summa in mathematics who is fluent in Russian and Japanese and runs her own hedge fund, Senia is a poster child for positive psychology. Her smile warms even cavernous classrooms like those in Huntsman Hall, nicknamed the “Death Star” by the Wharton School business students of the University of Pennsylvania who call it their home base. The students in this Masters program are really special: thirty-five successful adults from all over the world who fly into Philadelphia once a month for a three-day feast of what’s at the cutting edge in positive psychology and how they can apply it to their professions.
“The 2002 theory in the book Authentic Happiness, is supposed to be a theory of what humans choose, but it has a huge hole in it: it omits success and mastery. People try to achieve just for winning’s own sake,” Senia continued.
This was the moment I began to rethink happiness. Senia’s challenge crystallized ten years of teaching, thinking about, and testing this theory and pushed me to develop it further. Beginning in that October class in Huntsman Hall, I changed my mind about what positive psychology is. I also changed my mind about what the elements of positive psychology are and what the goal of positive psychology should be.
Summary of Well-Being Theory
Here then is well-being theory: well-being is a construct; and well-being, not happiness, is the topic of positive psychology. Well-being has five measurable elements (PERMA) that count toward it:
In authentic happiness theory, by contrast, happiness is the centerpiece of positive psychology. It is a real thing that is defined by the measurement of life satisfaction. Happiness has three aspects: positive emotion, engagement, and meaning, each of which feeds into life satisfaction and is measured entirely by subjective report.
There is one loose end to clarify: in authentic happiness theory, the strengths and virtues—kindness, social intelligence, humor, courage, integrity, and the like (there are twenty-four of them)—are the supports for engagement. You go into flow when your highest strengths are deployed to meet the highest challenges that come your way. In well-being theory, these twenty-four strengths underpin all five elements, not just engagement: deploying your highest strengths leads to more positive emotion, to more meaning, to more accomplishment, and to better relationships.
Authentic happiness theory is one-dimensional: it is about feeling good and it claims that the way we choose our life course is to try to maximize how we feel. Well-being theory is about all five pillars, the underpinnings of the five elements is the strengths. Well-being theory is plural in method as well as substance: positive emotion is a subjective variable, defined by what you think and feel. Meaning, relationships, and accomplishment have both subjective and objective components, since you can believe you have meaning, good relations, and high accomplishment and be wrong, even deluded. The upshot of this is that well-being cannot exist just in your own head: well-being is a combination of feeling good as well as actually having meaning, good relationships, and accomplishment. The way we choose our course in life is to maximize all five of these elements.
This difference between happiness theory and well-being theory is of real moment. Happiness theory claims that the way we make choices is to estimate how much happiness (life satisfaction) will ensue and then we take the course that maximizes future happiness: Maximizing happiness is the final common path of individual choice.
For now I want to give just one example of why happiness theory fails abysmally as the sole explanation of how we choose. It is well established that couples with children have on average lower happiness and life satisfaction than childless couples. If evolution had to rely on maximizing happiness, the human race would have died out long ago. So clearly humans are either massively deluded about how much life satisfaction children will bring, or else we use some additional metric for choosing to reproduce. Similarly, if personal future happiness were our sole aim, we would leave our aging parents out on ice floes to die. So the happiness monism not only conflicts with the facts, but it is a poor moral guide as well: from happiness theory as a guide to life choice, some couples might choose to remain childless. When we broaden our view of well-bring to include meaning and relationships, it becomes obvious why we choose to have children and why we choose to care for our aging parents.
The goal of positive psychology in authentic happiness theory is, like Richard Layard’s goal, to increase the amount of happiness in your own life and on the planet. The goal of positive psychology in well-being theory, in contrast, is plural and importantly different: it is to increase the amount of flourishing in your own life and on the planet.
Learn More About Well-Being
Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being: Read chapter 1 (“What Is Well-Being?”)
https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/node/17
This an excerpt from Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being
The Original Theory: Authentic Happiness
Positive psychology, as I intend it, is about what we choose for its own sake. I chose to have a back rub in the Minneapolis airport recently because it made me feel good. I chose the back rub for its own sake, not because it gave my life more meaning or for any other reason. We often choose what makes us feel good, but it is very important to realize that often our choices are not made for the sake of how we will feel. I chose to listen to my six-year-old’s excruciating piano recital last night, not because it made me feel good but because it is my parental duty and part of what gives my life meaning.
The theory in Authentic Happiness is that happiness could be analyzed into three different elements that we choose for their own sakes: positive emotion, engagement, and meaning. And each of these elements is better defined and more measurable than happiness. The first is positive emotion; what we feel: pleasure, rapture, ecstasy, warmth, comfort, and the like. An entire life led successfully around this element, I call the “pleasant life.”
The second element, engagement, is about flow: being one with the music, time stopping, and the loss of self-consciousness during an absorbing activity. I refer to a life lived with these aims as the “engaged life.” Engagement is different, even opposite, from positive emotion; for if you ask people who are in flow what they are thinking and feeling, they usually say, “nothing.” In flow we merge with the object. I believe that the concentrated attention that flow requires uses up all the cognitive and emotional resources that make up thought and feeling.
There are no shortcuts to flow. On the contrary, you need to deploy your highest strengths and talents to meet the world in flow. There are effortless shortcuts to feeling positive emotion, which is another difference between engagement and positive emotion. You can masturbate, go shopping, take drugs, or watch television. Hence, the importance of identifying your highest strengths and learning to use them more often in order to go into flow.
There is yet a third element of happiness, which is meaning. I go into flow playing bridge, but after a long tournament, when I look in the mirror, I worry that I am fidgeting until I die. The pursuit of engagement and the pursuit of pleasure are often solitary, solipsistic endeavors. Human beings, ineluctably, want meaning and purpose in life. The Meaningful Life consists in belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than the self, and humanity creates all the positive institutions to allow this: religion, political party, being Green, the Boy Scouts, or the family.
“Your 2002 theory can’t be right, Marty,” said Senia Maymin when we were discussing my previous theory in my Introduction to Positive Psychology for the inaugural class of the Master of Applied Positive Psychology in 2005. A thirty-two-year-old Harvard University summa in mathematics who is fluent in Russian and Japanese and runs her own hedge fund, Senia is a poster child for positive psychology. Her smile warms even cavernous classrooms like those in Huntsman Hall, nicknamed the “Death Star” by the Wharton School business students of the University of Pennsylvania who call it their home base. The students in this Masters program are really special: thirty-five successful adults from all over the world who fly into Philadelphia once a month for a three-day feast of what’s at the cutting edge in positive psychology and how they can apply it to their professions.
“The 2002 theory in the book Authentic Happiness, is supposed to be a theory of what humans choose, but it has a huge hole in it: it omits success and mastery. People try to achieve just for winning’s own sake,” Senia continued.
This was the moment I began to rethink happiness. Senia’s challenge crystallized ten years of teaching, thinking about, and testing this theory and pushed me to develop it further. Beginning in that October class in Huntsman Hall, I changed my mind about what positive psychology is. I also changed my mind about what the elements of positive psychology are and what the goal of positive psychology should be.
Summary of Well-Being Theory
Here then is well-being theory: well-being is a construct; and well-being, not happiness, is the topic of positive psychology. Well-being has five measurable elements (PERMA) that count toward it:
- Positive emotion (Of which happiness and life satisfaction are all aspects)
- Engagement
- Relationships
- Meaning and purpose
- Accomplishment
In authentic happiness theory, by contrast, happiness is the centerpiece of positive psychology. It is a real thing that is defined by the measurement of life satisfaction. Happiness has three aspects: positive emotion, engagement, and meaning, each of which feeds into life satisfaction and is measured entirely by subjective report.
There is one loose end to clarify: in authentic happiness theory, the strengths and virtues—kindness, social intelligence, humor, courage, integrity, and the like (there are twenty-four of them)—are the supports for engagement. You go into flow when your highest strengths are deployed to meet the highest challenges that come your way. In well-being theory, these twenty-four strengths underpin all five elements, not just engagement: deploying your highest strengths leads to more positive emotion, to more meaning, to more accomplishment, and to better relationships.
Authentic happiness theory is one-dimensional: it is about feeling good and it claims that the way we choose our life course is to try to maximize how we feel. Well-being theory is about all five pillars, the underpinnings of the five elements is the strengths. Well-being theory is plural in method as well as substance: positive emotion is a subjective variable, defined by what you think and feel. Meaning, relationships, and accomplishment have both subjective and objective components, since you can believe you have meaning, good relations, and high accomplishment and be wrong, even deluded. The upshot of this is that well-being cannot exist just in your own head: well-being is a combination of feeling good as well as actually having meaning, good relationships, and accomplishment. The way we choose our course in life is to maximize all five of these elements.
This difference between happiness theory and well-being theory is of real moment. Happiness theory claims that the way we make choices is to estimate how much happiness (life satisfaction) will ensue and then we take the course that maximizes future happiness: Maximizing happiness is the final common path of individual choice.
For now I want to give just one example of why happiness theory fails abysmally as the sole explanation of how we choose. It is well established that couples with children have on average lower happiness and life satisfaction than childless couples. If evolution had to rely on maximizing happiness, the human race would have died out long ago. So clearly humans are either massively deluded about how much life satisfaction children will bring, or else we use some additional metric for choosing to reproduce. Similarly, if personal future happiness were our sole aim, we would leave our aging parents out on ice floes to die. So the happiness monism not only conflicts with the facts, but it is a poor moral guide as well: from happiness theory as a guide to life choice, some couples might choose to remain childless. When we broaden our view of well-bring to include meaning and relationships, it becomes obvious why we choose to have children and why we choose to care for our aging parents.
The goal of positive psychology in authentic happiness theory is, like Richard Layard’s goal, to increase the amount of happiness in your own life and on the planet. The goal of positive psychology in well-being theory, in contrast, is plural and importantly different: it is to increase the amount of flourishing in your own life and on the planet.
Learn More About Well-Being
Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being: Read chapter 1 (“What Is Well-Being?”)
https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/node/17
Carl Rogers and Active Listening
In this section you will find several readings which will introduce you to the theory and practice of Active Listening. Read these through and use information from them to inform your journal entries.
THE PERSON-CENTERED APPROACH
source:
http://www.ahpweb.org/rowan_bibliography/chapter6.html
This is the approach developed by Carl Rogers, and is sometimes for that reason called Rogerian counselling or therapy, although Rogers himself never approved of that title.
What it says is that if we approach another person in a certain way, we can enable them to grow and develop and work through any problems they may have. And the suggestion is really that any approach which is genuinely going to help people must involve working in that same way. Well, what is this way? It entails three qualities.
The first quality is empathy. Many people believe that this is the single quality which is most important in all forms of therapeutic listening. It means getting inside the world of the person who comes for therapy (usually called the client, though some people not in this group prefer other words such as patient or consulter) so that that person feels accepted and understood. Two things are important about this: (1) that the empathy be accurate, and (2) that the empathy be made known to the client. Both of these are learnable skills, and they do make a huge difference to the relationship between client and counsellor or therapist.
The second quality is genuineness. If empathy is about listening to the client, genuineness is about listening to myself - really tuning in to myself and being aware of all that is going on inside myself. It means being open to my own experience, not shutting off any of it. And again it means letting this out in such a way that the client can get the benefit of it. Genuineness is harder than empathy because it implies a lot of self-knowledge, which can really only be obtained by going through one's own therapy in quite a full and deep way. It is only a fully-functioning person (Rogers' word for the person who has completed at least the major part of their therapy) who can be totally genuine.
The third quality is non-possessive warmth. It means that the client can feel received in a human way, which is not threatening. In such an atmosphere trust can develop, and the person can feel able to open up to their own experiences and their own feelings. It may be noticed here that these three qualities are really what we would hope for from any human being. And anyone who would not be capable of exhibiting these qualities would not be much of a human being. So there is a lot in this approach about learning how to be a human being. It is one of the paradoxical and exciting things about the humanistic approach generally that it assumes that everyone is capable of being fully human.
In a therapeutic situation where these qualities are operating, Rogers found, clients go through a sequence of stages which more and more closely approach being fully functioning persons, able to take charge of their own lives and really be themselves.
Rogers later extended his work to basic encounter groups (small groups where the same principles operate), to organisational work on several different levels (for example, working with a class in school, with the school itself, and with the whole school district), and to work with cross-cultural groups to improve international understanding. He saw his work as having political implications: for him personal power and political power were closely connected.
BOOKLIST
Kirschenbaum, Howard & Henderson, Valerie (1990) The Carl Rogers reader Constable, London. An excellent compendium of papers written by Rogers over the years, from 1942 to 1987.
Kirschenbaum, Howard & Henderson, Valerie (1990) Carl Rogers dialogues Constable, London. A fascinating collection of conversations, with Martin Buber, Paul Tillich, B F Skinner, Gregory Bateson, Michael Polanyi, Rollo May and others.
Mearns, Dave and Thorne, Brian (1988) Person-centred counselling in action Sage, London. Sound and sober introduction to the Rogers method.
Merry, Tony (1988) A guide to the person-centred approach Association for Humanistic Psychology, London. A brief up-to-date guide.
Rogers, Carl (1980) A way of being Houghton Mifflin, Boston. An autobiography which treats well of current challenges to the helping professions.
Thorne, Brian (1992) Carl Rogers Sage, London. A good account of his life and work.
source:
http://www.ahpweb.org/rowan_bibliography/chapter6.html
http://www.ahpweb.org/rowan_bibliography/chapter6.html
This is the approach developed by Carl Rogers, and is sometimes for that reason called Rogerian counselling or therapy, although Rogers himself never approved of that title.
What it says is that if we approach another person in a certain way, we can enable them to grow and develop and work through any problems they may have. And the suggestion is really that any approach which is genuinely going to help people must involve working in that same way. Well, what is this way? It entails three qualities.
The first quality is empathy. Many people believe that this is the single quality which is most important in all forms of therapeutic listening. It means getting inside the world of the person who comes for therapy (usually called the client, though some people not in this group prefer other words such as patient or consulter) so that that person feels accepted and understood. Two things are important about this: (1) that the empathy be accurate, and (2) that the empathy be made known to the client. Both of these are learnable skills, and they do make a huge difference to the relationship between client and counsellor or therapist.
The second quality is genuineness. If empathy is about listening to the client, genuineness is about listening to myself - really tuning in to myself and being aware of all that is going on inside myself. It means being open to my own experience, not shutting off any of it. And again it means letting this out in such a way that the client can get the benefit of it. Genuineness is harder than empathy because it implies a lot of self-knowledge, which can really only be obtained by going through one's own therapy in quite a full and deep way. It is only a fully-functioning person (Rogers' word for the person who has completed at least the major part of their therapy) who can be totally genuine.
The third quality is non-possessive warmth. It means that the client can feel received in a human way, which is not threatening. In such an atmosphere trust can develop, and the person can feel able to open up to their own experiences and their own feelings. It may be noticed here that these three qualities are really what we would hope for from any human being. And anyone who would not be capable of exhibiting these qualities would not be much of a human being. So there is a lot in this approach about learning how to be a human being. It is one of the paradoxical and exciting things about the humanistic approach generally that it assumes that everyone is capable of being fully human.
In a therapeutic situation where these qualities are operating, Rogers found, clients go through a sequence of stages which more and more closely approach being fully functioning persons, able to take charge of their own lives and really be themselves.
Rogers later extended his work to basic encounter groups (small groups where the same principles operate), to organisational work on several different levels (for example, working with a class in school, with the school itself, and with the whole school district), and to work with cross-cultural groups to improve international understanding. He saw his work as having political implications: for him personal power and political power were closely connected.
BOOKLIST
Kirschenbaum, Howard & Henderson, Valerie (1990) The Carl Rogers reader Constable, London. An excellent compendium of papers written by Rogers over the years, from 1942 to 1987.
Kirschenbaum, Howard & Henderson, Valerie (1990) Carl Rogers dialogues Constable, London. A fascinating collection of conversations, with Martin Buber, Paul Tillich, B F Skinner, Gregory Bateson, Michael Polanyi, Rollo May and others.
Mearns, Dave and Thorne, Brian (1988) Person-centred counselling in action Sage, London. Sound and sober introduction to the Rogers method.
Merry, Tony (1988) A guide to the person-centred approach Association for Humanistic Psychology, London. A brief up-to-date guide.
Rogers, Carl (1980) A way of being Houghton Mifflin, Boston. An autobiography which treats well of current challenges to the helping professions.
Thorne, Brian (1992) Carl Rogers Sage, London. A good account of his life and work.
source:
http://www.ahpweb.org/rowan_bibliography/chapter6.html
Active listening does not necessarily mean long sessions spent listening to grievances, personal or otherwise. It is simply a way of approaching those problems which arise out of the usual day-to-day events of any job. To be effective, active listening must be firmly grounded in the basic attitudes of the user. We cannot employ it as a technique if our fundamental attitudes are in conflict with its basic concepts. If we try, our behavior will be empty and sterile, and our associates will be quick to recognize this. Until we can demonstrate a spirit which genuinely respects the potential worth of the individual, which considers his sights and trusts his capacity for sell-direction, we cannot begin to be effective listeners.
What We Achieve by Listening
Active listening is an important way to bring about changes in people. Despite the popular notion that listening is a passive approach, clinical and research evidence clearly shows that sensitive listening is a most effective agent for individual personality change and group development. Listening brings about changes in peoples attitudes toward themselves and others; it also brings about changes in their basic values and personal philosophy. People who have been listened to in this new and special way become more emotionally mature, more open to their experiences, less defensive, more democratic, and less authoritarian.
When people are listened to sensitively, they tend to listen to themselves with more care and to make clear exactly what they are feeling and thinking. Group members tend to listen more to each other, to become less argumentative, more ready to incorporate other points of view. Because listening reduces the threat of having ones ideas criticized, the person is better able to see them for what they are and is more likely to feel that his contributions are worthwhile.
Not the least important result of listening is the change that takes place within the listener himself. Besides providing more information than any other activity, listening builds deep, positive relationships and tends to alter constructively the attitudes of the listener. Listening is a growth experience. These, then, are some of the worthwhile results we can expect from active listening. But how do we go about this kind of listening? How do we become active listeners?
How to Listen
Active listening aims to bring about changes in people. To achieve this end, it relies upon definite techniques” things to do and things to avoid doing. Before discussing these techniques, however, we should first understand why they are effective. To do so, we must understand how the individual personality develops.
What to Do
Just what does active listening entail, then? Basically, it requires that we get inside the speaker, that we grasp, from his point of view, just what it is he is communicating to us. More than that, we must convey to the speaker that we are seeing things from his point of view. To listen actively, then, means that there are several things we must do.
Listen for Total Meaning
Any message a person tries to get across usually has two components: the content of the message and the feeling or attitude underlying this content. Both are important; both give the message meaning. It is this total meaning of the message that we try to understand. For example, a machinist comes to his foreman and says, I’ve finished that lathe setup. This message has obvious content and perhaps calls upon the foreman for another work assignment.
Suppose, on the other hand, that he says, “Well, I’m finally finished with that damned lathe setup.” The content is the same, but the total meaning of the message has changed—and changed in an important way for both the foreman and the worker. Here sensitive listening can facilitate the relationship. Suppose the foreman were to respond by simply giving another work assignment. Would the employee feel that he had gotten his total message across? Would he feel free to talk to his foreman? Will he feel better about his job, more anxious to do good work on the next assignment?
Now, on the other hand, suppose the foreman were to respond with, “Glad to have it over with, huh?” or “Had a pretty rough time of it?” or "I guess you don’t feel like doing anything like that again,” or anything else that tells the worker that he heard and understands. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the next work assignment need be changed or that he must spend an hour listening to the worker complain about the setup problems he encountered. He may do a number of things differently in the light of the new information he has from the worker—but not necessarily. It’s just that extra sensitivity on the part of the foreman which can transform an average working climate into a good one.
Respond to Feelings
In some instances, the content is far less important than the feeling which underlies it. To catch the full flavor or meaning of the message, one must respond particularly to the feeling component. If, for instance, our machinist had said, “I’d like to melt this lathe down and make paper clips out of it,” responding to content would be obviously absurd. But to respond to his disgust or anger in trying to work with his lathe recognizes the meaning of this message. There are various shadings of these components in the meaning of any message. Each time, the listener must try to remain sensitive to the total meaning the message has to the speaker. What is he trying to tell me? What does this mean to him? How does he see this situation?
Note All Cues
Not all communication is verbal. The speaker’s words alone don’t tell us everything he is communicating. And hence, truly sensitive listening requires that we become aware of several kinds of communication besides verbal. The way in which a speaker hesitates in his speech can tell us much about his feelings. So, too, can the inflection of his voice. He may stress certain points loudly and clearly and may mumble others. We should also note such things as the person’s facial expressions, body posture, hand movements, eye movements, and breathing. All of these help to convey his total message.
What We Communicate by Listening
The first reaction of most people when they consider listening as a possible method for dealing with human beings is that listening cannot be sufficient in itself, Because it is passive, they feel, listening does not communicate anything to the speaker. Actually, nothing could be farther from the truth. By consistently listening to a speaker, you are conveying the idea that: “I’m interested in you as a person, and I think that what you feel is important. I respect your thoughts, and even if I don’t agree with them, I know that they are valid for you. I feel sure that you have a contribution to make. I’m not trying to change you or evaluate you. I just want to understand you. I think you’re worth listening to, and I want you to know that I’m the kind of a person you can talk to.”
The subtle but more important aspect of this is that it is the demonstration of the message that works. While it is most difficult to convince someone that you respect him by telling him so, you are much more likely to get this message across by really behaving that way—by actually having and demonstrating respect for this person. Listening does this most effectively. Like other behavior, listening behavior is contagious. This has implications for all communication problems, whether between two people or within a large organization. To ensure good communication between associates up and down the line, one must first take the responsibility for setting a pattern of listening. Just as one learns that anger is usually met with anger, argument with argument, and deception with deception, one can learn that listening can be met with listening. Every person who feels responsibility in a situation can set the tone of the interaction, and the important lesson in this is that any behavior exhibited by one person will eventually be responded to with similar behavior in the other person.
Problems in Active Listening
Active listening is not an easy skill to acquire. It demands practice. Perhaps more important, it may require changes in our own basic attitudes. These changes come slowly and sometimes with considerable difficulty. Let us look at some of the major problems in active listening and what can be done to overcome them.
To be effective at all in active listening, one must have a sincere interest in the speaker. We all live in glass houses as far as our attitudes are concerned. They always show through. And if we are only making a pretense of interest in the speaker, he will quickly pick this up, either consciously or unconsciously. And once he does, he will no longer express himself freely. Active listening carries a strong element of personal risk. If we manage to accomplish what we are describing here—to sense deeply the feeling of another person, to understand the meaning his experiences have for him, to see the world as he sees it—we risk being changed ourselves... To get the meaning which life has for him—we risk coming to see the world as he sees it. It is threatening to give up, even momentarily, what we believe and start thinking in someone else’s terms. It takes a great deal of inner security and courage to be able to risk one’s self in understanding another.
We are so accustomed to viewing ourselves in certain ways—to seeing and hearing only what we want to see and hear—that it is extremely difficult for a person to free himself from his needs to see things these ways. To do this may sometimes be unpleasant, but it is far more difficult than unpleasant. Developing an attitude of sincere interest in the speaker is thus no easy task. It can be developed only by being willing to risk seeing the world from the speaker’s point of view. If we have a number of such experiences, however, they will shape an attitude which will allow us to be truly genuine in our interest in the speaker.
What We Achieve by Listening
Active listening is an important way to bring about changes in people. Despite the popular notion that listening is a passive approach, clinical and research evidence clearly shows that sensitive listening is a most effective agent for individual personality change and group development. Listening brings about changes in peoples attitudes toward themselves and others; it also brings about changes in their basic values and personal philosophy. People who have been listened to in this new and special way become more emotionally mature, more open to their experiences, less defensive, more democratic, and less authoritarian.
When people are listened to sensitively, they tend to listen to themselves with more care and to make clear exactly what they are feeling and thinking. Group members tend to listen more to each other, to become less argumentative, more ready to incorporate other points of view. Because listening reduces the threat of having ones ideas criticized, the person is better able to see them for what they are and is more likely to feel that his contributions are worthwhile.
Not the least important result of listening is the change that takes place within the listener himself. Besides providing more information than any other activity, listening builds deep, positive relationships and tends to alter constructively the attitudes of the listener. Listening is a growth experience. These, then, are some of the worthwhile results we can expect from active listening. But how do we go about this kind of listening? How do we become active listeners?
How to Listen
Active listening aims to bring about changes in people. To achieve this end, it relies upon definite techniques” things to do and things to avoid doing. Before discussing these techniques, however, we should first understand why they are effective. To do so, we must understand how the individual personality develops.
What to Do
Just what does active listening entail, then? Basically, it requires that we get inside the speaker, that we grasp, from his point of view, just what it is he is communicating to us. More than that, we must convey to the speaker that we are seeing things from his point of view. To listen actively, then, means that there are several things we must do.
Listen for Total Meaning
Any message a person tries to get across usually has two components: the content of the message and the feeling or attitude underlying this content. Both are important; both give the message meaning. It is this total meaning of the message that we try to understand. For example, a machinist comes to his foreman and says, I’ve finished that lathe setup. This message has obvious content and perhaps calls upon the foreman for another work assignment.
Suppose, on the other hand, that he says, “Well, I’m finally finished with that damned lathe setup.” The content is the same, but the total meaning of the message has changed—and changed in an important way for both the foreman and the worker. Here sensitive listening can facilitate the relationship. Suppose the foreman were to respond by simply giving another work assignment. Would the employee feel that he had gotten his total message across? Would he feel free to talk to his foreman? Will he feel better about his job, more anxious to do good work on the next assignment?
Now, on the other hand, suppose the foreman were to respond with, “Glad to have it over with, huh?” or “Had a pretty rough time of it?” or "I guess you don’t feel like doing anything like that again,” or anything else that tells the worker that he heard and understands. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the next work assignment need be changed or that he must spend an hour listening to the worker complain about the setup problems he encountered. He may do a number of things differently in the light of the new information he has from the worker—but not necessarily. It’s just that extra sensitivity on the part of the foreman which can transform an average working climate into a good one.
Respond to Feelings
In some instances, the content is far less important than the feeling which underlies it. To catch the full flavor or meaning of the message, one must respond particularly to the feeling component. If, for instance, our machinist had said, “I’d like to melt this lathe down and make paper clips out of it,” responding to content would be obviously absurd. But to respond to his disgust or anger in trying to work with his lathe recognizes the meaning of this message. There are various shadings of these components in the meaning of any message. Each time, the listener must try to remain sensitive to the total meaning the message has to the speaker. What is he trying to tell me? What does this mean to him? How does he see this situation?
Note All Cues
Not all communication is verbal. The speaker’s words alone don’t tell us everything he is communicating. And hence, truly sensitive listening requires that we become aware of several kinds of communication besides verbal. The way in which a speaker hesitates in his speech can tell us much about his feelings. So, too, can the inflection of his voice. He may stress certain points loudly and clearly and may mumble others. We should also note such things as the person’s facial expressions, body posture, hand movements, eye movements, and breathing. All of these help to convey his total message.
What We Communicate by Listening
The first reaction of most people when they consider listening as a possible method for dealing with human beings is that listening cannot be sufficient in itself, Because it is passive, they feel, listening does not communicate anything to the speaker. Actually, nothing could be farther from the truth. By consistently listening to a speaker, you are conveying the idea that: “I’m interested in you as a person, and I think that what you feel is important. I respect your thoughts, and even if I don’t agree with them, I know that they are valid for you. I feel sure that you have a contribution to make. I’m not trying to change you or evaluate you. I just want to understand you. I think you’re worth listening to, and I want you to know that I’m the kind of a person you can talk to.”
The subtle but more important aspect of this is that it is the demonstration of the message that works. While it is most difficult to convince someone that you respect him by telling him so, you are much more likely to get this message across by really behaving that way—by actually having and demonstrating respect for this person. Listening does this most effectively. Like other behavior, listening behavior is contagious. This has implications for all communication problems, whether between two people or within a large organization. To ensure good communication between associates up and down the line, one must first take the responsibility for setting a pattern of listening. Just as one learns that anger is usually met with anger, argument with argument, and deception with deception, one can learn that listening can be met with listening. Every person who feels responsibility in a situation can set the tone of the interaction, and the important lesson in this is that any behavior exhibited by one person will eventually be responded to with similar behavior in the other person.
Problems in Active Listening
Active listening is not an easy skill to acquire. It demands practice. Perhaps more important, it may require changes in our own basic attitudes. These changes come slowly and sometimes with considerable difficulty. Let us look at some of the major problems in active listening and what can be done to overcome them.
To be effective at all in active listening, one must have a sincere interest in the speaker. We all live in glass houses as far as our attitudes are concerned. They always show through. And if we are only making a pretense of interest in the speaker, he will quickly pick this up, either consciously or unconsciously. And once he does, he will no longer express himself freely. Active listening carries a strong element of personal risk. If we manage to accomplish what we are describing here—to sense deeply the feeling of another person, to understand the meaning his experiences have for him, to see the world as he sees it—we risk being changed ourselves... To get the meaning which life has for him—we risk coming to see the world as he sees it. It is threatening to give up, even momentarily, what we believe and start thinking in someone else’s terms. It takes a great deal of inner security and courage to be able to risk one’s self in understanding another.
We are so accustomed to viewing ourselves in certain ways—to seeing and hearing only what we want to see and hear—that it is extremely difficult for a person to free himself from his needs to see things these ways. To do this may sometimes be unpleasant, but it is far more difficult than unpleasant. Developing an attitude of sincere interest in the speaker is thus no easy task. It can be developed only by being willing to risk seeing the world from the speaker’s point of view. If we have a number of such experiences, however, they will shape an attitude which will allow us to be truly genuine in our interest in the speaker.
Components of the Active Listening Approach
The Listening Orientation
I am responsible for my thoughts and feelings, and you are responsible for your thoughts and feelings.
As a listener, I want to see your issue from your point of view and convey what I understand from a respectful and neutral place inside me. As the speaker, you have in you the capacity for self-insight, problem-solving, and growth.
As a Listener, I use these skills…
Unconditional Positive Regard –
Listen for Total Meaning –
I demonstrate these four Characteristics in myself:
Congruence –
Empathy –
Acceptance –
As a Listener I will be willing to deviate from these four qualities if that is what the speaker needs.
The Techniques of Reflection
Statements/Questions that demonstrate Restatement:
"Let me see if I got this. You are feeling…(emotion)…when she/he does…(action/behavior)…"
Statements of Clarification:
You make an observation that points out a conflict of feelings or asks for information that moves things into a more specific example.
Statements that respond to the elements that are personal (what the speaker is saying about her/himself and her/his feelings):
Because the goal of the process is for the other person, rather than the listener, to take responsibility for the problem, reflective listening means responding to, rather than leading, the other. Responding means reacting from the other's frame of reference to what the other has said. In contrast, leading means directing the other person to talk about things the helper wants to see the other explore.
The Listening Orientation
I am responsible for my thoughts and feelings, and you are responsible for your thoughts and feelings.
As a listener, I want to see your issue from your point of view and convey what I understand from a respectful and neutral place inside me. As the speaker, you have in you the capacity for self-insight, problem-solving, and growth.
As a Listener, I use these skills…
Unconditional Positive Regard –
- I respect you
- I am listening with the attitude that what you express is valid from your perspective
Listen for Total Meaning –
- I am hearing the content of your words
- I am hearing the feeling behind what you are saying
- I am attending to the non-verbal cues you are giving
- Voice tone and pacing
- Pitch and loudness
- Facial expression
- Body posture and hand movements
- Expressions and movement of the eyes
- Breathing
- Rather than asking leading questions, I ask clarifying questions and ask you to explore your own thoughts and feelings, desires and values on the subject under discussion. You, as speaker, are directing the process.
- I let you determine what is dealt with and the pace of exploration.
I demonstrate these four Characteristics in myself:
Congruence –
- There is a match between what I am saying and how I feel and what I think and believe inside me. That congruence makes me believable and trustworthy.
- I am open, frank and genuine as a listener.
Empathy –
- I will attempt to hear you deeply, accurately and without judgment. I will try to understand the situation from your point of view.
- Empathy is surprisingly difficult to achieve. We all have a strong tendency to advise, tell, agree, or disagree from our own point of view.
Acceptance –
- I accept you and respect you for being a person, regardless of what you do. I can do this without agreeing or disagreeing with what you have said.
- I am specific not general in my observations and my questions. I will help you to be specific in identifying your issues and where they may have come from.
As a Listener I will be willing to deviate from these four qualities if that is what the speaker needs.
The Techniques of Reflection
Statements/Questions that demonstrate Restatement:
"Let me see if I got this. You are feeling…(emotion)…when she/he does…(action/behavior)…"
Statements of Clarification:
You make an observation that points out a conflict of feelings or asks for information that moves things into a more specific example.
Statements that respond to the elements that are personal (what the speaker is saying about her/himself and her/his feelings):
Because the goal of the process is for the other person, rather than the listener, to take responsibility for the problem, reflective listening means responding to, rather than leading, the other. Responding means reacting from the other's frame of reference to what the other has said. In contrast, leading means directing the other person to talk about things the helper wants to see the other explore.