Our World 5. British English. Student's Book

There is no substitute for the therapist's ability to see, to hear, and to feel. In order to distinguish congruent from incongruent communication, the therapist must clear his input channels. By failing to clear the channels he runs the risk of either being preoccupied and missing the other person's messages or of hallucinating spurious messages instead of being receptive to what's actually being presented. When a therapist fails to clear all of his senses, he usually succeeds only in Mind Reading rather than in identifying and responding creatively to the messages from the person with whom he is working. Each of us has a nervous system, a personal history, and a view or model of the world which are unique to us. When we meet another person and communicate carefully, we are sensitive to the other individual in hopes of truly making contact and learning to appreciate his uniqueness, even as we, ourselves, change and grow from our experience of the differences between us. Much of our education is directed toward insuring that the verbal language which we share with other speakers (English, for this book) overlaps enough to enable us to make contact ...»